Pontic Steppe
62-548: The *kóryos ( Proto-Indo-European for 'army, war-band, unit of warriors') refers to the theoretical Proto-Indo-European brotherhood of warriors in which unmarried young males served for several years, as a rite of passage into manhood, before their full integration into society . Scholars such as Kim McCone and Gerhard Meiser have theorized the existence of the *kóryos based on later Indo-European traditions and myths that feature links between landless young males, perceived as an age-class not yet fully integrated into
124-535: 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
186-659: 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
248-541: A belt and an animal skin during their initiation within the kóryos. Celtiberian statuettes from the 5th–3rd centuries BC depict naked warriors with a sword, a small round shield ( caetra ), a "power belt", and sometimes a helmet. The tradition of kurgan stelae featuring warriors with a belt is also common in the Scythian cultures . According to military historian Michael P. Speidel , the scene 36 of Trajan's Column , which shows bare-chested, bare-footed young men wearing only
310-544: 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
372-453: 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
434-606: 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
496-433: A part of the year. Their life was centered on military duties, hunting wild animals and pillaging settlements on one side; and on the recitation of heroic poetry telling the deeds of past heroes and cattle theft legends on the other side. A tradition of epic poetry celebrating heroic and violent warriors conquering loot and territories, which were portrayed as possessions the gods wanted them to have, probably participated in
558-400: A shield, could be a depiction of Germanic berserkers . The kóryos is usually associated with the colour black, or at least dark, and with the mobilization of chthonic forces. Frequent references are made to the "black earth" or the "dark night" in the Indo-European literature, and hunting and fighting at night appears to have been one of the distinguishing characteristics of the kóryos. In
620-497: A symbolic and metaphorical sense, wearing animal skins to assume the nature of wolves or dogs. Members of the kóryos adopted wolfish behaviours and bore names containing the word 'wolf' or 'dog', each a symbol of death and the Otherworld in Indo-European belief. The idealized attributes of the kóryos were borrowed from the imagery surrounding the wolf: violence, trickery, swiftness, great strength, and warrior fury. By identifying with
682-663: A terrorizing figure among the inhabitants of the capital-city, Emain Macha , after he beheaded three rivals from his own people, the Ulaid . Aiming to appease his fury, they decide to capture him and plunge his body into basins of water in order to 'cool him down'. Irish sources also describe some of the warrior-bands as savages ( díberg ), living like wolves by pillaging and massacring. Similarly, some Greek warrior-bands were called hybristḗs (ὑβριστή) and portrayed as violent and insolent groups of ransomers and looters. Many kurgan stelae found in
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#1733085135567744-597: 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 ,
806-404: Is Priscilla K. Kershaw's The One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde (1997). The kóryos were supposedly composed of adolescent males, presumably from 12–13 up to 18–19 years of age, usually coming from prominent families and initiated together into manhood as an age-class cohort. After undergoing painful trials to enter the group, they were sent away to live as landless warriors in
868-422: 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
930-567: 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
992-777: Is fighting his adversary within the territory of Armenia, Aram makes war in the borderlands and beyond the borders of Armenia. According to Armen Petrosyan, this suggests that the young warriors of Aram can be interpreted as a reflex of the kóryos, while Hayk's soldiers may be the depiction of the adult men in arms. Proto-Indo-European language 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 )
1054-488: 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: Heinrich Schurtz From Misplaced Pages,
1116-534: Is suggested by the attributes generally associated with the kóryos: great strength, resistance to pain, and lack of fear. The typical state of warrior fury or frenzy was supposed to increase his strength above natural expectations, with ecstatic performances accentuated by dances and perhaps by the use of drugs. The Indo-European term for a 'mad attack' ( *eis ) is common to the Vedic, Germanic, and Iranian traditions. The Germanic berserkers were depicted as practitioners of
1178-424: 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
