Old Europe (archaeology)

Old Europe, or Neolithic Europe, refers to the time between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe, roughly from 7000 BCE (the approximate time of the first farming societies in Greece) to c. 1700 BCE (the beginning of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia). The duration of the Neolithic varies from place to place: in southeast Europe it is approximately 4000 years (i.e., 7000−3000 BCE); in parts of North-West Europe it is just under 3000 years (c. 4500−1700 BCE).

Regardless of specific chronology, many European Neolithic groups share basic characteristics, such as living in small-scale communities, more egalitarian than the city-states and chiefdoms of the Bronze Age, subsisting on domestic plants and animals supplemented with the collection of wild plant foods and hunting, and producing hand-made pottery, without the aid of the potter's wheel. There are also many differences, with some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe living in heavily fortified settlements of 3,000–4,000 people (e.g. Sesklo in Greece) whereas Neolithic groups in Britain were small (possibly 50–100 people)..

Marija Gimbutas investigated the Neolithic period in order to understand cultural developments in settled village culture in the southern Balkans, which she characterized as peaceful, matristic, and possessing a goddess-centered religion. In contrast, she characterizes the later Indo-European influences as warlike, nomadic, and patrilineal. Using evidence from pottery and sculpture, and combining the tools of archaeology, comparative mythology, linguistics, and, most controversially, folkloristics, Gimbutas invented a new interdisciplinary field, archaeomythology.

In historical times, some ethnonyms are believed to correspond to Pre-Indo-European peoples, assumed to be the descendants of the earlier Old European cultures: the Pelasgians, Minoans, Leleges, Iberians, Nuragic people, Etruscans, Rhaetians, Camunni and Basques. Two of the three pre-Greek peoples of Sicily, the Sicans and the Elymians, may also have been pre-Indo-European.

How many Pre-Indo-European languages existed is not known. Nor is it known whether the ancient names of peoples descended from the pre-ancient population actually referred to speakers of distinct languages. Gimbutas (1989), observing a unity of symbols marked especially on pots, but also on other objects, concluded that there may have been a single language spoken in Old Europe. She thought that decipherment would have to wait for the discovery of bilingual texts.

The idea of a Pre-Indo-European language in the region precedes Gimbutas. It went by other names, such as "Pelasgian", "Mediterranean", or "Aegean". Apart from marks on artifacts, the main evidence concerning Pre-Indo-European language is in names: toponyms, ethnonyms, etc., and in roots in other languages believed to be derived from one or more prior languages, possibly unrelated. Reconstruction from the evidence is an accepted, though somewhat speculative, field of study. Suggestions of possible Old European languages include Urbian by Sorin Paliga,[5] and the Vasconic substratum hypothesis of Theo Vennemann (also see Sigmund Feist's Germanic substrate hypothesis).

According to Gimbutas' version of the Kurgan hypothesis, Old Europe was invaded and destroyed by horse-riding pastoral nomads from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (the "Kurgan culture") who brought with them violence, patriarchy, and Indo-European languages.[6] More recent proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis agree that the cultures of Old Europe spoke pre-Indo-European languages but include a less dramatic transition, with a prolonged migration of Proto-Indo-European speakers after Old Europe's collapse due to other factors.[7][8]

Colin Renfrew's competing Anatolian hypothesis suggests that the Indo-European languages were spread across Europe by the first farmers from Anatolia. In the hypothesis' original formulation, the languages of Old Europe belonged to the Indo-European family but played no special role in its transmission.[9] According to Renfrew's most recent revision of the theory, however, Old Europe was a "secondary urheimat" where the Greek, Armenian, and Balto-Slavic language families diverged around 5000 BCE.[10]

Recent genetic evidence favors Gimbutas’ Kurgan hypothesis over Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis.[11][12]

• Anthony, David (1995). "Nazi and eco-feminist prehistories: ideology and empiricism in Indo-European archaeology". Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55839-6.
• Anthony, David W (2007). The horse, the wheel, and language: how Bronze-Age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14818-2.
• Mallory, JP (1991). In search of the Indo-Europeans: language, archaeology and myth. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27616-1.
• Paliga, Sorin (1989). "Proto-Indo-European, Pre-Indo-European, Old European: Archaeological Evidence and Linguistic Investigation". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 17 (3&4).
• Renfrew, Colin (1987). Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-521-38675-6.
• Renfrew, Colin (2003). "Time Depth, Convergence Theory, and Innovation in Proto-Indo-European". Languages in Prehistoric Europe. ISBN 3-8253-1449-9.
• Bellwood, Peter (2001). "Early Agriculturalist Population Diasporas? Farming, Languages, and Genes". Annual Review of Anthropology. 30: 181–207. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.181.
• Bellwood, Peter. (2004). First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20566-7
• Childe, V. Gordon. (1926). The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins. London: Paul, Trench, Trubner.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1982). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500–3500 B.C.: Myths, and Cult Images Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04655-2
• Gimbutas, Marija (1989). The Language of the Goddess. Harper & Row, Publishers. ISBN 0-06-250356-1.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-250337-5.

• culture.gouv.fr: Life along the Danube 6500 years ago
• Kathleen Jenks, "Old europe": further links
• The Lost World of Europe 2009–2010 exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World