Paleolithic continuity paradigm: Difference between revisions

Part of a series on
Indo-European topics
Languages List of Indo-European languages Extant Albanoid Albanian Armenian Balto-Slavic Baltic Slavic Celtic Germanic Hellenic Greek Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Nuristani Italic Romance Extinct Anatolian Tocharian Paleo-Balkan Dacian Illyrian Liburnian Messapic Mysian Paeonian Phrygian Thracian Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Phonology: Sound laws, Accent, Ablaut Hypothetical Balkanic Daco-Thracian Graeco-Albanian Graeco-Armenian Graeco-Aryan Graeco-Phrygian Indo-Hittite Italo-Celtic Thraco-Illyrian Grammar Vocabulary Root Verbs Nouns Pronouns Numerals Particles Other Proto-Albanian Proto-Anatolian Proto-Armenian Proto-Germanic (Proto-Norse) Proto-Italo-Celtic (Proto-Celtic · Proto-Italic) Proto-Greek Proto-Balto-Slavic (Proto-Slavic · Proto-Baltic) Proto-Indo-Iranian (Proto-Iranian)
Philology Hittite inscriptions Hieroglyphic Luwian Linear B Rigveda Avesta Homer Behistun Greek epigraphy Phrygian epigraphy Messapic epigraphy Latin epigraphy Gaulish epigraphy Runic epigraphy Ogham Gothic Bible Bible translations into Armenian Tocharian script Old Irish glosses Albanian Kanun
Origins Homeland Proto-Indo-Europeans Society Religion Mainstream Kurgan hypothesis Indo-European migrations Eurasian nomads Alternative and fringe Anatolian hypothesis Armenian hypothesis Beech argument Indigenous Aryanism Baltic homeland Paleolithic continuity theory
Archaeology Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Pontic Steppe Domestication of the horse Kurgan Kurgan stelae Kurgan culture Steppe cultures Bug–Dniester Sredny Stog Dnieper–Donets Samara Khvalynsk Yamnaya Mikhaylovka culture Novotitarovskaya culture Caucasus Maykop East Asia Afanasievo Eastern Europe Usatovo Cernavodă Cucuteni Northern Europe Corded ware Baden Middle Dnieper Bronze Age Pontic Steppe Chariot Yamnaya Catacomb Multi-cordoned ware Poltavka Srubnaya Northern/Eastern Steppe Abashevo culture Andronovo Sintashta Europe Globular Amphora Corded ware Bell Beaker Únětice Trzciniec Nordic Bronze Age Terramare Tumulus Urnfield Lusatian South Asia BMAC Yaz Gandhara grave Iron Age Steppe Chernoles Europe Thraco-Cimmerian Hallstatt Jastorf Caucasus Colchian India Painted Grey Ware Northern Black Polished Ware
Peoples and societies Bronze Age Anatolian peoples (Hittites) Armenians Mycenaean Greeks Indo-Iranians Iron Age Indo-Aryans Indo-Aryans Iranians Iranians East Asia Wusun Yuezhi Europe Celts Gauls Celtiberians Insular Celts Cimmerians Hellenic peoples Italic peoples Germanic peoples Paleo-Balkan/Anatolia Thracians Dacians Illyrians Paeonians Phrygians Scythians Middle Ages East Asia Tocharians Europe Albanians Balts Slavs Norsemen/Medieval Scandinavians Middle Ages Indo-Aryan Medieval India Iranian Greater Iran
Religion and mythology Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-Iranian paganism Historical Vedic religion Ancient Iranian religion Historical Hittite Indo-Aryan Vedic Hinduism Buddhism Jainism Sikhism Iranian Persian Zoroastrianism Kurdish Yazidism Yarsanism Scythian Ossetian Others Armenian European Paleo-Balkan (Albanian · Illyrian · Thracian · Dacian) Greek Roman Celtic Irish Scottish Breton Welsh Cornish Germanic Anglo-Saxon Continental Norse Baltic Latvian Lithuanian Slavic Practices Fire rituals Horse sacrifice Sati Winter solstice/Yule
Indo-European studies Scholars Marija Gimbutas J. P. Mallory Institutes Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European Publications Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture The Horse, the Wheel, and Language Journal of Indo-European Studies Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch Indo-European Etymological Dictionary
v t e

