Ich versuche in diesem Beitrag eine sehr abkürzende Darstellung der Argumentation David W. Anthonys für eine Lokalisierung der Proto-Indoeuropäischen (in meinem weiteren Text auch ´PIE´) "Urheimat" (homeland) genau dort, wo auch Marija Gimbutas sie vermutete, nämlich
(The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, 99)
west of the Ural Mountains, between the Urals and the Caucasus, in the
steppes of eastern Ukraine and Russia.
Auf S. 82 hebt Anthony ausdrücklich hervor, dass es in den letzten Jahrzehnten vor allem (notably) Marija Gimbutas und Jim Mallory waren, die auf überzeugende Weise (persuasively) für eine Lokalisierung in den pontisch-kaspischen Steppen argumentierten:
The evidence will take us down a well-known path to a familiar destination: the grasslands north of the Black and Caspian Seas in what is today Ukraine and southern Russia, also known as the Pontic-Caspian steppes (figure 5.1). Certain scholars, notably Marija Gimbutas and Jim Mallory, have argued persuasively for this homeland for the last thirty years, each using criteria that differ in some significant details but reaching the same end point for many of the same reasons.
Dann weist Anthony auf neue Forschungsergebnisse (recent discoveries) hin (die Herrn Häusler, der von einer autochtonen Entstehung ausgeht, wohl entgangen sind), welche die Steppen-Hypothese derart bestärken, dass man vernünftigerweise annehmen kann, dass das Homeland in diesen Steppen lag:
(82)
Recent discoveries have strengthened the Pontic-Caspian hypothesis so significantly, in my opinion, that we can reasonably go forward on the assumption that this was the homeland.
Auf S. 89 betont Anthony, dass es sich bei dieser Theorie keinesfalls um einen "rassistischen Mythos" handelt (wie Herr Häusler anzunehmen scheint) oder um eine "pure theoretische Phantasie":
The Proto-Indo-European homeland is not a racist myth or a purely
theoretical fantasy. A real language lies behind reconstructed Proto-Indo-
European, just as a real language lies behind any dictionary.
Dann erläutert er die Methode einer Rekonstruktion der PIE Sprache. Dabei gilt es, Vokabeln zu identifizieren, die sich auf Tier- und Pflanzenarten sowie auf Technologien beziehen, die ausschließlich an bestimmten Orten und zu bestimmten Zeiten existierten. Dadurch könne man das Ursprungsgebiet eingrenzen:
(89)
The first step is to identify roots in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary referring to animal and plant species or technologies that existed only in certain places at particular times. The vocabulary itself should point to a homeland, at least within broad limits.
Als gute Indikatoren können z.B. die PIE Vokabeln für "Biene" und "Honig" dienen, da anhand deren Vorkommens und Nicht-Vorkommens das Suchgebiet nach dem Ausschlussverfahren eingegrenzt werden kann:
Bee and honey are very strong reconstructions based on cognates in
most Indo-European languages. (...) Honeybees
were not native east of the Ural Mountains, in Siberia, because the hard-
wood trees (lime and oak, particularly) that wild honeybees prefer as
nesting sites were rare or absent east of the Urals. If bees and honey did
not exist in Siberia, the homeland could not have been there. That re-
moves all of Siberia and much of northeastern Eurasia from contention,
including the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan.
Als Homeland des PIE kommen also weder Sibirien noch der größte Teil des nordöstlichen Eurasien in Frage.
Die Pferd-Vokabel *ek*wo- ist ein weiterer Indikator, der - 1) wegen des quantitativ erheblichen Vorkommens von Pferden allein in den eurasischen Steppen und 2) wegen des (Fast-)Nichtvorkommens im Nahen Osten, im Iran und in Indien - das westlich von den eurasischen Steppen gelegene "temperate (= klimatisch gemäßigte) Europe" sowie den Nahen Osten, Iran und Indien und die gemäßigten Zonen Anatoliens und des Kaukasus aus der Rasterfahndung ausschließt:
(91)
The horse, *ek*wo-, is solidly reconstructed and seems also to have been a potent symbol of divine power for the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Although horselived in small, isolated pockets throughout prehistoric Europe, the Caucasus, and Anatolia between 4500 and 2500 BCE, they were rare or absent in the Near East, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent. They were numerous and economically important only in the Eurasian steppes. The term for horse removes the Near East, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent from serious contention, and encourages us to look closely at the Eurasian steppes. This leaves temperate Europe, including the steppes west of the Urals, and the temperate parts of Anatolia and the Caucasus Mountains.
