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

 

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.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0275744 

Some important points from the paper that are relevant to agriculture.

Strikingly, not a single word for millet can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European.

Accordingly, at least two terms have been reclassified from the inherited, potentially Indo-European category into a category of prehistoric loans from one or more unknown sources: *bhars- ‘a cereal’ and *au̯iĝ- ‘oats’. Neither of these traditional reconstructions can be maintained for any level within the Indo-European pedigree.

 For a start, many of the proposed etymologies have been overinterpreted semantically, i.e. they have been assigned an agricultural meaning while in fact no such meaning is evident for the Proto-Indo-European level.

The formation *d(e)rH-ueh2-, for instance, refers to a kind of grass in Indic and Celtic, and to wheat only in Middle Dutch. As a limited distribution of an agricultural meaning is most easily understood as resulting from an equally limited, post-Indo-European innovation, those meanings should not uncritically be projected back into the protolanguage

The Proto-Indo-European meaning of *ǵrH-no- was not ‘cereal’, but rather ‘granule’, a meaning still extant in Germanic and Italic. Likewise, the Proto-Indo-European meaning of *pelH-u- cannot have been ‘chaff’; this meaning is dominant only in Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, but the other branches in which the word occurs rather have ‘dust’, ‘powder’ or even ‘snow’

Many reconstructed meanings are post-Anatolian, as in they acquired agricultural linkage only in core-Indo-European. For example,  the root *h2erh3-, meaning ‘crush, shatter’ in Anatolian, but ‘plow’ in core Indo-European, including Tocharian. The root *sper- means ‘scatter’ in Anatolian, but displays a semantic shift to ‘seed’ in Greek and Albanian. The core Indo-European root *h2leh1- ‘grind; thresh’ could be the continuation of what in Hittite appears as ḫall- ‘tramp(le), flatten. 

Some reconstructions are also post-Tocharian, *gwr(e)h2-uon-, meaning ‘stone’ in Tocharian, but ‘grindstone’ in the other branches in which it is attested. In addition, there is the s-stem *h2eḱ-os- meaning ‘tip (of grass)’ in Tocharian, and ‘ear (of grain)’ in Germanic and Italic only.

European Centum languages show several instances of exclusive semantic specialization for agriculture, indicating the diffusal of WSH ancestry in EEF-dominated Europe likely.

Conclusion: 

•  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.

Now, coming to the implications for Indo-Iranian (which was likely formed in a much less agriculture heavy zone, the Fatyanovo culture in the Volga Forest Steppes surrounded by cultural exchanges with Volosovo type Hunter Gatherer groups). The European branches repurpose a lot of the inherited vocabulary to adapt to their new agricultural environment, however, Indo-Iranian only marginally participates in this. The central question is this: 

The question revolves around the two rival hypotheses by Hirt on the one hand and Schrader on the other: did Indo-Iranian lose many of the agricultural terms present in the European branches or did the European branches rather acquire them after the Indo-Iranian split?

Some examples of archaisms by Indo-Iranian here:

• An association of *ǵrH-no- ‘granule’, plausibly derived from a root *ǵerH- ‘scatter’, with domesticated plant seeds is visible in Germanic, Ital(o-Celt)ic and Balto-Slavic, but if Pashto zə́ṇai is to be relied on, (Indo-)Iranian may have preserved a more general meaning, i.e. a seed of any (domesticated or non-domesticated) plant.
•  The root *peuH- retained its original meaning ‘purify’ in Germanic, Celtic and Italic. It might have developed into ‘winnow’ in Balto-Slavic, Greek and possibly Albanian, in view of the derivation *puH-ro- ‘a kind of cereal’, but Indo-Iranian takes up an intermediate position, in that it preserves the polysemy. Grinding is an activity that is not restricted to agricultural societies
• Nevertheless, it is striking that the formation *gwr(e)h2-uon- has the generic meaning ‘stone’ in Tocharian, the more agricultural meaning ‘quern’ or ‘millstone’ in Germanic, Celtic, Armenian and Balto-Slavic, but the semantically intermediate ‘(pressing) stone’ in Sanskrit
• A final showcase exemplifying the comparatively archaic semantics of Indo-Iranian is that of PIE *h2eǵ-ro-, whose original meaning ‘plain (for driving cattle?)’ was preserved in Indo-Iranian, while the European branches Germanic, Italic and Greek share a (partial) semantic shift to ‘cultivated field’. Although often subtle, at least some of these differences in meaning attest to unidirectional semantic shifts in the European branches towards a more agricultural way of life to the exclusion of the Indo-Iranian branch.

Conclusion: 

While it cannot be excluded that Indo-Iranian lost some vocabulary, the data strongly suggest that the relative dearth of inherited agricultural terminology in this branch is due to a comparatively limited involvement in the lexical innovations that characterize the European branches. At the same time, it is clear that some vocabulary was lost in Indo-Iranian. As the root *h2erh3- is also attested with the meaning ‘plow’ in Tocharian, which is widely held to have split off second, Indo-Iranian probably once possessed this verb, something that also follows from the preservation of the formation *h2rh3-ur/n- ‘(arable) field’ in this branch. It thus appears that both Schrader and Hirt were partially right. On the one hand, Indo-Iranian participated in the initial core Indo-European shift from a pastoralist to an agro-pastoralist economy, of which some elements later were lost. On the other hand, Indo-Iranian was peripheral to the more recent and more radical shift towards a farming economy, as reflected in the vocabularies of the European branches

This is also more or less what we see here, the paper discusses agriculture in Fatyanovo and comes to the conclusion that it was barely an important part of their lifestyle, and any evidence for large-scale agriculture is limited. The Pre-Proto Indo Iranians rather kept pigs, sheep, horses and hunted fish along the Volga.