Early Indo-European social organization and the Indo-European homeland
 
Sergey Kullanda (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, kullanda@java.msk.ru)
 
Journal of Language Relationship, № 9, 2013 - p.137-144
 
Abstract: The homeland of a language family can be tentatively located with the aid of data on linguistic contacts, material culture, genetics, etc. Consequently, the current paper discusses the evidence that points to the specific traits of Proto-Indo-European social structure. It seems likely that the latter was based on age-sex stratification that had evolved into the varna system among the Indo-Iranians. Since age-sex stratification was particularly viable among cattle-breeding pastoralists, the search for the Indo-European homeland should focus on such mobile semi-sedentary cultures.
 
Keywords: kinship terms, age-sex stratification, cattle-breeding, varṇas
 
PDF