The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) aims to reconstruct the origin of languages using the concept of continuity as the basic working hypothesis. It draws on the consequences of innate grammaticality^[1] according to Chomsky's principles of generative grammar, that defines conservation as the law of language and languages, and change as the cline of grammaticality provoked by major external factors such as language contacts and hybridization, as well as ecological, socio-economic and cultural events.^[2] Theoretically, linguistic change would compare chronologically to the results of paleo-anthropology, genetics and archaeology. Proponents claim linguistic coherence, rigor and productivity in the persuit of this approach.

Applied on the issue of origins of the Indo-European languages, the approach resulted into a set of prepositions supported by generally accepted principles that lay the burden of proof on the shoulders of competing theories, especially when relying on invasions. By absence of irrefutable counter-evidence, Indo-European languages should be considered to originate in or near Europe and to have existed there since the Paleolithic, while the advance of Indo-Europeans would by default coincide with the first regional settlement of Homo sapiens in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic age.

The Paleolithic Continuity hypothesis proposes a reversal of the Kurgan hypothesis and largely identifies the Indo-Europeans with Gimbutas "Old Europe"^[3], while it reassigns the Kurgan culture - traditionally considered early Indo-European - to a people of predominantly mixed Uralic and Turkic stock. The proof of this is sought in the tentative linguistic identification of Etruscans as a Uralic, proto-Hungarian people that already underwent strong proto-Turkish influence in the third millennium BC^[4] when Pontic invasions would have brought this people to the Carpatian basin. A subsequent migration of Urnfield culture signature around 1250 BC triggered this ethnic group to expand south in a general movement of people, attested by the upheaval of the Sea Peoples and the overthrow of an earlier Italic substrate at the onset of the "Etruscan" Villanovan culture.

Its main proponents are the Italian linguists Mario Alinei, Gabriele Costa and Cicero Poghirc as well as the German and Belgian prehistorians Alexander Häusler and Marcel Otte.

The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) proposes that Indo-European speakers were native in Europe for tens of millennia, and that by the end of the Ice Age, had already differentiated into Celtic/Italic/Germanic/etc. speakers occupying territories within or close to their traditional homelands. It also suggests that the glaciers and pre-glacial basins that compartmentalised Europe during the Ice Age may actually have been the mechanisms for this process of differentiation of Indo-European into its component families.

PCT also draws radically different conclusions about the rate of linguistic change from those of the traditional theories of Colin Renfrew and Gimbutas. Clearly, if a homogeneous proto-Indo-European people appeared in Europe 6,000 years ago, then firstly, all subsequent language evolution will necessarily be compressed into the 6,000 years between then and the present, and secondly, the projection of this rapid rate of linguistic change back into the Palaeolithic will lead to the evident conclusion that no useful inferences can be drawn about languages spoken at that time, since it will impossible to distinguish genuine cognates in extant languages from chance similarities.

It is based on a synthesis of linguistic studies, the archaeogenetical studies of Brian Sykes indicating that some 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to the Paleolithic, as well as on archaeological data indicating European cultural continuity.

Proponents point to a lack of archaeological evidence for an Indo-European invasion in the Bronze Age; to the lack of substantial genetic change since the Paleolithic; and to analogy with a theory of a Paleolithic origin of Uralic peoples and languages in Eurasia. Moreover, the continuity theory is much more parsimonious in comparison with classical approaches to the IE developments.

