- 5'000 B.C. : on the move
The name Indo-European is somewhat misleading. The original people who began to spread a language globally identified as Indo-European, the lost mother tongue of all European languages, Sanskrit and Indo-Iranian, were not Indian and above all didn't come from India. They came from a spot located in the Russian steppes, beyond the Oural and around the Caspian Sea. A Kurgan is a type of burial momument made of huge stones that they made for warriors and important individuals. Kurgan is a Russian word because a great many were found in Russia. However, they are also often identified as the Battle-Axe people (perforated stone battle-axe) because they developed the use of this type of weapon in warfare.At a time estimated around - 5'000 B.C. or even earlier, they entered a phase of expansion and invasion of other countries. The domestication of the horse was the motor of their expansion and allowed them a degree of mobility that had not existed before.
There are cogent arguments, based on the study of both philology and archeology, for suggesting that the initial spread of the Indo-European group of languages may be attributed to the Battle-Axe or Kurgan folk. The Indo-European group of languages embraces most of those current in present-day Europe, including modern and ancient Celtic, Greek and Latin, and ancient languages beyond Europe, such as Hittite and Sanskrit. .
The first destination of the Kurgan folk in - 5'000 --> India. They entered India through the northern mountains.
In India they found the advanced culture of the Dravidians which they destroyed and their language developed into Sanskrit, whose first written records emerged in approx. - 2'000 B.C., the oldest and most eminent of the Indo-European languages and the first of which there are written records. Sanskrit might be best representative of what the Battle axe folk spoke.
Hindi and Bengali are the modern descendants of Sanskrit. Dravidian survives in the south of India (brown area on the map).
The race of the Kurgan folk
The Kurgan or Battle-Axe people were European and white men. But whether they were in majority fair or dark haired or whether they had mostly blue or dark eyes, can't be said because historians can be happy if they find pieces of skulls or scraps of bones to study their morphology.
The degree of culture of the Kurgan folk
Their degree of development was that of the neolithic age (new stone age). Agriculture had developed in the Near and Middle East in approx. - 10'000 B.C. and had reached Europe in the next few thousand years. Archeology and the study of Sanskrit, in particular, shows that the Battle-Axe people (like the other Europeans) were no longer purely nomadic and did no longer live in caves. They built shelters and practised agriculture. They had domesticated some animals and kept cattle. In particular, for the Kurgan folk, the horse, the sheep and the dog. They knew how how to spin and weave. They believed in gods and buried the dead. But at the time of their migrations, some cultures were much more advanced than they were (the Dravidians in India, the Minoans on Crete, the Myceneans in Greece and of course the civilizations of Mesopotamia).
Social organization
Their social system was strongly patriarchal and they were very warlike; warfare was certainly a normal condition for them. It is obviously with the dissemination of the Indo-Europeans that the warrior clearly emerged as the most important individual in society and the absolute leader. It is possible that the basis of the social organization common to a number of barbarian peoples in Europe and indeed to the progenitors of the Greeks and Romans also, was initially disseminated by the Kurgan folk (i.e. a society divided into three classes : warrior aristocracy, priests-sorcerers and a large base of farmers-peasants to support the two former classes).
The descendants of the Cro-Magnon people - the old European who preceded the Indo-Europeans
Cro-Magnon people had most certainly been matriarchal. Gradually they too had become sedentary, had adopted building shelters and, thanks to gradual immigration from groups who were constantly on the move searching for new territories, farming had been introduced. It is likely that among the old peaceful Europeans, a certain degree of warfare had appeared too because archaeologists have found traces of fortifications around late neolithic settlements; the reason was certainly cattle raiding. This may have led in time towards the emergence of local leaders if only to organize the protection of the cattle. But on the whole it is thought that the old European continental cultures were fairly "egalitarian", there wasn't one class who had to work to support another class.