38 from the sea or ocean, since there is no common word for sea. The continental part of Europe and the central part of Asia as probable locations more or less agreed with these language conditions. But within these broad limits individual views varied considerably. O. Schrader (1901), for example, favored the north Pontic area, while Feist (1913) regarded central Asia as the starting point of the Indo-European prehistoric migrations, holding the Tokharians in central Asia as likely remnants of the early centre of the Indo-Europeans. Some linguists, because of the very archaic character of the Lithuanian and Old Prussian languages, believed and still believe that the homelands must be in Lithuania or near it, somewhere between the Baltic Sea and western Russia, or even in a small area between the Vistula and Nemunas. On the other hand, the great accumulation of archaeological finds in eastern Europe and western Asia, and the reconstruction of pre-historic cultures in eastern Europe, Central Asia, and southern Siberia, indicate movements of people from the Eurasiatic steppes into Europe and Asia Minor and the assimilation or disappearance of local Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures in Europe at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium B.C. In 2300–2200 B.C., the first signs of expansion of an entirely new culture from the steppe zone north of the Black Sea and beyond the Volga can be traced in the Balkans, in the Aegean area and western Anatolia, and soon thereafter in central and Baltic Europe. The Kurgan Pit-grave people (kurgan is the Russian word for barrow) from the Volga and the south Siberian steppes and Kazakhstan were ceaselessly advancing westwards. They possessed vehicles, a specialized knowledge of animal husbandry, farmed on a small scale, and had well-organized small patriarchal communities. The utilization of the vehicle and the stratification of society into warrior and laboring classes were important factors which gave impetus to their

39 Fig. 3. The tentative expansion of the Eurasiatic “Kurgan” culture to Europe and the Proto-Baltic area. 1, expansion not later than c. 2300-2200 B.C.; 2, expansion before and around 2100 B.C. (chronology not yet fixed by Carbon 14 dating. The arrows in the Caucasus and Anatolia may indicate an earlier period, c. 2300 B.C.); 3, the area occupied or influenced by the “Kurgan” (Corded, Battle-Axe) people; 4, the proto-Baltic area during the first half of the second millennium B.C. (unchanged limits in the west until c.1200 B.C.). The southern limits almost coincide with the limits between the forest and forest-steppe zones in eastern Europe. mobility and aggressiveness. This type of social structure and economy contrasted with that of the local European Neolithic agricultural people who lived in large communities and apparently in a matriarchal system. The Kurgan people must have established themselves as overlords. Such European Neolithic

40 cultures as the Painted Pottery culture in the Balkans, the Funnel-Beaker culture in central and northwestern Europe and the food-gathering culture in the East Baltic area and central Russia were overpowered, but it took at least several hundred years before the old cultures disintegrated or were assimilated. The archaeological elements of the Kurgan culture fully confirm the picture drawn from shared words in the Indo-European languages. I shall mention here only a few examples pertaining to economy and social structure, stressing pertinent words in the Baltic languages. Farming was not unknown to the Kurgan people. Pots filled with millet or wheat grains were found in graves and in habitation sites. There is a common Indo-European name for cereals: Sanskrit yavah, Avestan yavo, Lithuanian javaĩ, Irish eorna; for grains: Old Prussian syrne, Lithuanian žirnis (now come to mean “pea”), Old Slavic zrŭno, Gothic kaurn, Old Irish kaurn, Latin granum; and for wheat or spelt: Lithuanian pūrai, Old Indic pūros, Greek πύζός, and Old Bulgarian pyro. Words for the seed (Lithuanian sēmuo, Latin sēmen) and sowing (Lithuanian sėti, Old Slavic sěti, Gothic saian, Old Irish sīl) are early Indo-European. All Kurgan habitation sites and graves show that stockbreeding was a main preoccupation and a most important source of food. Sheep, goat, cattle, dog, and horse bones are abundant, and language sources reflect this as the names of all the domestic animals are preserved. Stock was called: Sanskrit pāçu, paçuh, Latin pecu, pecus, Old High German fihu, Lithuanian pekus, Old Prussian pecku. The words are connected with the words for money (Latin pecunia, Gothic faihu, and Old Prussian pecku), indicating that cattle played a great role in commerce. There are common names for cow and bull (Sanskrit gauh, Avestan gāuš, Armenian kov, Lettish gůws, Greek βους, Latin bōs, Old Slavic govędo), for sheep (Sanskrit ávih, Lithuanian avis, Greek ονς, Latin ovis, Irish oi, Old

