The Ambergau is a historic landscape and natural region unit in the Innerste Uplands in southern Lower Saxony , Germany. It is a basin, about 10 x 10 kilometres across, with 18 settlements (there were 31 in the Middle Ages ), the centre and capital of which since the 13th century is the town of Bockenem . The basin, with its fertile agricultural fields, is surrounded by the wooded ridges of Heber , the Harplage , the Weinberg and the Hainberg . The Gau is a cultural landscape that was formed as early as the 8th century.
61-600: The name Ambergau is a combination of the German words Amber and Gau . Amber has its origin in the Proto-Indo-European language and has the word stem mb(h) , was means something like dampness. That is probably related to the wet areas that existed at that time, like those of the River Nette . Gau is a word for the enclosed settlement area of Germanic peoples . The term Ambergo was also used. The Ambergau lies between
122-638: A blast furnace firm. Duke Augustus William of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel had iron produced in the Wilhelmshütte smeltery. The Ambergau is bisected from south to north by the River Nette. The bigger lines of communication also run in a north–south direction through the region. These are the goods line from Derneburg to Bornum, the B ;243 federal highway and the A ;7 motorway . The 18 present-day settlements in
183-458: A cultural horizon founded on kurgan funerals that stretched over a vast steppic area between the Dnieper and Volga rivers. It was initially a herding -based society, with limited crop cultivation in the eastern part of the steppes, while the Dnieper - Donets region was more influenced by the agricultural Tripolye culture . Paleolinguistics likewise postulates Proto-Indo-European speakers as
244-447: A host or a guest. The connotation of an obligatory reciprocity between both guests and hosts has persisted in descendant cognates , such as Latin hospēs ("foreigner, guest; host"), Old English ġiest ("stranger, guest"), or Old Church Slavonic gostĭ ("guest") and gospodĭ ("master"). Guests and hosts were indeed involved in a mutual and reciprocal relationship bound by oaths and sacrifices. The giving and receiving of favors
305-535: A French Jesuit who spent most of his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi . In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated
366-659: A PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. The table lists
427-416: A compensation, * kwey- , had the meanings of ' blood-price ', 'vengeance' or 'guilt' in daughter languages, suggesting that it was specifically applied to the restitution for theft or violence. Law was apparently designed to preserve the 'order' (* h₂értus ) of the universe, with the underlying idea that the cosmic harmony should be maintained, be it in the physical universe or the social world. There
488-544: A conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥ , * ḱwn̥tós , or * tréyes ; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water , hound , and three , respectively. No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method . For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot , padre and father , pesce and fish . Since there
549-453: A detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut . From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis , first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas , has become
610-406: A hierarchy of wealth and poverty was recognized. Some graves, larger than the average and necessitating a considerable number of people to be built, likewise suggest a higher status given to some individuals. These prestigious funerals were not necessarily reserved to the wealthiest person. Smiths in particular were given sumptuous graves, possibly due to the association of smithery with magic during
671-606: A language. From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law , published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. August Schleicher 's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct
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#1733085375519732-411: A legendary past in Indo-European traditions. In this form of kinship organization, the individual's genetic distance from the clan's founding ancestor determined his social status. But if he was of exceptional prowess or virtue, the same individual could in his turn gain social prestige among the community and eventually found his own descent-group. In the reconstructed lexicon linking the individual to
793-864: A more favourable environment allowing for grassland productivity. Yamnaya new pastoral economy then experienced a third wave of rapid demographic expansion, that time towards Central and Northern Europe. Migrations of Usatovo people towards southeastern Poland, crossing through the Old European Tripolye culture from around 3300 BCE, followed by Yamnya migrations towards the Pannonian Basin between 3100 and 2800, are interpreted by some scholars as movements of pre-Italic, pre-Celtic and pre-Germanic speakers. The Proto-Indo-European language probably ceased to be spoken after 2500 as its various dialects had already evolved into non-mutually intelligible languages that began to spread across most of western Eurasia during
854-584: A semi-nomadic and pastoral population with subsidiary agriculture. Bronze was introduced to the Pontic-Caspian steppes during this period. Following the Yamnaya expansion, long-distance trade in metals and other valuables, such as salt in the hinterlands, probably brought prestige and power to Proto-Indo-European societies. However, the native tradition of pottery making was weakly developed. The Yamnaya funeral sacrifice of wagons, carts, sheep, cattle, and horse