1240-554: Is used in particular the Rigveda to describe the Maruts. In Ancient Greece , the traditional war-bands lost some of the frenzy attributes that characterize shape shifters in other Indo-European cultures, but they still maintained the terror-inspiring appearance and the tricky war tactics of the original *kóryos. From 17 to 20 years old, the Athenian ephebos had to live during the 2 years in
1302-538: The Baltic * kāryas 'army', Celtic * koryos 'troop, tribe', and Germanic * harjaz 'host, troop, army, raiding party'. In west-central Indo-European dialects, the designation *koryonos , meaning 'leader of the *kóryos ' (here attached to the suffix -nos 'master of'), is also attested: Ancient Greek koíranos 'army-leader', Old Norse Herjan (< PGmc * harjanaz 'army-leader'), and Brittonic Coriono-totae 'people of
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#17330851355671364-549: 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 ,
1426-548: The Iron Age , while they were downgraded in ancient India with the rise of the Brahmin caste, leading to their progressive demise. Scholars have argued that the institution of the kóryos played a key role during the Indo-European migrations and the diffusion of Indo-European languages across most of western Eurasia. Raids headed by those young warriors could have led to the establishment of new settlements on foreign lands, preparing
1488-576: 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
1550-547: The Pontic–Caspian steppe , which are associated with the Proto-Indo-European culture , depict a naked male warrior carved on the stone with little else than a belt and his weapons. In later Indo-European traditions, kóryos raiders likewise wore a belt that bound them to their leader and the gods, and little else. In Ancient Greek and Roman literary sources, Germanic and Celtic peoples were often portrayed as fighting naked or semi naked, armed only with light weapons. At
1612-459: The battle of Telamon (225 BC), Gallic warriors reportedly wore only trousers and capes. In the Norse tradition, Berserker usually scorned the use of armour to favour animal skins, and they were sometimes also said to fight naked. Ancient Italic tribes had in their ranks berserk-like warriors who fought naked, barefoot, flowing-haired, and often in single combat. Similarly, young Vedic boys wore only
1674-471: 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
1736-737: The Ancient Greek tradition featured an initiation ritual imposed upon young males in which "black hunters" were sent out to the frontier to perform military exploits. The Greek model of the black hunter, Meleager , is named after the word for "black" ( melas ), and the Armenian name Aram stems from the root *rē-mo- ('dirt, soot'). The Roman historian Tacitus (1st c. AD) mentions the Germanic Harii , whose name could derive from *kóryos , as "savages" wearing black shields, dyeing their bodies, and choosing dark nights for battle. Kershaw has proposed that
1798-537: The Harii were the kóryos of the neighbouring Lugii tribe. Some Vedic families began initiating young boys at 8 years old, studying heroic poetry about past ancestors and practicing their hunting and fighting skills. At 16, they were initiated into a warrior band during the winter solstice ritual (the Ekāstakā), during which the boys went into an ecstatic state, then ritually died to be reborn as dogs of war. After their leader
1860-463: The Indo-European social umbrella to move under it in order to obtain safety or restitution from thieving and raiding. They could therefore have served as an incentive for the recruitment of outsiders into social positions that offered vertical mobility, horizontal reciprocity, and the possibility of immortality through praise poetry, made more attractive by generosity at patron-sponsored public feasts. The war-bands consisted of shape-shifting warriors, in
1922-1226: The Jewish Question by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini, pg 103 ^ The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914-1918 by Richard Wall, Jay Winter ^ The Science of the Swastika by Bernard Thomas Mees, pg 90 Authority control databases [REDACTED] International ISNI VIAF WorldCat National Germany United States Czech Republic Netherlands Greece Poland Vatican Israel People Trove Deutsche Biographie DDB Other IdRef Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heinrich_Schurtz&oldid=1257245638 " Categories : German ethnologists 19th-century German historians Academic staff of Leipzig University People from Zwickau 1863 births 1903 deaths German male non-fiction writers Corporatism Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
*Kóryos - Misplaced Pages Continue
1984-574: The Netherlands, may stem from historical ethnic groups whose name contained the Celtic noun * koryo- 'army, troop', as proposed by Pierre-Yves Lambert . The Asturian personal name Vacoria (similar to Gaulish Vocorius ) has been interpreted as stemming from the Celtic ethnic name * (d)uo-korio 'possessing two armies', and the Gallic tribal name Coriosolites as meaning 'those who watch over
