South Ural Department of the Institute of History and Archaeology

Origins of Indo-Europeans and their migrations

 The problem of origins of people speaking Indo-European is discussed more than 200 years. The homeland of Indo-Europeans was localizing in different areas of our continent, from Western Europe to India. Most archaeologists suppose that this homeland was in Eastern Europe. Linguists T.V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov, basing on linguistic evidence, suggested the localization of Indo-European homeland in the Near East, and described migrations of the Indo-European tribes. This theory has encountered the serious opposition of linguists, but above all of archaeologists, who assert that the archaeological material does not confirm such migrations. In 1996-2002 S. Grigoriev has published a number of books and articles, where a scheme of developments of Eurasian cultures has been suggested. He shows similarities between the cultures of Northern Eurasia and those in the Near East, Transcaucasia and Central Europe. On this broad background a picture of a number of long migrations from the Near East crossing the continent in different directions is presented. This scheme corresponds to that of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov.

The last books of Dr. S. Grigoriev on this subject:

Ancient Indo-Europeans. An attempt of historical reconstruction. Chelyabinsk, 1999, 444 pp. (in Russian).

Ancient Indo-Europeans. Chelyabinsk, 2002, 498 pp. (in English).