41 Slavic ovĭnŭ, etc.); for goat and he-goat (Sanskrit aiah, ajā, Lithuanian ožys, ožka, Armenian ayc, Greek αϊς); for dog (Vedic ç(u)vá, Lithuanian šuva or šů, Avestan sūnō (in genitive); and for horse (Sanskrit açvah, fem. açvā, Lithuanian ašvà, Avestan aspō, Old Persian asa). There is no doubt that the meat of domesticated animals and other animal products constituted a basic food supply for the Kurgan people as well as for the later Indo-Europeans. The word for meat is the same in many Indo-European languages: Lithuanian mėsa, Old Slavic męso, Tokharian misa, Armenian mis, Gothic mims. A meal of meat with a kind of gravy was apparently widely used, as suggested by the common word: Latin iūs, Lithuanian jūšė, Old Slavic juxá, Sanskrit yuh. The Kurgan people became acquainted with metal several centuries before the end of the third millennium B.C. They acquired their metallurgical knowledge from the local Near Eastern, Transcaucasian, Anatolian, and Transylvanian peoples. Soon thereafter they became eager metallurgists and played a big role in the introduction of the Bronze Age in Europe and in exploring the copper resources of the central European mountains. The existence of vehicles is shown by actual finds in the Kurgan culture and by words. Nearly all Indo-European languages have the root veĝh to designate vehicle. What we know archaeologically about the habitat and social structure of the Kurgan culture is in full agreement with the linguistic data. The Kurgan people arranged their fortified hill settlements on high river banks. Their earliest acropolises date from the Chalcolithic period and continue throughout the later prehistoric and historic periods in all Indo-European groups. Lithuanian pilis, Lettish pils, or Old Prussian pil correspond with the Greek πολις, Old Indic pūr, puriš, and Sanskrit pūh, meaning acropolis, castle, town. There is also the name for a regular village with the root *wik, *weikos, *wes,

42 and another word for a house group: Lithuanian kaimas, kiemas, Old Prussian caymis, Gothic haims, Greek κωμη. The village had its chief: Lithuanian vëšpatis, Sanskrit viç-pátih, Avestan vīs-patiş. Houses of the Kurgan culture were small, rectangular wooden structures, comprising one room or one room with a porch, having wattle-and-daub walls and a pitched roof supported by a row of vertical posts. The type and structure of the house is perfectly rendered in words. Thus, for house there is Old Indic dámas, Latin domus, Greek δόμος, Old Bulgarian domъ, Lithuanian namas; also for a small house or “klete”: Lithuanian klėtis, Lettish klēts, Old Prussian clenan, Old Bulgarian klĕth, Gothic hleipra, Greek μλιδια, which is related to the Latin clivus, “hill,” and the Greek μλτύς, “slope.” The root *wei for “to twine” (Lithuanian vyti, Old Indic vayati, Latin vieo) is related to the name for wall (Old Icelandic veggr, Gothic waddjus), and there are common words for post, door, thatched roof, and other parts and activities connected with the building of the house. The division into warrior and laboring classes as shown by language is confirmed by Kurgan graves: there are on the one hand very many quite poor graves equipped merely with a flint knife or a pot, on the other hand some outstanding, richly furnished graves which very probably belonged to chieftains. Graves also indicate the superior family status of the man, who seemed to have unrestricted property rights over his wife and children. The frequent double graves of a man and a woman indicate the custom of self-immolation by the widow. The wife must follow to death her deceased husband — a custom which continued among Hindus in India (suttee) into the present century, and in Lithuania is recorded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. Linguists no longer speak of the unity of the Indo-European mother tongue; even in its early stages before becoming widely disseminated it probably comprised at least a number of