This section may contain material not related to the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Neolithic Europe. (Discuss)

Concerning archeology, the Paleolithic Continuity Theory departs from the local continuity that - to a certain degree - has been observed for most European regions from the Neolithic onwards. Pan-European migrations from the steppe region of southern Russia are recently being questioned and instead the spread of Indo-European languages became tied to many local developments that shared certain common ideas.^[5]

Mallory (1989) already gave an assessment to the consequence of such a rejection of a Pontic presence in Central and Northern Europe during the Eneolithic. Anticipating on the local continuity of Corded Ware culture back to Funnelbeaker and Ertebølle cultures, strongly advocated by modern archeology, he foresaw the need of a vast linguistic continuum during the Mesolithic or Paleolithic to connect the North Sea with the Volga-Ural.^[6] Shared development and unbroken contact up to the historic distribution of Indo European languages would have to be traced back to the Mesolithic and subsequently include the course of Neolitization, and the subsequent Second Products Revolution deemed important to the Proto Indo Europeans (Mallory, p218). The latter started in Late Neolithic and reached its height in the Bronze Age and was typified by the use of the plough, dairy products, wool, and wheeled vehicles, only to be closed off about 2500 BC at the very least by the appearance of the chariot and its adoption in a shared Indo European mythology and vocabularity. According to this view, some complex process of assimilation and convergence would acount to the development of shared features.

All Neolithic cultures of Europe are supposed to be either a direct continuation of Mesolithic cultures, or have been created by Mesolithic groups after their Neolithization by intrusive farmers from the Middle East. This corresponds to the claim of PCT.^[7] The Neolithic advance of Balkan farmers towards the north and west, followed and was ultimately confined by the fertile soils that could be cultivated without the plough - that was not invented yet. This advance of agriculture was deterred by a thousand years, due to less fertile soils or, to the contrary, overtly fertile heavy river sediments that offered less favorable conditions to traditional neolithic clearing technics. This became the scene of a "tertiary" zone of neolithization by the originally mesolithic autochthons that occupied the wetlands in what has been described as a deliberate choice, triggered by an abundant variety of habitats favourable to fishing, hunting and gathering.

This Neolithic advance has commonly been pictured as a colonization process by Balkan farmers and was for instance featured by Linear Pottery (with Rössen culture and Lengyel culture being the most important derivate cultures) and Cardium Pottery. These cultures had already passed their "aceramic Neolithic stage" when they became neighbours to the presumably autochthon and semi-sedentary fishing cultures, whose cultural level has been described as "ceramic Mesolithic".^[8] By then most Mesolithic people employed a distinct type of pottery manufactured by methods not known to the Neolithic farmers. Though each area developed an individual style, yet some common features such as the point or knob base and the superimposed circular rolls of clay, suggests enduring contact and even "ethnic" relationships between the groups.^[9] The special shape of this pottery has been related to transport by logboat in wetland areas (De Roever 2004,p.163). Jeunesse et al (1991, fig.22) related similar point base pottery from Spain, southern Scandinavia and the Dnieper-Donets region in the Ukraine. Another area featuring neolithic point base pottery is Northern Africa.

Especially interrelated are Swifterbant in the Netherlands, Ellerbek and Ertebølle in Northern Germany and Scandinavia, "Ceramic Mesolithic" pottery of Belgium and Northern France (including non-Linear pottery such as La Hoguette, Bliquy, Villeneuve-Saint-Germain), the Roucedour culture in Southwest France and the river and lake areas of Northern Poland and Russia.^[10][11] Dmitry Telegin assign the early fifth millennium Dnieper-Donets culture of hunters and fishers to a broad cultural region that spanned the Vistula in Poland southeast to the Dnieper. The dispersion of La Hoguette also intrudes typical Linear Pottery regions. Both La Hoguette and Roucadourien have been proposed to be older than Linear Pottery. The Mesolithic peoples in the hunter-gatherer phase already produced their own pottery when the first neolithic farmers arrived at the Rhine.^[12] It is generally accepted that nomadic mesolithic hunters and gatherers connected the neolithic farmers of the Cardium culture at the Franch-Spanish Mediterranean coast to La Hoguette and Roucadourien through the Rhone-Saône route. To the east, this same genetically related pottery found its way to the steppes and forests of Russia,^[13] where from the 4th millennium BC on peoples from the Pontic-Caspian brought point base pottery from their original riverside habitats even into the steppe and foreststeppe east of the Urals.^[14]

Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures dated according to the attested pottery:

