The Indo-European Dark Ages Illuminated

“The Indo-European Dark Ages Illuminated” is a research project that is financed by VELUX FONDEN and headed by Thomas Olander.

The millennia following 4000 BCE changed the linguistic, cultural and genetic make-up of Europe and western Asia forever. A decisive factor in this turbulent period was a herding people in the Ukrainian and south Russian steppes that spread west into Europe and east towards India and China. The most visible mark they left was linguistic: they spoke a language, Proto-Indo-European, which is not attested in writing, but is the ancestor of a number of languages spoken in large parts of the world today, including Danish, English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi.

Analysing the culture-specific words in the Indo-European languages, the project examines how far back the words can be reconstructed in the shared prehistory of the languages – some can be traced back all the way to Proto-Indo-European, others to later stages. The vocabulary is thus used to throw light on the archaeological cultures in which the various prehistoric language stages may have been spoken. The project is linguistic in its core, but together with archaeology and prehistoric genetics it contributes to the cross-disciplinary endeavour of understanding this formative period in the prehistory of Europe and Asia.