43 dialects. Archaeology seems to support this hypothesis, since before the Kurgan people appeared in the Balkans, Anatolia, central and northern Europe, there was much mixing of cultures north of the Black Sea. The impetus came from the lower Volga area and east of the Caspian Sea, and there must have been a kind of chain movement. The various Indo-European groups that formed in Europe after the expansion were at the start closely related to the mother culture of the Indo-Iranian bloc and to the ancestral culture of the Tokharians as shown by language relationships between Sanskrit and Greek, Armenian, Slavic, and Baltic on the one hand, and between Tokharian and Greek, Thracian, Illyrian, Slavic, and Baltic on the other. Due to a wide dispersal over the European continent and to a considerable mixing with the local European cultures, the Kurgan culture in Europe resolved into a number of separate groups. The nuclear units of later Slavs, Balts, Germanic peoples, and others appear in the first centuries of the second millennium B.C. The beginnings of many Indo-European groups in Europe were more or less simultaneous. Rather than attribute the curious similarity between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit to late migrations, we prefer to think that over 4,000 years ago the forefathers of the Balts and of the Old Indian peoples lived in the Eurasian steppes. The Balts preserved archaic forms, living a secluded life in the forests, removed from major routes of many subsequent migrations. How did the immediate forebears of the Balts reach the shores of the Baltic Sea and what are now Byelo-Russia and Greater Russia? The movement of the Kurgan people proceeded from the lower Dnieper basin in the direction of central Europe and up to the Baltic Sea. One branch settled along the eastern coasts of the Baltic, extending as far as south-western Finland in the north. Another group, bringing with them the same cultural elements, pushed from the middle Dnieper to

44 the upper Dnieper, the upper Volga, and the Oka river area in central Russia. Between Denmark and Lithuania, in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, the new settlers found long established Neolithic farmers. In the east Baltic area and forested central Russia, they found hunter-fishers, the so-called Comb-marked and Pitted-ware people. A process of hybridization and mutual influences over several hundreds of years can be traced archaeologically. The complex of finds which is known in archaeological terminology as the “Globular Amphora” culture is a hybrid one, composed of Funnel-Beaker and Kurgan elements, with a predominance of the latter, and in the course of several centuries the Funnel-Beaker culture disintegrated. From the early second millennium B.C., all over the former Funnel. Beaker territory and even in the areas north of it, in southern Sweden and southern Norway and in the whole eastern Baltic area, we find a rather uniform culture usually called the Corded-Ware or Battle-Axe culture. It is actually a variant of the Kurgan culture which developed local features by borrowing elements from the Funnel-Beaker population, and was influenced by the Bell-Beaker folk, who reached central Europe from southwest somewhat later than the Kurgan people. The pottery decorated by cord impressions, and stone battle-axes with perforations, were typical objects of this culture. Both are of eastern origin: decoration of pots by cord impression was frequent on pots of the Kurgan culture in the south Russian steppes; the stone battle-axes were an imitation of Caucasian copper axes. There is an astonishing similarity of cultural elements all over central Europe, and the southern and eastern Baltic coasts. This unmistakably shows the routes of the Kurgan dispersal over the Baltic shores. The Kurgan settlements and graves typified by corded pottery and battle axes in the lands originally occupied by hunter-fishers (the Comb-marked Pitted-Ware culture) contrast

45 markedly with those of the older settlers, and archaeologists in this case cannot be mistaken when they maintain that new people arrived and settled among the hunter-fishers. There is evidence that many sites of the food-producers and of the hunter-fishers were contemporaneous. The same picture of the spread of a new culture is seen in the upper Volga basin, where the Kurgan sites are classified as the Fat’janovo culture (named after the cemetery at Fat’janovo near Jaroslavl’). As in the East Baltic area, so in Greater Russia the newcomers spread along the rivers and established their small villages on high river banks, whereas the local hunter-fishers continued to live on lake shores or the lower banks of rivers. The Kurgan people occupied the central Russian upland area and did not spread into northern Russia. To the north they can be traced as far as the shores of Lake Ladoga and southern Finland, but they did not survive there for long. In these northern regions they either were assimilated by local people after several centuries, or what was left of them retreated southward. From the middle of the second millennium B.C. the approximate northern limit of the culture of Kurgan origin ran along northern Latvia to the upper Volga. The food-producers stayed in the more favorable climatic zone. This more or less coincides with the area of the deciduous forests, not differing very much from the original Indo-European homeland area which according to the linguistic evidence must have been in the deciduous tree zone, where oaks and apple trees grew, and where squirrels, hares, beavers, wolves, bears, and elks inhabited the forests. The oak and beaver zone extends in the north to the southern part of Scandinavia, and its boundary runs along the Gulf of Finland and south of Lakes Ladoga and Onega. The northern limit of apple trees runs somewhat south of the oak limit, approximately from the Gulf of Finland and northern Estonia to the upper Volga basin. That the ancient Balts lived in the area of deciduous

