Ten Constraints that Limit the Late PIE Homeland to the Steppes
David Anthony
2024, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Hamburg: Buske. 1–25.
25 Pages
Ancient Indo-European Languages,
Ancient DNA (Archaeology),
Proto Indo-European,
Yamnaya culture
Since 2015, migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into Europe and Asia have been revealed by the study of ancient DNA, leading to the recent resurgence of the steppe theory of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins. But the linguistic and archaeological support for the steppe theory has not been updated or integrated with recent specialist studies that examined aDNA not only from humans but also from horses, dairy peptides preserved in dental calculus, human skeletal pathologies associated with horseback riding, or other archaeological evidence. Here I differentiate Early PIE, prior to the Anatolian split, from Late PIE, also called Core or Nuclear PIE, the ancestor of all other IE branches. Ten linguistic, chronological, cultural, and genetic constraints taken from the LPIE vocabulary, its radiocarbon-dated material attestations such as wheels, and migrations revealed by aDNA are reviewed, supporting the hypothesis that the LPIE dialects were spoken in the Pontic-Caspian steppes 3500-2500 BCE.