915-470: A term to designate themselves as a group. Another word, * h₁leudhos , means 'people', 'freemen' in a more general way. Proto-Indo-European had several words for 'leader': * tagós was a general term derived from * tā̆g- ('set in place, arrange'); * h₃rḗǵs meant a ruler who also had religious functions, with the Roman rex sacrorum ('king of the sacred') as a heritage of the priestly function of
976-597: A thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations ,
1037-422: Is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f ) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language . Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support
1098-567: Is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's ) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song ) and accent . PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension , and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation . The PIE phonology , particles , numerals , and copula are also well-reconstructed. Asterisks are used by linguists as
1159-401: Is confirmed by lexical evidence, including the word * h₂u̯edh -, 'to lead (away)', being the word that denotes a male wedding a female. Rights, possessions, and responsibilities were consequently reckoned to the father, and wives were to reside after marriage near the husband's family, after the payment of a bride-price. The household (* domos ) was generally ruled by the senior male of
1220-921: Is not possible. Forming an exception, Phrygian is sufficiently well-attested to allow proposals of a particularly close affiliation with Greek, and a Graeco-Phrygian branch of Indo-European is becoming increasingly accepted. Proto-Indo-European phonology has been reconstructed in some detail. Notable features of the most widely accepted (but not uncontroversial) reconstruction include: The vowels in commonly used notation are: Proto-Indo-European culture Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European society
1281-424: Is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language , and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during
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#17330853755191342-519: Is the reconstructed culture of Proto-Indo-Europeans , the ancient speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , ancestor of all modern Indo-European languages . Many of the modern ideas in this field involve the unsettled Indo-European homeland debate about the precise origins of the language itself. There are four main approaches researchers have employed in their attempts to study this culture: Archaeologist David W. Anthony and linguist Donald Ringe distinguish three different cultural stages in
1403-549: The Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic , and Iranian . In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux ,
1464-576: The Neogrammarian hypothesis : the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. William Jones , an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal , caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , Gothic , the Celtic languages , and Old Persian , but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to
1525-580: The Pontic-Caspian steppes , with domesticated animals at the root of the Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe. Anthony attributes the first and progressive domestication of horses, from taming to actually working with the animal, to this period. Between 4500 and 4200, copper, exotic ornamental shells and polished stone maces were exchanged across the Pontic–Caspian steppes from Varna , in
1586-782: The Suvorovo –to– Cernavoda I migration, in the context of a progression of the Khvalynsk culture westwards towards the Danube area, from which had also emerged the Novodanilovka (4400–3800) and Late Sredny Stog (4000–3500) cultures. Recent genetic studies have shown that males of the Khvalynsk culture belonged to the Western Steppe Herder (WSH) cluster, which is a mixture of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestry. This admixture appears to have happened on
1647-409: The early Bronze Age . In general, such graves were mostly occupied by males in the eastern Don-Volga steppes, while they were more egalitarian in the western Dnieper-Donets region. Linguistics has allowed for the reliable reconstruction of a large number of words relating to kinship relations. These all agree in exhibiting a patriarchal , patrilocal and patrilineal social fabric. Patrilocality
1708-471: The 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages , and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method ) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age , though estimates vary by more than
1769-944: The Ambergau, all within the borough of Bockenem , are: In addition, during the Middle Ages, there were 13 other settlements in the Ambergau, that were given up during the periods of abandonment ( Wüstungsperiode ) in the 14th and 15th centuries. These were: 51°58′N 10°08′E / 51.967°N 10.133°E / 51.967; 10.133 Proto-Indo-European language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
1830-657: The Danube-Donets region after the first migration gave way to the Cernavodă (4000–3200), Usatovo (3500–2500), Mikhaylovka (3600–3000) and Kemi Oba (3700–2200) cultures, from west to east respectively. The Yamnaya horizon , associated with the Late Proto-Indo-European language (following both the Anatolian and Tocharian splits), originated in the Don - Volga region before spreading westwards after 3300 BCE, establishing
1891-558: The North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic. Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula . Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian , Thracian , and Dacian —do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them
