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The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the hypothetical speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable people or tribe, but were a group of loosely related populations ancestral to the later, still partially prehistoric, Bronze Age Indo-Europeans. This view is held especially by those archaeologists who believed it to be an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this view is not shared by linguists, as proto-languages, like all languages before modern transport and communication, occupied small geographical areas over a limited time span, and were spoken by a set of close-knit communities—a tribe in the broad sense. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the late Neolithic, or roughly the 4th millennium BC. Mainstream scholarship places them in the forest-steppe zone immediately to the north of the western end of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe. Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic (5500 to 4500 BCE) or even the early Neolithic (7500 to 5500 BC), and suggest alternative location hypotheses. By the early second millennium BC, offshoots of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia (Hittites), the Aegean (Mycenaean Greece), Western Europe (Corded Ware culture), the edges of Central Asia (Yamna culture), and southern Siberia (Afanasevo culture). The Proto-Indo-Europeans were in the past referred to by many scholars as ''Aryans''. ==Culture== The following basic traits of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their environment are widely agreed upon but still hypothetical due to their reconstructed nature: * Pastoralism, including domesticated cattle, horses, and dogs〔 * agriculture and cereal cultivation, including technology commonly ascribed to late-Neolithic farming communities, e.g., the plow〔 * a climate with winter snow〔"The Indo-Europeans knew snow in their homeland; the word sneigwh- is nearly ubiquitous." 〕 * transportation by or across water〔 * the solid wheel,〔 used for wagons, but not yet chariots with spoked wheels〔The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world – J. P. Mallory, Douglas Q. Adams, Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-19-929668-5, p249〕 * worship of a sky god,〔The Oxford Companion to Archaeology – Edited by Brian M. Fagan, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507618-4, p 347 – J.P. Mallory〕 '' *dyeus ph2tēr'' (lit. "sky father"; > Ancient Greek ''Ζεύς (πατήρ) / Zeus (patēr)''; '' *dieu-ph2tēr'' > Latin ''Jupiter''; Illyrian ''Deipaturos'')〔 "Yet, for the Indo-European-speaking society, we can reconstruct with certainty the word for “god,” *deiw-os, and the two-word name of the chief deity of the pantheon, *dyeu-pəter- (Latin Iūpiter, Greek Zeus patēr, Sanskrit , and Luvian Tatis Tiwaz)." 〕 * oral heroic poetry or song lyrics that used stock phrases such as ''imperishable fame''〔 * a patrilineal kinship-system based on relationships between men The Proto-Indo-Europeans had a patrilineal society, relying largely on agriculture, but partly on animal husbandry, notably of cattle and sheep. They had domesticated horses – ' (cf. Latin ''equus''). The cow (') played a central role, in religion and mythology as well as in daily life. A man's wealth would have been measured by the number of his animals (small livestock), ' (cf. English ''fee'', Latin ''pecunia''). They practiced a polytheistic religion centered on sacrificial rites, probably administered by a priestly caste. Burials in barrows or tomb chambers apply to the Kurgan culture, in accordance with the original version of the Kurgan hypothesis, but not to the previous Sredny Stog culture, which is also generally associated with PIE. Important leaders would have been buried with their belongings in kurgans, and possibly also with members of their households or wives (human sacrifice, suttee). Many Indo-European societies know a threefold division of priests, a warrior class, and a class of peasants or husbandmen. Georges Dumézil has suggested such a division for Proto-Indo-European society. If there was a separate class of warriors, it probably consisted of single young men. They would have followed a separate warrior code unacceptable in the society outside their peer-group. Traces of initiation rites in several Indo-European societies suggest that this group identified itself with wolves or dogs (see also Berserker, werewolf). As for technology, reconstruction indicates a culture of the late Neolithic bordering on the early Bronze Age, with tools and weapons very likely composed of "natural bronze" (i.e., made from copper ore naturally rich in silicon or arsenic). Silver and gold were known, but not silver smelting (as PIE has no word for lead, a by-product of silver smelting), thus suggesting that silver was imported. Sheep were kept for wool, and textiles were woven. The wheel was known, certainly for ox-drawn wagons. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Proto-Indo-Europeans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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