IE CLIMATE – Climate and weather in Indo-European
The postdoc research project IE CLIMATE – Climate and weather in Indo-European is conducted by Julia Sturm and is funded by the EU Skłodowska-Curie programme.
Julia's research project investigates the climate and weather vocabulary of the Proto-Indo-European language from a linguistic and cultural standpoint, in order to:
- identify the weather phenomena and climate conditions the Indo-Europeans were exposed to and were familiar with, and
- to better understand Indo-Europeans' attitudes towards and interactions with the weather and climate of the areas in which they lived.
These two goals will be achieved by comparing and analysing cognate words, phrases, deity names, and religious formulae in the Indo-European daughter languages and using modern historical linguistics methodologies to determine their age and geographical distribution. Julia's research also marks a new avenue of investigation into ancient peoples' relationship with climate and climate change, a critical field of research that has great potential to inform modern society as we face current and future climate crises. The broad question that IE CLIMATE addresses is this: what can historical linguistics methodologies tell us about ancient climate conditions and the ways that ancient peoples adapted and migrated due to these conditions?