Culture	First attested pottery	Source
Linear Pottery culture	5450-5000 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Rössen culture	4900-4500 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Bischheim culture	4500-4375 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Michelsberg I-IV	4350-3400 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
-	-	-
Swifterbant, Polderweg 2nd phase	5200-4950 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Hazendonk 1,2,3	4250-3300 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Vlaardingen (Late Mesolithic)	3550-2500 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
-	-	-
Ertebolle/Ellerbek (Northern Germany)	5100-3850 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Ertebølle (Salpetermosen)	4950-4800 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Ertebølle (Scandinavia)	4650-3850 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
TRB, Hüde-Dümmer	4300-3400 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
TRB, early, Germany & Scandinavia	4100-3300 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
TRB, Drenthe, Westgroup	3300-2700 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
-	-	-
Ceramic Mesolithic Belgium	4500 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
Ceramic Mesolitic France, Roucadourien	4850-4450 BC	De Roever, 2004[10]
-	-	-
Early Dnieper-Donets region	Early fifth millennium	Mallory, 1989[15]
Sredny Stog culture	4500-3500 BC	Mallory, 1989[15]

Most archeologist accept the hypothesis that the Dnieper-Donets culture was swallowed up by other populations from the steppe (Mallory p.256). Telegin indicates it was assimilated by the Sredny Stog and Yamnaya cultures, while Gimbutas dismiss this culture as a local substrate assimilated by invaders from the Volga-Ural region.

Here, the Paleolithic Continuity Theory comes in to propose a reversal of the Kurgan hypothesis, largely identifying the Indo-Europeans with Gimbutas "Old Europe"^[16], and reassigning the Kurgan culture - traditionally considered early Indo-European - to a people of predominantly mixed Uralic and Turkic stock. The proof of this is sought in the tentative linguistic identification of Etruscans as a Uralic, proto-Hungarian people that already underwent strong proto-Turkish influence in the third millennium BC^[17] when Pontic invasions would have brought this people to the Carpatian basin. A subsequent migration of Urnfield culture signature around 1250 BC triggered this ethnic group to expand south in a general movement of people, attested by the upheaval of the Sea Peoples and the overthrow of an earlier Italic substrate at the onset of the "Etruscan" Villanovan culture.

It should be noted that archeological arguments to a local developent do not supply migration models that tie prehistoric cultures together, and assume continuity by default. The initial prehistoric dispersal pattern of the Indo-European languages is proposed to be tied instead to a process of regional depopulation followed by repopulation in a "sparse wave" scenario of hunter-gatherers, migrating rapidly out of a refugial area to account for a disproportionate contribution to the genetic and linguistic legacy of the region. Most likely, this would have happened at the end of the coldest part of the Younger Dryas (around 10,800-9,400 cal. BC) or later, following the cold event at 6.200 cal BC.^[18]

This section may contain material not related to the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled Genetic history of Europe. (Discuss)

The PCT assumes paleoanthropological continuity from the earliest times.

The European "continuum" featured many different physical types. Concerning the proposed Mesolithic IE homeland, the Dnieper-Donets population has been predominantly characterized as late Cro-Magnons with more massive and robust features than the gracile Mediterranean peoples of the Balkan Neolithic.^[19] This corresponds to the robust physical type of other Mesolithic wetland and fishing cultures, like Ertebølle and Swifterbant^[20].

A large spatial continuum has been sought also in the distribution patterns of genetic markers. High concentrations of Mesolithic or late Paleolithic YDNA subclades of haplogroup R1b (typically well above 35%) and I (up to 25%), are thought to derive ultimately of the robust Eurasiatic Cro Magnoid homo sapiens of the Aurignacian culture, and the subsequent gracile leptodolichomorphous people of the Gravettian culture that entered Europe from the Middle East 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, respectively.^[21] Small Neolithic additions can be concerned in occurences of "Anatolian" haplogroups J2, G, F and E3b1a, the latter originally presenting a clearly Sub-Saharan Afican element^[22] Haplogroup R1a1, whose lineage is thought to have originated in the Eurasian Steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, is both associated with the Kurgan culture [13] and to the postglacial Ahrensburg culture that probably spread the gene originally,^[23] Ornella Semino et al. (see [14]) propose a postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene from the Ukrainian LGM refuge.

