Corded Ware culture: Encyclopedia II - Corded Ware culture - Language

Corded Ware culture - Language

The Corded Ware culture was long pointed to as the cultural horizon best fitting the description for the Urheimat (original homeland) of the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language. This people would have originated on the North German plain, then moved outwards. This viewpoint was still reflected in even some relatively recent literature, but has now been essentially supplanted by the work of Marija Gimbutas and her energetic propounding of the Kurgan hypothesis.

The role of the Corded Ware culture in the history of the Indo-European languages is actively debated but not denied. The Corded Ware people are mostly seen as ancestral to Proto-Balto-Slavic in its eastern regions, and to the Centum dialects (i.e. Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic) in the western parts.

The Corded Ware culture may in terms of Gimbutas' theory also be seen as a "kurganized" culture that emerged out of Neolithic Europe. The origin of this "kurganization" or Indo-Europeanization would be the approximately contemporaneous and overlapping Globular Amphora (ca. 3400-2800 BC) and Baden (ca. 3600-2800 BC) cultures, a process described by Gimbutas as the second wave of the Kurgan culture "invasion". See also Germanic substrate hypothesis. In its earlier phase, it was likely a largely non-Indo-European entity, a part of what Gimbutas termed Old Europe. In its subsequent phases, it clearly became progressively more Indo-European in character, and at the end, quite strongly so.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Language", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki