Автор статті - відомий український індоєвропеїст, викладач кафедри археології НаУКМА Сергій Вікторович Конча, який пішов з життя 17 липня 2016 р. У статті аналізуються праці прибічників
походження індоєвропейських народів із Центральної Європи 1980-1990-х рр. Дослідник
доходить висновку, що коріння найдавніших індоєвропейців Європи сягає мезоліту південної Балтії,
звідки пращури народів індоєвропейської мовної сім’ї розселилися у VI-II тис. до н. е. спочатку
у Надчорномор’я, а пізніше по всій Європі та в західній частині Азійського материка до Індії, Ірану
та Західного Китаю включно.
This paper presents historiographic analysis of the Central European version of the origins of
Indo-European (IE) linguistic family peoples. The article analysis of points of view of supporters of
origin of Indo-European peoples from Central Europe by K. Jazdzewski, L. Kilian, J. Makkay, Hausler,
L. Zaliznyak.
Recently, the argument between the supporters of the Central European version of Indo-Europeans
Homeland and the followers of the Steppe version have proved to be in the center of discussion around the
Indo-European origin. The concept of Baltic culture and province of Central and Eastern Europe by
L Zaliznyak allows to bring closer understanding and solving the problem.
The explorer of Mesolithic cultures of Polissya lowland pointed to similarity of the materials of
this region with the monuments of cultures of еру maglemosian-postmaglemosian culture circle in the
South Baltic region. L. Zaliznyak retraces some stages of Mesolithic hunting population’s migration
from the side of the West Baltic region to the basin of the Pripyat river and to the Middle Dnieper
(Fig. 1). The province of the kindred cultures was formed between the Lower Rhine, Jutland and the
Middle Dnieper. In L. Zaliznyak’s opinion, the bearers of these cultures can be related to the Indo-
European ancestors.
The penetration of population from the Ukrainian Polissya lowland to the forest-steppe zone to the
Lower Dnieper and in the Donets river basin are retraced already in Mesolithic and Neolithic. During the
migration of the tribes from the North farther and deep into steppes and their adaptation to the steppe
conditions, the Mariupol cultural unity is formed in the 5th millennium BC. The last one, which occupied
the spaces between the Lower Dnieper region and the Volga, becomes the basis on which the steppe cattlebreeding
and horse-breeding cultures are formed. Many authors identified the bearers of these steppe
cultures with the ancestors of the Eastern branch of Indo-Europeans. The latter was separated from the
main trunk in the North of Central Europe during the gradual dislocation by the river basins of the Pripyat
and the Dnieper to the East. While L. Zaliznyak highlights the Post-Maglemosian Mesolithic unity and considers it as Proto-Indo-
European, S. V. Koncha considers the same Post-Maglemosian substrate as an already formed IE but prior
to their disintegration into separate ethno-linguistic branches. So, there are good reasons to date the IE
community by the early Mesolithic (the 8th-7th millennium BC). The beginning of its decay can be associated
with the beginning of Yanislavytsa population settlement to the east, in Polissya and further to the
Donets basin in the 6th-5th millennia BC. The author of these lines believed that the determining cultural
complex for the earliest IE (pastoralism, barrow burial rites, the sun-wheel cult, ox, horse, weapons, patriarch
warrior and herdsman cults) were acquired by them later, after the collapse of the great IE community
in the 6th-3rd mil. BC.
So, a presently forgotten version about the origin of the Indo-European family of languages and nations
from the Central Europe roughly between Rhine and the Dnieper can be revived at a new level according
to the modern archeologic data.
