Proto-Indo-European society

Proto-Indo-European society is the hypothesized culture of the ancient speakers of Proto-Indo-European, a reconstructed ancestor language common to all Indo-European languages.

Theories about the culture are based primarily on linguistics and not ethnic, social, or cultural study. There is no direct evidence of the nature of a "Proto-Indo-European society", as such. Any conclusions in this article or otherwise are only inferences, and not established facts.

Much of our modern ideas in this field involve the unsettled Indo-European homeland debate about the precise origins of the language itself. There are three main approaches researchers have employed in their attempts to study this culture, but all are subject to resolution of the debate and all are the subject of criticism:

What follows in this page are interpretations based only on the assumption of the Kurgan hypothesis of Indo-European origins, and are by no means universally accepted.

Whether these people regarded themselves as a linguistic or ethnic community cannot be known, nor by which name they may have referred to themselves.

Linguistics has allowed the reliable reconstruction of a large number of words relating to kinship relations. These all agree in exhibiting a patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal social fabric. Patrilocality is confirmed by lexical evidence, including the word *h₂u̯edh, "to lead (away)", being the word that denotes a male wedding a female (but not vice versa). It is also the dominant pattern in historical IE societies, and matrilocality would be unlikely in a patrilineal society.

Inferences have been made for sacral kingship, suggesting the tribal chief at the same time assumed the role of high priest. Georges Dumézil suggested for Proto-Indo-European society a threefold division of a clerical class, a warrior class and a class of farmers or husbandmen, on his interpretations that many historically known groups speaking Indo-European languages show such a division, but Dumézil's approach has been widely criticised.

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