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1952-565: The Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis , the Paleolithic continuity paradigm , and the indigenous Aryans theory. The last two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. Out of all the theories for
2013-455: The Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact , as well as some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut , which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain . The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from
2074-426: The Proto-Indo-European language. By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory , which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as
2135-399: The Proto-Indo-European legal system. For instance, the word * serk - ('to make a circle, complete') designated a type of compensation where the father (or master) had to either pay for the damages caused by his son (or slave), or surrender the perpetrator to the offended party. It is attested by a common legal and linguistic origin in both Roman and Hittite laws . Another root denoting
2196-482: The Yamnaya horizon, and eventually to the emergence of a guest-host political structure. As various herding clans began to move across the steppes, especially during harsh seasons, it became necessary to regulate local migrations on the territories of tribes which had likely restricted these obligations to their kins or co-residents (* h₂erós ) until then. In Proto-Indo-European, the term * ghós-ti -, whose original meaning must have been "table companion", could either mean
2257-640: The clan, * h₂erós means a 'member of one's own group', 'one who belongs to the community' (in contrast to an outsider). It gave way to the Indo-Iranian * árya (an endonym ), and probably to the Celtic * aryos ('noble, freeman'), the Hittite arā- ('peer, companion'), and the Germanic * arjaz ('noble, distinguished'). It is unlikely however that the term had an ethnic connotation, and we do not know if Proto-Indo-European speakers had
2318-471: The classic (post- Anatolian ) Proto-Indo-European language, showed the first traces of cereal cultivation after 4000, in the context of a slow and partial diffusion of farming from the western parts of the steppes to the east. Around 3700–3300, a second migration wave of proto-Tocharian speakers towards South Siberia led to the emergence of the Afanasievo culture (3300–2500). The spoke-less wheeled wagon
2379-588: The common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend , Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German . In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik . Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of
2440-456: The eastern Pontic–Caspian steppe starting around 5,000 BC. Steppe economies underwent a revolutionary change between 4200 and 3300 BCE, in a shift from a partial reliance on herding, when domesticated animals were probably used principally as a ritual currency for public sacrifices, to a later regular dietary dependence on cattle, and either sheep or goat meat and dairy products. The Late Khvalynsk and Repin cultures (3900–3300), associated with
2501-451: The eastern Balkans, to Khvalynsk , near the Volga river . Around 4500, a minority of richly decorated single graves, partly enriched by imported copper items, began to appear in the steppes, contrasting with the remaining outfitted graves. The Anatolian distinctive sub-family may have emerged from a first wave of Indo-European migration into southeastern Europe around 4200–4000, coinciding with
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2562-577: The effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz 's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave
2623-568: The evolution of the Proto-Indo-European language : Domesticated cattle were introduced around 4700 BCE from the Danube valley to the Volga - Ural steppes where the Early Khvalynsk culture (4900–3900) had emerged, associated by Anthony with the Early Proto-Indo-European language . Cattle and sheep were more important in ritual sacrifices than in diet, suggesting that a new set of cults and rituals had spread eastward across
2684-460: The family, the * dems-potis ('master of the household'), and could also consist of his children, grandchildren, and perhaps unrelated slaves or servants. His wife probably also played a complementary role: some evidence suggest that she would have kept her position as the mistress (* pot-n-ih₂ ) of the household in the event her husband dies, while the eldest son would have become the new master. The Proto-Indo-European expansionist kinship system
2745-469: The feast was called the * ghosti-potis , the 'lord of the guests', who honoured the immortal gods and his mortal guests with gifts of food, drink, and poetry. Vertical social inequalities were partly balanced by horizontal mutual obligations of hospitality between guests and hosts. According to Anthony, the domestication of horses and the introduction of the wagon in the Pontic-Caspian steppe between 4500 and 3500 BCE led to an increase in mobility across
2806-419: The king. Public feasts sponsored by such patrons were a way for them to promote and secure a political hierarchy built on the unequal mobilization of labor and resources, by displaying their generosity towards the rest of the community. Rivals competed publicly through the size and complexity of their feasts, and alliances were confirmed by gift-giving and promises made during those public gatherings. The host of
2867-654: The main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. Slavic: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Czech , Slovak , Sorbian , Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian , Slovenian , Macedonian , Kashubian , Rusyn Iranic: Persian , Pashto , Balochi , Kurdish , Zaza , Ossetian , Luri , Talyshi , Tati , Gilaki , Mazandarani , Semnani , Yaghnobi ; Nuristani Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Aryan , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Phrygian , Daco-Thracian , and Thraco-Illyrian . There are numerous lexical similarities between