The present-day population of R1b, with extremely high peaks in Western Europe and measured up to the eastern confines of Central Asia, are believed to be the descendants of a refugium in the Iberian peninsula (Portugal and Spain) at the Last Glacial Maximum, where the haplogroup may have achieved genetic homogeneity. As conditions eased with the Allerød Oscillation in about 12,000 BC, descendants of this group migrated and eventually recolonised all of Western Europe, leading to the dominant position of R1b in variant degrees from Iberia to Scandinavia, so evident in haplogroup maps. The most common subclade is R1a1c9, that has a maximum in Frisia (the Netherlands). It may have originated towards the end of the last ice age, or perhaps more or less 7000 BC, possibly in the northern European mainland.[15].

The mainstream position of historical linguistics is that genetic continuity does not imply linguistic continuity and that theories of a literal "military conquest" have fallen into disfavour with most supporters of the theory of a Chalcolithic origin of Indo-European. The time frame proposed by PCT is far beyond mainstream estimates, by a factor of at least 500%, and the hypothesis is not taken seriously in Indo-European studies.

On the other hand, Alinei's book was reviewed favourably by Jonathan Morris in Mother Tongue, a journal dedicated to the reconstruction of Paleolithic language, judging Alinei's theory as being

"both simpler than its rivals and more powerful in terms of the insights it provides into language in the Meso- and Palaeolithic. While his book contains some flaws I believe that it deserves to be regarded as one of the seminal texts on linguistic archaeology, although given its lamentable lack of citation in English-language circles, it appears that recognition will have to wait until a translation of the original Italian appears."[16]

The search for archaeological evidence beyond what can be motivated from historical linguistics has been criticized by linguists such as Kortlandt,^[24] considering the probability of irretrievable loss of many linguistic groups somewhere between the archeological horizon and the attestation of a language. Also, Kortlandt addressed a general tendency to date proto-languages farther back in time than is warranted by the linguistic evidence since, like with Romance languages, the linguistic impact of contact during the first expansions has proven to be decisive to the formative period. Against the ancient continuity of the Celtic language in Ireland he refers to the radical changes which embody the formation of Irish in the first half of the first millennium AD that are probably due to imperfect learning by speakers of an unknown substrate language which was lost forever. Linguist Peter Schrijver speculates on the reminiscent lexical and typological features of some northwestern European regions and assumes the preexistence of pre-Indo-European languages up to 9000 year ago, linked to the archeological Linear Pottery culture and to a family of languages featuring complex verbs, of which the Northwest Caucasian languages might have been the sole survivors: those influences would have been especially strong on Celtic languages originating north of the Alps and on the region including Belgium and the Rhineland,^[25] thus yielding some kind of other linguistic continuity rather that language continuity. This notion that Balkan farmers introduced a short lived non-Indo-European language into Europe is shared by Alinei, though so far the PCV does not accept the slight evidence this Balkan languages spread so far to the north. Kortlandt relates the earliest dialectal divergences within Slavic to the period of historically attested expansions, about the fourth century AD. Though reasonable to assume that many dialects arose and disappeared at earlier stages, the term “Slavic” would be inappropriate before the expansions of the first millennium AD. Accordingly, any proposal which goes back too much in time, say beyond the fifth millennium, would rather have to start from the possible affinities of Indo-European with other language families.

• Jonathan Adams, Did Indo-European Languages spread before farming?, Current Anthropology 40, No. 1. (Feb., 1999), 73-77. [17]

• Pre-Indo-European
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-Europeans
• Neolithic Europe
• Urheimat
• Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory
• Devaneya Pavanar (postulates origin of the Tamil language in Kumari Kandam before 100,000 BC)

• continuitas.com principal PCT website
  • Review of Mario Alinei's - Origini delle Lingue d’Europa (Origins of the Languages of Europe) - by Jonathan Morris
• PCT outline
• An alternative model for the origins of European peoples and languages
• The Paleolithic Indo-Europeans