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. 

 

Uralic loans, BMAC substratum and agricultural terms of Indo-Iranian

Some important papers that discuss the three different possible loaning events of Indo-Iranian. It's well known that Indo-Iranian (henceforth, Aryan) had a limited agricultural vocabulary, and skipped many of the agriculture-related semantic shifts that characterize PIE > Proto-European as the livestock breeding Yamnaya shifted to a more farming culture after contact with the European Neolithic. Fatyanovo-Balanovo, the pre-Proto-Aryan culture, mostly survived of foraging and livestock breeding, with very little to no macrofossil evidence for any kind of agriculture, though some slash and burn has been suggested based on circumstantial evidence. This means it's important to pay close attention to the agricultural vocabulary of Aryan, since this would mostly have picked up from one of the many farming oriented Turan Neolithic societies in Central Asia, or later from the Harappans or Elamites. We also know that it's pretty likely that the Proto-Aryans (Abashevo? Sintashta-Petrovka?) were in direct contact with the Proto-Uralics (Sejma-Turbino Metallurgists?) and there is clear evidence of borrowings from Proto-Aryan into Uralic, though the reverse is less studied, and even lesser studied are possible Proto-Iranic and Proto-Indic borrowings in Uralic, as well as parallel borrowings by different branches of Uralic. Regardless, the Uralic borrowings are certain, and merit a review paper of their own.

The three kinds of loaning events in Aryan likely are

1) Into/from Uralic?
2) From BMAC/Turanian Neolithic?
3) From Dravidian/Language X into Indo-Aryan & Elamite > West Iranian?

The first one offers the best overview on the Uralic situation.

Indo-Iranian borrowings in Uralic : Critical overview of sound substitutions and distribution criterion

This dissertation discusses the Indo-Iranian loanwords in the Uralic languages. The loanwords that have been suggested in earlier research are critically analyzed and commented based on modern views of Uralic and Indo-Iranian historical phonology and etymology. The etymologies are analyzed on the basis of the general methods of loanword research: arguments of phonology, distribution and semantics are taken into account. In addition to the analyzis of older etymological proposals, also some new etymologies are presented. Also the research history of the topic is discussed. The aim of this study is to establish rules for the sound substitutions and bring new light to the relative chronology of the loanwords. Because the phoneme systems of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Iranian and later Iranian languages were very different from those of Proto-Uralic and its daughter languages, the phonemes of the Indo-Iranian donor languages have been substituted in various ways in the Uralic languages. Differences reflect both conditional developments (different substitutions in different environments) and chronological differences, and it is often difficult to distinguish between the two.

 The second paper by Alexander Lubtosky reviews the substratum (collection of possible non-Indo-European origin words) in Aryan and lists out likely/unlikely inherited vocab, as well as the basic laws for establishing non-IE words in Aryan, and possible Wanderworts.

The Indo-Iranian substratum

In my paper, I shall apply this methodology to the Indo-Iranian lexicon in search of loan words which have entered Proto-Indo-Iranian before its split into two branches. As a basis for my study I use the list, gleaned from Mayrhofer's EWAia, of all Sanskrit etyma which have Iranian correspondences, but lack clear cognates outside Indo-Iranian. The complete list of some 120 Indo-Iranian isolates is presented in the Appendix. The words of this list are by default characterized by the first of the above-mentioned criteria, viz. limited geographical distribution, but this in itself is not very significant because thelack of an Indo-European etymology can be accidental: either all other branches have lost the etymon preserved in Indo-Iranian, or we have not yet found the correct etymology. Only if aword has other features of a borrowing, must we seriously consider its being of foreign origin.The analysis of phonological, morphological and semantic peculiarities of our corpus will be presented in the following sections, but first I would like to make two remarks.

I use the term substratum for any donor language, without implying sociological differences in its status, so that substratum may refer to an adstratum or even superstratum. It's possible that Proto-Indo-Iranian borrowed words from more than one language and had thusmore than one substratum.Another point concerns dialect differentiation. In general, we can speak of language unity as long as the language is capable of carrying out common innovations, but this does not pre-clude profound differences among the dialects. In the case of Indo-Iranian, there may have been early differentiation between the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches, especially if we assume that the Iranian loss of aspiration in voiced aspirated stops was a dialectal feature which Iranianshared with Balto-Slavic and Germanic (cf. Kortlandt 1978: 115). Nevertheless, Proto-Indo-Iranian for a long time remained a dialectal unity, possibly even up to the moment when the Indo-Aryans crossed the Hindukush mountain range and lost contact with the Iranians

The last paper is really a chapter by Martin Kümmel for the book 'Language Dispersals Beyond Farming' and so specifically takes a look at the agriculture related vocabulary of Aryan.

Agricultural terms in Indo-Iranian

The article investigates the agricultural lexicon of Indo-Iranian, especially its earlier records, and what it may tell us about the spread of farming. After some general remarks on “Neolithic” vocabulary, a short overview of the animal husbandry terminology shows that this field of vocabulary was evidently well established in Proto-Indo-Iranian, with many cognate terms. Words for cattle, horses, sheep and goats are well developed and mostly inherited, while evidence for pigs is more limited, ad the words for donkey and camel look like common loans. A more extensive discussion of plant terminology reveals that while some generic terms for grain are inherited, more specific words for different kinds of cereals show few inherited terms and/or irregular variation, and the same is even clearer for pulses and some other vegetables. The terminology for agricultural terminology is largely different from that of most European branches of Indo- European. The conclusion is that the cultural background behind these linguistic data points to spreading of a mainly pastoralist culture in the case of Indo-Iranian.