46 forests is shown by the common names for oak, apple, birch, linden, ash, maple, and elm in all Baltic languages. But they did not have common names for beech, yew, and ivy, which are confined to a more southern region of deciduous forests and are known in the Slavic languages. This is one of the linguistic indications that ancient Balts lived north of the ancient Slavs. All Baltic languages had common names for squirrel, marten, bison, aurochs, and elk. Physical type as shown by excavated skeletons also confirms the intrusion of new people into the East Baltic area and central Russia. Skulls from graves of the Kurgan (Corded, Boat-Axe, Fat’janovo) culture differ considerably in measurement from those in the graves or settlements of the hunter-fishers of the Comb-marked and Pitted-Ware culture. Those from the graves of the Kurgan culture were long and Europoid; those from the hunter-fisher sites were of medium length or short, with wide face, flat nose, and high eye-sockets. The latter traits are generally similar to those of the Finno-Ugrian peoples of western Siberia. Furthermore, the skulls from hunter-fisher sites in Estonia have shown a certain mixed type presumed to be derived from a combination of Europoid and Mongoloid elements. Their appearance is close to that of the present Manti, Chanti, Samoyeds, and Lapps, all of which belong to the Uralic race. The Europoid skulls from the graves of the newcomers in the East Baltic area almost exactly correspond to those known from northern Poland (former East Prussia), which again indicates diffusion along the coasts of the Baltic Sea.. The skulls from the Fat’janovo graves are also very similar, and about the same type is found in the Kurgan graves of the steppe area along the lower Dnieper. The mixture of the two racial types must have started immediately, since we know several Kurgan (so-called “Boat-Axe”) graves from Estonia in which skulls with Mongoloid traits appeared.1 Whether the Kurgan people who settled in the East Baltic

47 Fig. 4. Physical types in the East Baltic area and Russia at end of Neolithic-Chalcolithic period. 1-3, long, beaded, Europoid: in the Corded (Battle-Axe) graves (1), Comb-marked Pottery sites (a), Fat’janovo graves (3); 4-5, short-headed with Mongoloid traits: in Comb-marked Pottery sites (4), Corded (Battle Axe) graves (5), and east Russian-middle Ural sites (6) area and in forested Russia spoke a separate language from the other Indo-European groups, archaeological finds cannot tell us. Culturally they were very closely related to the other Kurgan people who occupied central and northwestern Europe. During several centuries after 2000 B.C. cultural differences developed among the Kurgan groups, making it possible to define the limits of their distribution. We do not know if the language differentiation followed similar paths, but there is no doubt that it must have been influenced by such factors as diffusion over a large territory and by close contact with the local, non-Indo-European population. Having used language sources and early historic records to ascertain where the Baltic tribes lived, we can now follow the

48 development of the earliest culture presumed to have belonged to the direct ancestors of the Baltic peoples. For several hundred years during post-expansion times, the Kurgan culture of central and northern Europe did not change much. It was still a culture on a Chalcolithic level; that is, it continued to be of a Stone Age character, despite the fact that copper artifacts such as spiral rings for women’s hair, daggers and awls were used occasionally. What we find in graves and villages is mostly pots, stone battle-axes, axe-heads, flint arrow-heads, knives and scrapers, bone tools, and perforated animal teeth for necklaces — an inventory which does not differ basically from that found in Kurgan graves of the south Russian steppes dating from around 2000 B.C. and earlier. The period before the true metal age in central Europe, that is to say, before c. 1800–1700 B.C., is one of adaptation to local conditions and, to a certain degree, of dividing up into local variants. The individual styles of corded pottery which developed are about the only criteria for defining the cultural limits between these variants. The differences, although slight, indicate the trend towards development of local tastes. Distinctively localized groups emerged, one north of the Carpathians, another in the heart of central Europe, and yet another in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, not to mention those farther south and west. East of the River Oder, in Poland, northwestern Ukraine (northern Volynia), East Prussia, and Lithuania, another unit was established which has its closest cultural relatives farther to the north, in Latvia, Estonia, and south-western Finland, and to the east, in Byelo-Russia and central Russia. The unit has every right to claim a proto-Baltic origin; it was a common root from which the Bronze Age cultures of western and eastern Balts developed. Many names have been applied to the specific Corded and Battle-Axe culture between the lower Oder and the upper Vistula rivers, and southern Finland. In the upper Vistula

