Recent studies on the Indo-Europeans first contact with the Romanian Neolithic cultures

The Indo-Europeans “homeland’ and the moment of their dispersal throughout Europe is a much debated subject. In the last decades the most prominent researchers on this topic went from viewing the Indo-European appearance either as a warrior invasion or as a peaceful intrusion. A prominent researcher in the subject, James Mallory believes that sometime after 4500-4000 BC a considerable number of people from the Pontic region laid “the foundation for the Indo-European languages throughout Southeastern Europe” (Mallory 1989: 234). They disrupted the lower Danube prosperous cultures, Gumelniţa, Hamangia, Boian, Vinca, for which Marija Gimbutas established the term ‘Old Europe’ (Gimbutas 1974). The populations from these settlements practiced farming and herding, advanced ceramic techniques, and worshiped the Great Goddess. These invaders appeared as a warrior like, nomadic population, essentially patriarchal, structured in social classes, who worshiped the sky and the sun.

The violent invasion theory was refuted by Colin Renfrew (1987) who advanced the hypothesis that at about 7000 BC the first farmers, speaking a Pre-Proto-Indo-European language, came to Europe from Anatolia through Greece, and spread North colonizing middle and lower Danube valleys. Their arrival was not a warlike intrusion, but rather a gradual penetration, the ‘conquering’ process being realized by assimilation. The peaceful mingling between the Old Europe goddess worshiping group and the newcomers’ beliefs may justify the confusion often associated with the feminine deities function and their stories in the Greek pantheon.

Recently, David Anthony (2007) published his extensive archaeological researches, reinforcing the previous theories of Gimbutas/Mallory, locating the homeland for the Proto-Indo-European group North of the Black sea in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, the place of their dispersal. Analyzing the archaeological data in conjunction with the linguistic reconstructions Anthony reaches the conclusion that most likely the penetration of the Proto-Indo-European culture and the fall of the Southeast European settlements was the result of a combination of several factors: cultural and economic exchanges, warlike incursions, and climate conditions.

Briefly, here are some of his main ideas: between 6500-5500 BC the first farmers and herders from Anatolia arrived in Europe through Greece and Macedonia, going up north on the Danube Valley all the way to the east side of the Carpathian Mountains. These newcomers were non-Indo-European speakers. They brought with them domesticated sheep, cattle, the cultivation of a variety of wheat, emmer, einkorn, spelt, barley, millet, peas, plum orchards (Anthony: 139). A note should be included here on the difficulty linguists have to reconstruct the PIE word for ‘pea’ (Mallory Adams 1997: 416) in spite of its confirmed presence on the continent for thousands of years, and the unexplained Albanian modhullë – Romanian mazăre forms  ‘pea’, and the Dacian mózoula ’the plant thyme’.  

The Criş culture, developed on the east side of the Carpathian Mountains by the farmers from Anatolia, came in direct contact with its neighbors, the Pontic-Caspian population of foragers and hunters. Around 5800-5500 BC the archaeological data shows that the hunters and gatherers on the Bug-Dniester valley selectively and on a limited scale adopted the Criş farmers-herders influence, consisting of small plots of grain, cattle and pigs, and perhaps borrowed the word *tawr-. After 5200 BC the lower Danube valley settlements and the Criş culture know the results of centuries of peace and prosperity, the farming hamlets turn into large better built villages, larger towns, bigger houses, some on two levels, painted on specific patterns; remarkably, on some sites villages continued on the same spot for many generations, showing signs of a very sedentary type of population. The ceramic decorations follow similar patterns and the numerous female figurines confirm that the main religious beliefs centered on the Great Goddess. Beginning with 5200-5000 BC the Pontic-Caspian steppe societies became attracted to the Old Europe copper trade, and the beautifully decorated ceramics of the Cucuteni Tripolye cultures.

After one thousand years of prosperous existence by 4200 BC the Old Europe cultures reached their peak. Unfortunately, the lower Danube valley civilization was hit by a period of terrible winters (Anthony: 227) which resulted in burned and abandoned settlements. The destruction of Old Europe cultures took place from 4200 to 3800 BC, as a result of the shift in climate, with a period of 140-150 years of terrible winter colds, that lead to the end of farming activities. To this hardship contributed also the incursions of the steppe immigrants, a mobile force on horseback looking for Balkan copper and perhaps forceful accumulation of herds. Some of the settlers from this area retreated to north-west into the Transylvanian territory, where they settled and developed other cultural complexes. Following the long years of very harsh winters and the warlike interventions, by 3700 BC the lower Danube valley benefitted of a milder climate that encouraged further penetration of steppe settlers. The agricultural type of economy was replaces by the adoption of an Indo-European type pastoral economy. Yet, the traditions of Old Europe continued for a longer period of time in the western part of Romania, in Transylvania and western Bulgaria, while the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultures maintained an undisturbed economic and probably social relation with their steppe neighbors. Beginning sometimes before 4000 BC the steppe population adopted more of the farmers and herders way of life and economy, creating the conditions for the start of what it is accepted as the Proto-Indo-European: “The heart of the Proto-Indo-European period probably fell between 4000 and 3000 BCE, with an early phase that might go back to 4500 BCE and a late phase that ended by 2500 BCE” (Anthony 2007: 99). In accord with Gimbutas and Mallory, Anthony concludes that linguistic reconstruction and archaeological discoveries lead to the probability that Proto-Indo-European was the language spoken in the Pontic-Caspian steppes between 4500-2500 BC, and that by 2500 BC the PIE was dead.

Anthony presents a scenario in which the diffusion of the Proto-Indo-European language, which resulted into the formation of the I-E dialects, occurred in the following sequence (Anthony: 305): the dispersal of Yamnaya horizon began with Afanasievo culture spreading towards east around 3700-3500 BC with Pre-Tocharian, followed at about 3300 BC by the diffusion across Pontic-Caspian region. The large migration from Western Yamnaya to Danube valley and Carpathian basin took place from 3100-3000 BC during the Early Bronze Age, presumably with the Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic dialects. Around 2800-2600 BC the Yamnaya horizon penetrated the Corded Ware cultures North West of the Pontic region, giving leeway to Germanic, Slavic and Baltic dialects. The last diffusion took place around 2200-2000 BC when the late Yamnaya-Poltavka cultures went east separating in what are the Indo-Iranian speakers.  

Material culture such as pottery, copper, cattle, and textiles, was at the core of economic exchanges between the steppe tribes and the Anatolian settlers on the Southeast and Eastern part of Romania. Anthony argues that the Indo-European infiltration in Europe was successful, aside from violence, to the employment of a specific system of contractual patron-client relations and guest-host agreements, enforced by public lavishing rituals that impressed their neighbors and lead to forming social and economic relations. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary gives us a hint on the importance of the oath-bound rituals for their relations with gods, other members of the tribe, and even with people from a different ethnic group, or strangers. More so, some of these rituals may have been adopted by the surrounding groups from cultures other than the Indo-European stock. Relying on linguistic data scientists reconstructed a short but essential vocabulary that could help us understand the Pontic steppe people beliefs and way of life. In an effort to understand the position of the Romanian language and culture as an area that came first in contact with speakers of Indo-European, and in line with the rich archaeological data presented in Anthony’s work, I will offer here some examples of Proto-Indo-European reconstructed forms that may be preserved in the unsolved Romanian substratum.  It is a well-established fact that the horse and the wagon are the most distinguished marks of the Indo-European culture. It may be worth mentioning here that male horse domestication and handling was much more successful than of the female (Anthony: 201), which could shed a new light on the Romanian word for mare, iapă, (PIE *h₁ekwos ‘horse’, Grk hippos; Av aspa; Skt asva, and Epona ‘horses goddess’ in Gaelic tradition), and indicating that it may have entered the language at an earlier date than the form cal ‘horse’. One key element denoting these notions is the word for wheel, reconstructed in PIE as *k^wék^wlos or *k^w ek^wlós, based on Old Norse hvēl; Old English hweohl; Avestan Iranian čaxtra; Old Indic cakrá ‘wheel, Sun disc’; Greek kúklos ‘circle’ and kukla ‘wheels’; Tocharian A kukal ‘wagon’; Tocharian B kokale ‘wagon’, Hittite kugullaš ‘ring-shaped bread, donut’. To this list I would add the Romanian form cocoloş, pl. cocoloaşe ‘a small ball of dough, or other material that could be shaped in a small sphere; the word is also used as a term of endearment for a baby’. One should note the closeness to the Greek and Hittite forms, although the possibility of a loan from Greek is most unlikely as the vowel u>o in Romanian language is not documented. There are though other examples PIE reconstructed words (Mallory: 2006) which show the vowel ‘o’ continuing in Romanian substratum, among which here are a few examples:

*dhólh_aos ‘valley’ – Rom n. dolie ‘slow river, the place where a slow river goes

*smók’wṛ ‘beard’ – Rom n. smoc ‘turf of hair’; but as a verb smuci ‘pull, jiggle’

*népōts ‘descendant’ – Rom n. nepot/nepoată ‘grandchild and nephew/niece’

*lóḱs   ‘salmon’ – Rom n. lostriţa<*lo(k)s +trutta? ‘salmo trutta’        

*g^worh_x ‘mountain, forest’ – Rom gorun ‘oak’

To this argument it should be added the well-established linguistic rule in Romanian Language according to which the vowel o changes into u, as seen in the following examples from PIE:

 *bhólĝhis ‘skin, belly’ < *bhelĝh- ‘swell’ – Rom n. burduf ‘bag of animal skin or stomac’; bulgăr, bulz ‘ball of matter, earth, snow, food’; 

*lónko/eh_a  ‘valley’ – Rom n. luncă ‘meadow, field’;

*mórom ‘blackberry’ – Rom n. mur[ă] ‘blackberry’;

* k`os-trom/dhrom ‘knife, dagger’ <*k`es- ‘cut’ – Rom n. custure ‘reg. knife’; cuţit ‘knife’.  

To broaden the discussion I may add an example in which the PIE vowel u persisted in Romanian, perhaps due to the heavy semantic connotations implied: *dusmenēs ‘hostile’ literally ‘bad-thought’ – Rom n. duşman ‘enemy’. To my knowledge, there are no examples of vowels u>o in Romanian.

Considering that this linguistic rule [o>u] applies to many forms that relate Latina volgata to Romanian, such as Lat. montem Rom. munte; Lat. corona Rom. cunună; Lat. dominica Rom. duminică; Lat bonus Rom. bun, etc. we may wonder, if perhaps this linguistic phenomenon belongs to more recent time in the development of the Romanian language, while the other examples given above from the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed vocabulary may show  more conservative qualities, testifying for an archaic structure. Even if this idea may be difficult to accept the need for further exploration is paramount. I may add here the Romanian coacăză ‘currant’, ARom. and MeglenoRom. cocă ‘head, plants with small round fruits’; Alb. koqë ‘kernel, grain, ball (testicle)’ and koqëz ‘small kernel, grain, small white fig’; the Latin form coccum, pl. coca ‘red berry of the scarlet oak’. Semantically, all these cognates imply the idea of ‘round shape’, and whether or not we accept a direct relation with the PIE *k^wék^wlos, they show an impressive continuity.

Ignoring the traditional biases and misjudgments resulting from the turbulent history and numerous invasions that flooded the Carpathian territory, the archaic aspect of the Romanian language needs to be brought into open discussion, with special attention offered to the ninety, maybe more, forms of unresolved etymology, grouped in a so called ‘substratum’, that await the attention of the international community of linguists. Anthony’s remarkable contribution and his new hypothesis regarding the early contacts of the lower Danube valley and east Carpathian settlers with the Indo-European immigrants, whether through violence or by commercial contracts, shine a bright light on a language and culture that is not enough evaluated and studied.       

REFERENCES

Gimbutas, Marija. 1974. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myth and Cult Images (6500-3500 B.C.) London: Thames and Hudson.

Mallory, James P. 1989. In Search of the Indo-European. London: Thames and Hudson.

Mallory, J. P. & Adam, D Q. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.

Mallory, J. P. & Adam, D Q. 2006. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Anthony, David W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language; How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasia Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.