T. Gamkrelidze, V. Ivanov: The Secret of the Indo-European Pre-Homeland

Abstract

"The Secret of the Indo-European Pre-Homeland" – under this title, the journal Nauka v SSSR (No. 2, pp. 80-92) published an interview with T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov in 1981, three years before the release of their famous monograph Indo-European Language and Proto-Indo-Europeans (Гамкрелидзе Т.В., Иванов В.В., Индоевропейский язык и индоевропейцы. Реконструкция историко-типологического анализа праязыка и пракультуры, ТГУ, vol. 1-2, Tbilisi 1984). The authors were awarded the Lenin Prize for this work. Despite the fact that 43 years have passed since the interview was published, the ideas presented here remain relevant, and I believe it would be interesting to revive them. In the interview, T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov discuss in detail the historical-comparative method of reconstructing the proto-language, addressing the following questions: What is the proto-homeland? Who spoke these languages, and when? What did these people talk about? What is reflected in their language? What did they create, trade, and think about? What were their customs, myths, and so on? The authors explain the structure of a thematic dictionary compiled from the reconstructed words and texts of the Proto-Indo-European language, which includes three main groups of concepts: the living environment, material and spiritual culture, and social organization. Each concept presented in the dictionary is not limited to linguistic data; it is thoroughly explained, taking into account information from other fields such as paleobotany, paleozoology, history, mythology, archaeology, anthropology, etc. The migration routes of Indo-European tribes are also discussed, along with the reasons why the Indo-Europeans, descending from the mountains, did not stay at the foot but instead continued moving farther from the homeland of their ancestors.