ISBN:
9780197683286
,
9780197506479
Language:
English
Pages:
xix, 563 Seiten
Uniform Title:
Mais où sont passés les lndo-Européens?
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Demoule, Jean-Paul Indo-Europeans
DDC:
305.809
Keywords:
Indo-Europeans Ethnic identity
;
Indo-Europeans Historiography
;
Ethnology Political aspects
;
Civilization, Western
;
Indo-European languages History
;
Archaeology and history
;
Ancient history: to c 500 CE
;
Antike
;
Archaeology by period / region
;
Archäologie einer Periode / Region
;
Ethnic Studies
;
Ethnic studies
;
General & world history
;
Geschichte allgemein und Weltgeschichte
;
HISTORY / Ancient / General
;
HISTORY / World
;
SOC008060
;
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
;
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / General
;
Europa
;
Europe
;
Indogermanen
;
Archäologie
;
Sprache
;
Geschichte
Abstract:
"The Search for a Long-anticipated Discovery The history of Indo-European studies reads with all the straightforward clarity of a family saga, with its founding fathers, child prodigies and even misguided sons. It also forms part of the catalogue of great scientific sagas, on a par with the discovery of penicillin, gravity and electricity. Of all the discoveries claimed by the social sciences, it is probably one of the few that the "hard" sciences (i.e. sciences concerned with physical matter and nature) are willing to acknowledge. Not only was the recognition of resemblances between the languages that we now term "Indo-European" an achievement in its own right, but the comparative grammar of these languages became the foundation on which general linguistics was gradually constructed as a scholarly discipline over the course of the 19th century: indeed, it is the only social science to have developed, and successfully applied, widely recognized mathematical models, much to the envy and fascination of other social sciences. As early as the mid-19th century, the German grammarian Schleicher made specific reference to Darwin in the construction of his family tree of Indo-European languages. In parallel, biologists taking this biologically-inspired tree at face value are today attempting to uncover traces of the Indo-European migrations hidden deep within the human genome. The Indo-European Golden Legend The saga had its pioneers, those who at the end of the 18th century had the intuitive genius to spot relationships between languages, initially by comparing Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. The best known of these pioneers was Sir William Jones who, in the 19th century, inspired three generations of mainly German linguists. The first generation was led by the German Franz Bopp (from 1816), and the Dane Rasmus Rask (from 1818), who defined the principles and tools of comparative grammar and who extended the corpus to include all Indo-European language families (Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Persian, Armenian, Albanian). The second generation was that of August Schleicher, who was the first to construct a family tree of these languages based on the natural sciences model (in 1861, only two years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species); he was also the first to write a short fable in the reconstructed "primordial language" (Ursprache) . And finally, the generation of Leipzig "Neo-Grammarians" who, deeming the methods of their predecessors insufficiently rigorous, defined a corpus of phonetic laws capable of explaining both the evolution and reconstruction of languages, laws "that would not tolerate any exceptions". Out of this century of German scholarship would emerge an etymological dictionary of Indo-European (initiated by Wahlde) and a comparative grammar of Indo-European languages (by Brugmann and Delbrück), two key tools that still remain indispensable to this day"--
Abstract:
The existence of an Indo-European linguistic family, allowing for the fact that several languages widely dispersed across Eurasia share numerous traits, has been demonstrated for several centuries now. But the underlying factors for this shared heritage have been fiercely debated by linguists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. The leading theory, of which countless variations exist, argues that this similarity is best explained by the existence, at one given point in time and space, of a common language and corresponding population. This ancient, prehistoric, population would then have diffused across Eurasia, eventually leading to the variation observed in historical and modern times. The Indo-Europeans: Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West argues that despite its acceptance and use by most researchers from different disciplines, such a model is inherently flawed. This book describes how, beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans began a quest for a supposed original homeland, from which a small conquering people would one day spread out, bringing their language to Europe and parts of Asia (India, Iran, Afghanistan). This quest was often closely tied to ideological preoccupations and it was in its name that the Nazi leadership, claiming for the Germans the status of the purest Indo-Europeans (or Aryans), waged genocide. The last part of the book summarizes the current state of knowledge and current hypotheses in the fields of linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology, and genetics. The culmination of three decades of research, this book offers a sweeping survey of the historiography of the Indo-European debate and poses a devastating challenge to the Indo-European origin story at its roots
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
URL:
Cover
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