Urheimat

Urheimat (/ˈʊərhaɪmɑːt/; German pronunciation: [ˈʔuːɐ̯ˌhaɪmaːt]; from a German compound of "original" and Heimat "home, homeland") is a linguistic term that denotes the hypothesized homeland of the speakers of a proto-language. A proto-language is a hypothetical parent language in the tree model of language evolution. As the placement of branches is often uncertain, the time, location, and very existence of an urheimat is also often uncertain. However, it is possible to have considerable confidence regarding the location of an urheimat of a language or language family from multiple lines of linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence, even when the precise contours of a proto-language are not firmly established.

Archaeological evidence is sometimes adduced to support the existence of an urheimat. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the prevailing belief was that languages could be reliably associated with archaeological cultures. This culture history theory, developed by Gustaf Kossinna, formalized the presumption that unified ethnicities, such as peoples or tribes, could be associated with archaeological cultures. One might point to a culture map and hazard a guess as to which language, typically a proto-language, was spoken in each culture.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the link between archaeological cultures and language boundaries was weakened by the discovery of cases in which language shifts occurred with only minor differences in cultural artifacts. This article summarizes some of the leading, and sometimes competing, urheimat proposals for some of the larger or more carefully studied language families.

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