The Indo-European (IE) Linguistic Spread and the ‘Homeland Problem’ Revisited

The nineteenth and early twentieth-century intellectual claim to European ancestry stems from the ‘Aryan Myth’—the linguistic equating of Iranians as direct descendants Aryans, or Indo-Europeans. historical genesis word ‘Aryan’ was influenced by First Persian Empire (550-330 B.C.E.) in reference an Iranian homeland, nineteenth-century Western linguists’ associations with ancestral Indo-Europeans (IE).1 Notable philologists examining ‘homeland problem’ have shown a standard concern towards accuracy scholarship on Indo-European origins. Ara (2008) decodes origins spread that gradually led affiliations between Indo-Iranians label. onomastics approach would suggest proto-language left identifiable clues landscape itself (Mallory & Adams, 2006, p. 447). Dyen’s (1956) migration homeland theory cites accepted since nineteen hundreds. Nichols’ (1997) analysis migrations 4,000 3,500 B.C.E. points locus language dispersal within western central Asia (p. 134). Mallory (1989) Kuzmina (1994a) favor Proto-Indo-European Pontic-Caspian steppe region fifth fourth millennium B.C.E.2 (Lamberg-Karlovsky, 2004, 142). accurate whereabouts daughter Indo-Iranian group been reviewed various fields abundant methodologies, including eschatological, anthropological, linguistic, archaeological—all adding convoluted nature Aryan question. academic search for raises inquiry how ethnicity become tantamount politicized prejudiced topics account misappropriations concept. An archaeological lexicostatistic excavation conservative review may help diverge aggrandized ethnological, ethnographic, anthropometric evidence has ramified essentialist nomenclature eighteen