Linguistics Indo-European cereal terminology suggests a Northwest Pontic homeland for the core Indo-European languages

[Tautalus]

This article from 2022 discusses the origins of the Indo-European languages and their connection to cereal terminology. The research focuses on the etymology of cereal-related terms in Proto-Indo-European languages, indicating a shift from non-agricultural to mixed agro-pastoral economies and indicating that the western Yamnaya groups around the Dnieper River are more likely to reflect this stage. Consequently, the article suggests that the core Indo-European languages likely originated in the Northwest Pontic region.
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Abstract

Questions on the timing and the center of the Indo-European language dispersal are central to debates on the formation of the European and Asian linguistic landscapes and are deeply intertwined with questions on the archaeology and population history of these continents. Recent palaeogenomic studies support scenarios in which the core Indo-European languages spread with the expansion of Early Bronze Age Yamnaya herders that originally inhabited the East European steppes. Questions on the Yamnaya and Pre-Yamnaya locations of the language community that ultimately gave rise to the Indo-European language family are heavily dependent on linguistic reconstruction of the subsistence of Proto-Indo-European speakers. A central question, therefore, is how important the role of agriculture was among the speakers of this protolanguage. In this study, we perform a qualitative etymological analysis of all previously postulated Proto-Indo-European terminology related to cereal cultivation and cereal processing. On the basis of the evolution of the subsistence strategies of consecutive stages of the protolanguage, we find that one or perhaps two cereal terms can be reconstructed for the basal Indo-European stage, also known as Indo-Anatolian, but that core Indo-European, here also including Tocharian, acquired a more elaborate set of terms. Thus, we linguistically document an important economic shift from a mostly non-agricultural to a mixed agro-pastoral economy between the basal and core Indo-European speech communities. It follows that the early, eastern Yamnaya of the Don-Volga steppe, with its lack of evidence for agricultural practices, does not offer a perfect archaeological proxy for the core Indo-European language community and that this stage of the language family more likely reflects a mixed subsistence as proposed for western Yamnaya groups around or to the west of the Dnieper River.​

Indo-European cereal terminology suggests a Northwest Pontic homeland for the core Indo-European languages - PMC

Questions on the timing and the center of the Indo-European language dispersal are central to debates on the formation of the European and Asian linguistic landscapes and are deeply intertwined with questions on the archaeology and population ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Ricardo]

The Neolithic package arrived from the South, cereals easily change the names in any Indo-European language, even in Western Europe cereals have completely different names, sometimes even in closer languages with the same known ancestral root as Latin the words are different.

 

[Tautalus]

The article analysis of Proto-Indo-European cereal-related terminology reveals an economic shift from non-agricultural to mixed agro-pastoral economies. The transition from basal Indo-European (Indo-Anatolian) to core Indo-European languages shows an increase in agricultural terminology, indicating a shift towards mixed subsistence strategies.
Many agricultural terms traditionally reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European are post-Anatolian, suggesting that the core Indo-European languages developed these terms later, probably influenced by contact with groups like Cucuteni-Trypillia.
Agriculture appears marginal in early steppe cultures and Basal Indo-European was not a deeply agricultural language, in fact early Indo-Anatolian lacked extensive agricultural vocabulary, fitting better with a pastoralist culture like Sredny Stog (Serednii Stih).
This linguistic evidence points to a pastoralist steppe culture as the origin of PIE.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of all Indo-European languages. It is believed to have been spoken by a community that had a mixed subsistence strategy, including both pastoralism and some agriculture. The vocabulary of PIE includes terms related to both herding and farming.
Basal Indo-European (Indo-Anatolian) represents the earliest split from PIE, leading to the Anatolian languages (like Hittite). The Indo-Anatolian phase is characterized by a limited agricultural vocabulary, suggesting that the speakers were primarily pastoralists with minimal agricultural activities. This aligns with the archaeological evidence from the Sredny Stog culture, which shows limited agricultural practices.
Core Indo-European includes the languages that developed after the Anatolian split, such as Tocharian, Indo-Iranian, and the European branches. Core Indo-European languages exhibit a more extensive agricultural vocabulary, indicating a shift towards a mixed agro-pastoral economy. This economic shift is reflected in the archaeological record of the western Yamnaya groups, which had a more diverse subsistence strategy compared to the eastern Yamnaya.

