Gamkrelidze/Ivanov on Proto-Indo-Europeans

T.V. Gamkrelidze, V.V. Ivanov, 1995, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin - New York

pp. 847-849

12.8.1. The diffusion of the ancient Southwest Asian physical type in western Asia and Europe as a reflection of ethnic blending

The non-Indo-European linguistic substrata of the autochthonous populations of ancient Europe facilitated the graduate differentiation of the Ancient European dialects and the rise of the separate Celtic, Italic, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic linguistic groups. Contacts among these languages would still have been possible, with consequent formation of shared lexical isoglosses reflected in the diagram of dialect differentiation at level 6 (see I.7, Fig. 3 and I.7.5 above).

The trajectory proposed here for migrations of the Indo-Europeans from a center in Southwest Asia to new territories in Eurasia, and for their contacts with speakers of other languages, correlates to some extent with the physical anthropological picture of migrations and racial blending in western Europe (see Map 3). There is an eastern Mediterranean, Balkan-Caucasian area of racial formation centered in Asia Minor (Alekseev 1974:224-25). In this area we can distinguish a Southwest Asian population group, widely attested in monuments in Southwest Asia (Luschan 1911, Bunak 1927, Field 1961). This physical type is characterized by marked brachycephaly, intensified development of facial and body hair, and a distinctive nose form (depicted, for example, in Hittite reliefs). It is typical of the tribes who were in contact with the ancient Near Eastern area, including the southern Caucasus, Asia Minor, and northern Iran, at a certain chronological level (Abduselisvili, 1966). From this area it spread with some changes to Afghanistan (in particular Nuristan: Herrlick 1937) and northern India (the so-called Indo-Afghan race: Devec 1967). It is related to the Bronze Age population of Central Asia and the contemporary Pamir-Fergana type (Alekseev 1974:222-23). The eastern Mediterranean type is also represented in Europe, where it blends with the earlier types - northern, southern and central-eastern, the latter with Mongoloid admixture - which represent the original population (Alekseev 1974: 225-41).

Our claim that the Proto-Indo-European speakers were of the Mediterranean racial type conflicts with the traditional view of the Indo-Europeans as fair-haired, blue-eyed, and dolichocephalic, a view drawn from the literary texts of the ancient Indo-European languages (cf. Lelekov 1982). There is a certain idealization of light skin and fair hair in the the Old Indic and Greek traditions (e.g., Indra is characterized as fari, ha'ri-), but this indicates that fair coloring was rare and phenotypically marked among the early Indo-Europeans; it cannot be interpreted as some kind of memory of the of the typical physical features of their ancestors who spoke Proto-Indo-European. There is special sympoblic significance for the color white in various early Indo-European traditions, and it is connected with early Indo-European social organization, but there is no basis in regarding it as based on hair or skin color.

The assumption that the Indo-Europeans were blue-eyed found some currency when northern Europe was regarded as the original Proto-Indo-European homeland, but placing the homeland in Southwest Asia changes the physical type that must be assumed. The migrations of the early Indo-European speakers and their interactions with local populations in their new territories would eventually have brought about fundamental changes in their physical type. Such interaction must be assumed for northern Europe, where the Ancient European languages were super-imposed on the local non-Indo-European languages in prehistoric times. The speakers of the ancient European languages could have been a dark-eyed population which was assimilated by the indigenous population. The outcome would have depended on the relative numbers of the indigenous and immigrant population. The child of a dark-eyed and a light-eyed parent will be phenotypically dark-eyed but heterozygous, carrying a gene for light eyes which may become overt in the next generation if the gene for dark eyes is lost. Thus a pre-Indo-European population with light eye color, as in northern Europe, could have remained predominantly light-eyed even after being conquered by a dark-eyed population and adopting their language.

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