Proto-Indo-European homeland

The proposed ancestral region where Proto-Indo-European was spoken before its daughter languages spread. Its location remains disputed, chiefly between steppe and Anatolian models.

Kurgan hypothesis: A model placing the Proto-Indo-European homeland on the Pontic-Caspian steppe and linking its spread to mobile pastoralists. It is the influential steppe model that locates the homeland north of the Black and Caspian seas.
Proto-Indo-European language: The reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family, inferred by comparing its descendant languages. The homeland is the proposed place where this reconstructed language was spoken.
Indo-European migrations: The movements of populations associated with the historical spread of Indo-European languages across Eurasia. A homeland model must explain the routes and chronology of the languages' later dispersal.
Indo-European Urheimat: A term for the hypothesized original homeland of the Indo-European languages. Its competing proposed locations illustrate why the homeland remains an unresolved historical question.
Anatolian hypothesis: A model linking the spread of Indo-European languages to Neolithic farming dispersals from Anatolia. It places the homeland farther south and proposes an earlier dispersal than the steppe model.
Comparative method: A linguistic method that compares related languages to reconstruct features of their common ancestor. It supplies the evidence for reconstructing Proto-Indo-European vocabulary and sound patterns.
Yamnaya culture: A Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, associated with mobile pastoralism and burial mounds. Steppe proponents link this culture and related populations to early Indo-European dispersals.
Indo-European languages and ancient DNA: Research comparing ancient population movements with the historical spread of Indo-European languages. Genetic ancestry can track migrations, but cannot by itself establish which language migrants spoke.
Pontic-Caspian steppe: The grassland region north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, extending across eastern Europe and western Asia. This region is the principal geographic setting proposed by steppe-based homeland theories.
Proto-Indo-European homeland problem: The scholarly problem of locating the region where Proto-Indo-European was spoken before its dispersal. This is the specific historical-geographic question that homeland models seek to answer.

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