Anatolian hypothesis

The hypothesis that Indo-European languages spread from Neolithic farming communities in Anatolia as agriculture expanded into Europe and parts of Asia.

Colin Renfrew: A British archaeologist who argued that Indo-European languages spread with Neolithic farmers from Anatolia. His 1987 book made the hypothesis a prominent alternative to steppe-origin accounts.
Kurgan hypothesis: The hypothesis that Proto-Indo-European originated among Bronze Age pastoralists of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. It places the language homeland later and farther north than the Anatolian hypothesis.
Comparative method: A procedure for reconstructing earlier languages by comparing systematic similarities among related languages. It establishes the language family and ancestral forms whose spread the hypothesis explains.
Bayesian phylogenetics: A statistical approach that estimates evolutionary relationships and divergence times using probability models. Its language-family dating studies have produced results that bear on the proposed Neolithic chronology.
Neolithic Revolution: The transition in many regions from foraging to food production and settled life. The hypothesis links language spread to this transformation’s movement out of Anatolia.
Pontic-Caspian steppe: The grassland region north of the Black and Caspian seas. The competing homeland model locates Proto-Indo-European speakers in this region.
Language family: A group of languages descended from a common ancestral language. The hypothesis accounts for the geographic distribution of one such family.
Indo-European language dispersal: The prehistoric spread of Indo-European languages across Europe and Asia. The hypothesis offers a farming-linked account, but the routes and timing remain debated.
Anatolia: A large peninsula in western Asia, mostly within modern Turkey. The hypothesis identifies this region as the homeland of early Indo-European languages.
Indo-European homeland: The proposed original homeland of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. The Anatolian hypothesis is one answer to this long-standing historical question.

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