The Graeco-Armeno-Aryan group supposedly branched off from the parent Indo-European stem by the mid-3rd millennium BC.
Relation to the possible homeland
In the context of the Kurgan hypothesis, Graeco-Aryan is also known as "Late Proto-Indo-European" or "Late Indo-European" to suggest that Graeco-Aryan forms a dialect group, which corresponds to the latest stage of linguistic unity in the Indo-European homeland in the early part of the 3rd millennium BC. By 2500 BC, Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian had separated and moved respectively westward and eastward from the Pontic Steppe.[1]
If Graeco-Aryan is a valid group, Grassmann's law may have a common origin in Greek and Sanskrit. However, Grassmann's law in Greek postdates certain sound changes that happened only in Greek, not Sanskrit, which suggests that it could not have been inherited directly from a common Graeco-Aryan stage. Rather, it is more likely that an areal feature spread across a then-contiguous Graeco-Aryan–speaking area. That would have occurred after early stages of Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian had developed into separate dialects but before they ceased to be in geographic contact.[citation needed]
Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov included Armenian in Graeco-Aryan and argued for a primary split of Graeco-Aryan into a Greek branch with Greek as its only member, and an Armenian-Aryan branch that comprises Armenian and Indo-Iranian.[5][6][7]
Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who support the Armenian hypothesis, which asserts that the homeland of the Indo-European language family was in the Armenian Highlands.[8][9][10]
A related proposal, Graeco-Armenian, assumes a special relation between Greek and Armenian to the exclusion of other Indo-European branches and has been popular among experts since the beginning of the 20th century,[11] although it has not gained generally acceptance, and its validity has been questioned.[12][13]
Modern archaeogenetics studies report that Bronze Age Greeks and Armenians derived their steppe ancestry directly from the Yamnaya culture people of the Pontic Steppe, in contrast to the Proto-Indo-Iranian-speaking[14][15]Andronovo and Sintashta cultures, whose steppe ancestry was Corded Ware-related. This seems to lend credence to the Graeco-Armenian theory, while undermining the Graeco-Aryan theory.[16][17]
References
↑Martin Litchfield West, Indo-European poetry and myth (2007), p. 7.
↑Wolfram Euler: Indoiranisch-griechische Gemeinsamkeiten der Nominalbildung und deren indogermanische Grundlagen [= Aryan-Greek Communities in Nominal Morphology and their Indoeuropean Origins]. Innsbruck, 1979 (in German).
↑Litchfield West, Martin (1999). "The Invention of Homer". Classical Quarterly. 49 (364).
↑Gamkrelidze, Thomas V.; Ivanov, V. V. (1995). Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and Proto-Culture. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. p.323. doi:10.1515/9783110815030. ISBN978-3-11-014728-5.
↑Renfrew, A. C., 1987, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, London: Pimlico. ISBN0-7126-6612-5; T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, The Early History of Indo-European Languages, Scientific American, March 1990; Renfrew, Colin (2003). "Time Depth, Convergence Theory, and Innovation in Proto-Indo-European". Languages in Prehistoric Europe. Winter. ISBN3-8253-1449-9.
↑A. Bammesberger in The Cambridge History of the English Language, 1992, ISBN978-0-521-26474-7, p. 32: the model "still remains the background of much creative work in Indo-European reconstruction" even though it is "by no means uniformly accepted by all scholars."
↑Beckwith 2009, p.49: "Archaeologists are now generally agreed that the Andronovo culture of the Central Steppe region in the second millennium BC is to be equated with the Indo-Iranians."