Aus dem Suchbereich zu eliminieren sind auch alle Gebiete, wo nach 2500 BCE noch Wildbeutergesellschaften existierten, weil PIE von da an eine tote Sprache (dead language) war, das von Bauern und Viehzüchtern gesprochene PIE in diesen Gebieten also nicht entstanden sein kann. Damit fallen das klimatisch gemäßigte Nordeuropa und Sibirien (das bereits durch den Honig-Indikator ausgeschlossen ist) sowie die kasachischen Steppen östlich vom Ural aus der Rechnung:
(93)
The speakers of Proto-Indo-European were tribal farmers and stock-
breeders. Societies like this lived across much of Europe, Anatolia, and
the Caucasus Mountains after 6000 BCE. But regions where hunting and
gathering economies persisted until after 2500 BCE are eliminated as
possible homelands, because Proto-Indo-European was a dead language
by 2500 BCE. The northern temperate forests of Europe and Siberia are
excluded by this stockbreeders-before-2500 BCE rule, which cuts away
one more piece of the map. The Kazakh steppes east of the Ural Moun-
tains are excluded as well. In fact, this rule, combined with the exclusion
of tropical regions and the presence of honeybees, makes a homeland anywhere
east of the Ural Mountains unlikely.
Desweiteren gibt es auffällige Beziehungen zwischen PIE und der proto-uralischen Sprache, die auf eine enge geographische Nachbarschaft schließen lassen. Auszuschließen ist aber ein Gebiet östlich des Ural, da dort erst nach 2500 BCE Tiere domestiziert wurden, das ab 2500 BCE tote Viehzüchter-PIE dort also nicht entstanden sein kann (siehe auch vorausgehende Argumentation, die East-of-Ural schon wegen anderer Gründe ausschloss):
(96-97)
These two kinds of linguistic relationship — a possible common ancestral
origin and inter-language borrowings — suggest that the Proto-Indo-
European homeland was situated near the homeland of Proto-Uralic, in
the vicinty of the southern Ural Mountains. We also know that the speak-
ers of Proto-Indo-European were farmers and herders whose language
had disappeared by 2500 BCE. The people living east of the Urals did not
adopt domesticated animals until after 2500 BC. Proto-Indo-European
must therefore have been spoken somewhere to the south and west of the Urals, the only region close to the Urals where farming and herding was regularly practiced before 2500 BCE.
Schießlich fasst Anthony seine Überlegungen wie folgt zusammen:
(99)
We can exclude all regions where hunter-gatherer economies survived up to 2500 BCE. That eliminates the northern forest zone of Eurasia and the Kazakh steppes east of the Ural Mountains. The absence of honeybees east of the Urals eliminates any part of Siberia. The temperate-zone flora and fauna in the reconstructed vocabulary, and the absence of shared roots for Mediterranean or tropical flora and fauna, eliminate the tropics, the Mediterranean, and the Near East.
Proto-Indo-European exhibits some very ancient links with the
Uralic languages, overlaid by more recent lexical borrowings into Proto-
Uralic from Proto-Indo-European; and it exhibits less clear linkages to
some Pre- or Proto-Kartvelian language of the Caucasus region. All these
requirements would be met by a Proto-Indo-European homeland placed west of the Ural Mountains, between the Urals and the Caucasus, in the steppes of eastern Ukraine and Russia. The internal coherence of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European — the absence of evidence for radical internal variation in grammar and phonology — indicates that the period of language history it reflects was less than two thousand years, probably less than one thousand. 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.
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