Reconstructed protoforms of some agricultural terms :​

 

[Jaska]

Quote from the article:
"In conclusion, while many cereal terms have been proposed in the literature, their number must be substantially reduced, especially for the most basal stage of Indo-European, Indo-Anatolian. The resulting picture is one that is far less problematic to the Steppe Hypothesis than has been previously suggested [10]. The overall scarcity of shared cereal (cultivation and processing) vocabulary at this stage strongly contradicts a deeply agricultural language community and thus disqualifies the Anatolia Hypothesis as it was initially formulated. The results in fact also contradict the revised form of the hypothesis, which entailed a scenario in which core Indo-European was introduced to the Pontic-Caspian steppe by an outmigration from an agrarian homeland in Anatolia. This scenario implies that Indo-Anatolian was originally rich in agricultural vocabulary, but that this part of the lexicon was largely lost in core Indo-European during an economic transformation from sedentary farmers to mobile pastoralists. The linguistic evidence is suggestive of the opposite scenario in which core Indo-European repurposed various originally non-agricultural Indo-Anatolian lexical roots to reference an increasingly agricultural economy.

Nevertheless, our results also raise questions for the Steppe Hypothesis. For the oldest stratum, Indo-Anatolian, the lexical evidence for cereal use is relatively modest, but not zero: we must at least admit the cereal term (H)ieu(H)- and perhaps ǵh(e)rsd-. For the core Indo-European level, an even more extensive set of terms can be identified. In a model in which the split between the European and Asian branches is assumed to be primary, we must admit at least h2erh3- ‘plow’, h2erh3-ur/n- ‘(arable) field’, peis- ‘grind (grain)’, se-sh1-io- ‘a cereal’, h2ed-o(s)- ‘a (parched?) cereal’, dhoH-neh2- ‘(cereal) seed’ and pelH-u- ‘chaff’. By applying the alternative, Indo-Slavic model, it is possible to relegate the latter two terms to the most recent subnode of the family, so as to deprive them of their core Indo-European status. However, even in this model, the remaining terms still stand. It is furthermore worth noting that at the second-most basal stage, prior to the Tocharian split, the root h2erh3- had already undergone the semantic shift to ‘plow’, implying that this practice was known to the deepest layers of core Indo-European.

In other words, unless cereal cultivation was a much more important
aspect of the Yamnaya culture than recent archaeological interpretations suggest, this culture does not offer a perfect archaeolinguistic match for the original language community of the core Indo-European branches, including Tocharian. As a consequence, we may conclude that it is not possible to on the one hand support the Steppe Hypothesis (or the revised Anatolia Hypothesis for that matter) while at the same time assuming that steppe migrants had an exclusively pastoralist way of life, as has been proposed for the early Yamnaya culture [41; 42;
215:17]."

 

[Jaska]

"From 3300, Yamnaya pastoralists crossed the Dnieper in increased numbers and started settling the westernmost steppes. At the same time, Late Cucuteni-Trypillian farmers were expanding into the steppe directly west of the Middle Dnieper, where settlements persisted until 2600 BCE, resulting in a short-lived but likely crucial phase of coexistence in this area [2:237; 222]. Kurgans were erected on top of Late Cucuteni settlements [223:301; 224]. Cereal imprints are documented for two of the Belyaevka and Glubokoe kurgans on the lower Dniester [3:320]. Further west in the Lower Danube region, regionally distinguishable burial customs reflect the adaptation of incoming pastoralists to the local populations of the tell settlements [225]. Within a few generations, culturally and linguistically diversifying Yamnaya groups would have had ample opportunity to acquire extensive knowledge of local agricultural practices, such as the use of plows, plowshares and sickles, as they have been documented archaeologically in the region in the fourth
millennium BCE [43; 127:88–95; 162:48; 212], as indicated in Fig 3.

In conclusion, unlike the archaeological Yamnaya homeland, the linguistic homeland of the core Indo-European language community cannot be located in the eastern steppe, but must be situated around, and extending to the west of, the Dnieper River. After the formation of the core Indo-European dialect continuum in this area after ca. 3300 BCE, it gradually developed into a network of increasingly evolved and disconnected varieties of Indo-European speech,
thus foreshadowing the final fragmentation of the language and the movements of the various branches into Europe and Asia. Intriguingly, Indo-Iranian and especially Tocharian were impacted less heavily by the later, more radical shift towards agriculture that manifests itself in the European branches, indicating that they were culturally but also geographically more peripheral."