2928-524: The most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse , which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout
2989-575: The northwestern edge of the Harz Mountains and the Hildesheim Börde . The hill ridges surrounding it are predominantly covered by beech woods. The basin-shaped valley is today a largely treeless arable farming region that has probably always been used by man for that purpose. Agriculture was the dominant industry until the 20th century. A moderate degree of industrialization began in 1727 in Bornum with
3050-428: The regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws ), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. PIE
3111-708: The set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit , in which he investigated
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#17330853755193172-446: The third wave of Indo-European migrations (3300–1500). Indo-Iranian languages were introduced to Central Asia, present-day Iran, and South Asia after 2000 BCE. It is generally agreed that Proto-Indo-European society was hierarchical, with some form of social ranking and various degrees of social status. It is unlikely, however, that they had a rigidly stratified structure, or castes such as are found in historical India. There
3233-697: Was a general distinction between free persons and slaves, typically prisoners of war or debtors unable to repay a debt. The free part of society was composed of an elite class of priests, kings and warriors, along with the commoners, with each tribe following a chief ( * wiḱpots ) sponsoring feasts and ceremonies, and immortalized in praise poetry. The presence of kurgan graves prominently decorated with dress, body ornaments and weaponry, along with well-attested roots for concepts such as "wealth" ( * h₂ép- ), "to be in need" ( * h₁eg- ) or "servant" ( * h₂entbʰi-kʷolos , "one who moves about on both sides"; and * h₂upo-sth₂-i/o- , "one standing below"), indicate that
3294-516: Was accompanied by a set of ritual actions that indebted the guest to show hospitality to his host at any time in the future. The obligation could even be heritable: Homer ’s warriors, Glaukos and Diomedes , stopped fighting and presented gifts to each other when they learned that their grandfathers had shared a guest-host relationship. Violations of the guest-host obligations were considered immoral, illegal and unholy: in Irish law , refusing hospitality
3355-415: Was deemed a crime as serious as murder. The killing of a guest was also greeted with a singular revulsion, as was the abuse of hospitality. Because of the archaic nature of traditional legal phraseology—which preserves old forms and meaning for words—and the necessity for legal sentences to be uttered precisely the same way each time to remain binding, it is possible to securely reconstruct some elements of
3416-528: Was fairly high, with many individuals living to 50–60 years old. The language itself appeared as a dialect continuum during this period, meaning that neighbouring dialects differed only slightly between each other, whereas distant language varieties were probably no longer mutually intelligible due to accumulated divergences over space and time. As the steppe became dryer and colder between 3500 and 3000, herds needed to be moved more frequently in order to feed them sufficiently. Yamnaya distinctive identity
3477-455: Was however probably no public enforcement of justice, nor were there formal courts as we know them today. Contractual obligations were protected by private individuals acting as sureties: they pledged to be responsible for payments of debts incurred by someone else if the latter defaulted. In case of litigation, one could either take matter into their own hands, for instance by barring someone from accessing their property to compel payment, or bring
3538-546: Was introduced to the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 3500 from the neighbouring North Caucasian Maykop culture (3700–3000), with which Proto-Indo-Europeans traded wool and horses. Interactions with the hierarchical Maykop culture, itself influenced by the Mesopotamian Uruk culture , had notable social effects on the Proto-Indo-European way of life. Meanwhile, the Khvalynsk-influenced cultures that had emerged in
3599-518: Was likely related to a cult of ancestors requiring specific rituals and prayers, a connection between language and cult that introduced the Late Proto-Indo-European language to new speakers. Yamnaya chiefdoms had institutionalized differences in prestige and power, and their society was organized along patron-client reciprocity, a mutual exchange of gifts and favors between their patrons, the gods, and human clients. The average life expectancy
3660-426: Was likely supported by both marital exogamy (the inclusion of foreign women through marriage) and the exchange of foster children with other families and clans, as suggested by genetic evidence and later attestations from Indo-European-speaking groups. Once established, the family lasted as long as the male stock of its founder endured, and clan or tribal founders were often portrayed as mythical beings stemming from
3721-463: Was thus founded on mobile pastoralism , permitted by two earlier innovations: the introduction of the wheeled wagon and the domestication of the horse. Yamnaya herders likely watched over their cattle and raided on horseback, while they drove wagons for the bulk transport of water or food. Light-framework dwellings could be easily assembled and disassembled to be transported on pack animals. Another climate change that occurred after around 3000 led to
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