2046-558: 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
2108-622: 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
2170-517: 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
2232-426: 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
2294-415: The Vedic tradition, the followers of Indra and Rudra wore black clothes, and the young heroes of Medieval Armenia were called "black youths" ( t'ux manuks ). The "black" Aram is the idealized figure of the kóryos leader in Armenian myths , and his armies are said to suddenly attack adversaries "before dawn" in the borderlands of Armenia. The Athenian ephebes traditionally wore a black chlamys, and
2356-642: The army-leader'. The Gallic tribes Uo-corri ('two-armies'), Tri-corii ('three-armies') and Petru-corii ('four-armies') were presumably formed from alliances of roving war-bands. The noun * harja- is also part of compound names in Germanic languages, such as Herigast ( Heregast ), possibly attested as Harikast on the Negau helmet . Some toponyms in Western Europe, such as Cherbourg in France or Heerlen in
2418-499: The battle fury ('going berserk', berserksgangr ). The martial fury of the Ancient Greek warrior was called lyssa , a derivation of lykos ('wolf'), as if the soldiers temporarily become wolves in their mad rage. As such, young males were perceived as dangers even to their host society. The Maruts , a group of storm deities of the Vedic tradition, were depicted as both beneficial and dangerous entities. The Irish hero Cúchulainn becomes
2480-537: 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
2542-432: The community of the married men; their service in war-bands sent away for part of the year in the wild (where they hunted animals and raided foreign communities), then defending the host society for the rest of the year; their mystical self-identification with wolves and dogs as symbols of death, lawlessness, and warrior fury; and the idea of a liminality between vulnerability and death on one side, and youth and adulthood on
*Kóryos - Misplaced Pages Continue
2604-577: 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
2666-435: The ephebeia (ἐφηβεία). Relegated to the edges of society, they were given a marginal status without a full citizenship. Their duty was to guard the limit of their community during peaceful times, generally as guards of fields, forests, and orchards. Leading ambushes and skirmishes in war time, the ephebos wore black tunics and were lightly armed. An essential part of their training was the traditional hunt, conducted at night with
2728-503: The 💕 German ethnologist and historian (1863–1903) Heinrich Schurtz (born 11 December 1863 in Zwickau ; died 2 May 1903 in Bremen ) was a German ethnologist and historian. His most significant work is said to be Altersklassen und Männerbünde ( Age-classes and Male Bands ) which emphasized the role gender and generational issues have in social institutions and argued that basing
2790-507: The ground for the larger migration of whole tribes including old men, women and children. This scenario is supported by archaeological data from the early Single Grave – Corded Ware Culture in Jutland , where 90 per cent of all burials belonged to males in what appears to be a 'colonial' expansion on the territory of the Funnelbeaker culture . The kóryos probably drove people not protected by
2852-455: The kóryos was perceived as a transitional stage preceding the status of adult warrior and was usually crowned by marriage. The kóryos were symbolically associated with death and liminality, but also with fecundity and sexual license. Kim McCone has argued that members of the * kóryos initially served as young unmarried males without possessions before their eventual incorporation into the *tewtéh 2 - ('the tribe, people under arms'), composed of
2914-654: 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
2976-524: 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
3038-614: The other side. The hypothetical Proto-Indo-European noun *kóryos denotes a 'people under arms' and has been translated as 'army, war-band, unit of warriors', or as 'detachment, war party'. It stems from the noun *kóro- 'cutting, section, division', attested in Old Persian as kāra 'people, army' ( Persian : کاروان , romanized : kārāvan , lit. 'troupe') and in Lithuanian as kãras 'war, army'. The term *kóryos has descendant cognates in
3100-534: The period 1900–1920s, then Nazi circles during the 1930–1940s. Scholarship from the later part of the 20th century has pointed out the far-right ideological foundations of most of the earlier works, but has also yielded new evidence supporting the existence of brotherhoods of warriors in Vendel Period Scandinavia. The standard comparative overview of the subject is Kim McCone's Hund, Wolf und Krieger bei den Indogermanen , published in 1987. Another study
3162-442: The property-owning and married adult males. According to David W. Anthony and Dorcas R. Brown, the kóryos may have served "as an organization promoting group cohesion and effectiveness in combat, as an instrument of external territorial expansion, and as a regulatory device in chiefly feast-centred economies." In Europe, those oath-bound initiatory war-bands were eventually absorbed by increasingly powerful patrons and kings during
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#17330851355673224-428: 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
3286-708: 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
3348-580: The society on the family was a step backwards. His notion of Männerbünde placed male associations, where he deemed masculinity more "unfettered", in opposition to the family which he saw as dominated by women. Notions of Männerbünde , though not just Schurtz's, would have an influence on Nazi Germany 's SS while in a very different way his ideas on same-sex bonding has become of historical interest to Queer studies . References [ edit ] ^ Schurtz, Heinrich (2023). "Age Classes & Male Bands" . Amazon . ^ Queer Theory and
3410-587: The terms Bruderschaft ('fraternity, brotherhood') or Jungmannschaft ('young [group of] men') as preferable alternatives. The concept of the Männerbund was developed in the early 20th century by scholars such as Heinrich Schurtz (1902), Hans Blüher (1917), Lily Weiser-Aall (1927), Georges Dumézil (1929), Richard Wolfram (1932), Robert Stumpfl (1934), Otto Höfler (1934), Stig Wikander (1938), and Henri Jeanmaire [ fr ] (1939). These theories influenced German Völkisch movements in
3472-467: The troop', or 'those who purchase soldiers or mercenaries'. Ancient paleo-Hispanic onomastics also attest the noun, albeit in the form *koro , with the same meaning. In Indo-European studies , the modern German term Männerbund [ de ] (literally 'alliance of men') is often used to refer to the *kóryos . However, it can be misleading since the war-bands were made up of adolescent males, not grown-up men. Some scholars have proposed
3534-481: The use of snares and traps. In the case of the Spartan krypteia, it was even a human hunt. The manuks ('young warriors') are mentioned in the story of the legendary founder of Armenia, Hayk . His descendant, Aram, interpreted as the "second image of Hayk", heads an army of 50,000 norati ('youths') warriors extending the borders of the territory on every side to create a new, superior Armenia. Contrary to Hayk, who
3596-414: The validation of violence among the kóryos. The leader of the band, the * koryonos , was determined with a game of dice, and the result accepted as the gods' choice. The other members pledged to die for him, and to kill for him. He was regarded as their master in the rite of passage, but also as their 'employer' since the young warriors served as his bodyguards and protectors. The period of initiation within
3658-470: The wild animals, kóryos members perceived themselves as physically and legally moved outside the human world, and therefore no longer restrained by human taboos . When returning to their normal life, they would feel no remorse for breaking the rules of their home society, because they had not been humans or at least were not living in the cultural space of the host society when those rules were broken. The conflicting opposition between death and invulnerability
3720-484: The wild for a number of years, within a group ranging from two to twelve members. The young males went without possession other than their weapons, living on the edges of their host society. Social behaviour normally forbidden, such as stealing, raiding, or sexually assaulting women, were therefore tolerated amongst kóryos members, as long as the malevolent acts were not directed at the host society. Their activities were seasonal, and they lived with their home community for
3782-416: Was determined by a dice game, the initiated youths were cast away in the wild for four years to live as dogs, stealing animals, women, goods and territory, until the summer solstice ended the raiding season. The young warriors then returned to their forest residence where they held a Vrātyastoma sacrifice to thank the gods for their success. At the end the four-year initiation, a final Vrātyastoma sacrifice
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#17330851355673844-493: Was performed to transform the dog-warrior into a responsible adult man. Then, the newly-initiated males destroyed their old clothes to become human once again, ready to return to their family and to live by the rules of their host community. The Vrātyas ('dog-priests') were known for performing the Ekāstakā ceremony at the winter solstice, when Indra , the god of war, is said to have been born with his band of Maruts . The term Vrāta
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