Summary
Vrezh – Armen E. Artinian
Keywords – Indo-Europeans, Indo-European languages, Indo-European migrations and expansion, Branching out of IndoEuropean languages (language tree), Original Indo-European people, Indo-European primary homeland, Proto-Indo-European language, Archeology, Linguistics, Anthropology, Mythology, History, Racist diversion
In «MAIS OÙ SONT PASSÉS LES INDO-EUROPÉENS?» (Le mythe d’origine de l’Occident, La librairie du XXIe siècle, Seuil, France 2014, 748 pp), its author, Jean-Paul Demoule challenges those for whom nothing remains unsolved in the questions concerning the existence of an original Indo-European people, their primary homeland and a proto-Indo-European language. He is convinced that, with the available data in the fields of archeology, linguistics, biology and mythology, we cannot confirm without hesitation the existence of such a primary people and determine its migrations and territorial conquests, and that other explanations have to be sought to interpret the irrefutable similarities between the Indo-European languages.
Demoule summarizes the 12 canonical theses related to the origins of the Indo-European family of languages, their branching out, the relationships between the languages constituting that family, the common homeland and its location, the migrations of the Indo-Europeans, their various cultural manifestations, mythology, the ideology of the supremacy of the Aryan race, etc. He analyses them in detail in the different chapters of the book, then presents his antitheses, concluding that we cannot consider the beginnings and the prehistory of Europe as a genealogical succession of societies, ethnic groups and «cultures», but the history of a multipolar world in continuous recomposition. A similar model can be considered also for the languages. Thanks to the abundant information gathered and the modern technological means we have today, those problems can be thoroughly researched in the future.