49 basin it is called “Zlota”; in Volynia, “Volynian Corded”; in the coastal area of northern Poland (Pomerania), East Prussia, and Lithuania, “Rzucewo” (in Polish) or “Haffküstenkultur” (in German), the latter meaning “the culture which extends along the Baltic bays, the Frisches Haff and Courish Haff.” In the East Baltic area it simply retains the name Boat-Axe culture, since stone or “battle-axes” are reminiscent of boats, and in Greater Russia it is known as “Fat’janovo.”2 On comparing all the cultural elements, even the style of pottery decoration, of these various groups, one has to acknowledge the great similarity between them. Differences are not sufficient to warrant considering them as separate cultures. In such a large area one cannot expect identical pots or identical ornaments; but even so, I find in this whole area a remarkable similarity in tool and pottery making and in decoration motifs, as well as uniformity of graves and burial rites. It is a culture which, after all, does not differ basically from its mother Kurgan culture. The people kept cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and dogs. They used carefully prepared, nicely retouched flint sickles to reap their harvests. Wheat and millet grains, as well as stone hoes and saddle querns, point to agricultural occupations. Stone and flint axe-heads were used for forest clearing. Triangular flint arrowheads were basic weapons in hunting forest fauna — bears, wolves, fox, lynx, and hare; and bone harpoons and nets were used for river and sea fishing, particularly pike in the rivers and seals (Phoca groenlandica) in the Baltic Sea. There were various stone and bone instruments for wood and leather working. From their predecessors, the Funnel-Beaker people, these proto-Balts learned to fashion articles of amber and to mine the best varieties of European flint on the upper Vistula and along the upper Bug in Poland. They made cylindrical amber beads and amber buttons, round or quadrangular, having V perforations. They were capable of making a considerable variety of pots for culinary use and

50 Fig. 5. Corded pottery, the proto-Baltic variant, from the villages located along the Frisches Haff and the Courish Lagoon. c. 2000 B.C. Approx. 1:5 for ritual purposes: beakers, amphorae, globular and wide-mouthed pots, large storage vessels, some with two holes on the side for hanging purposes, boat-shaped dishes, and ladles. The clay molding was fairly thin, but not particularly well baked. Dishes and some culinary ware excepted, the upper part of pots was always decorated both with horizontal and wavy lines of cord impressions and incisions of diagonal lines forming herringbone, triangle, and rhomboid patterns. If one looks down at these pots from above, the patterns have the appearance of a radiating sun. The bases of the pots had concavities or simple solar motifs. Sometimes solar motifs are recognizable

51 on the sides of pots, incised as semicircles and surrounded with dots. [Plates 2 and 3] Such finds come from a number of graves and villages, the best examples having been brought to light during the excavations of 1923–36 in Pomerania and East Prussia, west and east of the lower Vistula. The village at Rzucewo, built on dunes along the Baltic sea coast,3 and the village at Succase (present Suchacz) on the Frisches Haff,4 are outstandingly preserved and well excavated. Both were inhabited for more than a Fig. 6. Reconstruction and plan of a house in the village Succase (Suchacz) on the Frisches Haff. c. 2000 B.C.

52 hundred years, as several habitation horizons show. Remains of small rectangular houses, 8–12 m. long and 4–5 m. wide, lay one above the other. This stratigraphy indicates that the people established themselves in permanent villages. These were built as a rule on hillocks or dunes, and when the ground was not level the houses were arranged terrace-wise. Such is the case at Rzucewo where houses lie on several terraces which were specially reinforced with stones and timber posts. Succase was a village of twenty houses, placed close to each other at random within a small area. Most of them were one-roomed, but they frequently had a small porch at one of the narrow ends. In the main room of each house was a round, hoof-shaped or rectangular hearth, fenced with stones. With a few exceptions, the door was in one of the narrow sides. The plan and reconstruction reproduced here show one of the Succase houses having a large room with a rectangular hearth and a porch. At the north-western end is an added wing, probably a stall for animals. Walls were built of vertical timber posts in two rows, and the space in between the posts was filled with daub. The pitched roof was supported by several thick posts placed along the axis of the house. Near the hearth were timber structures resembling beds or benches. Beneath the entrance of another of the houses was found a human jaw and a necklace of amber beads. This may have been the remains of a human sacrifice performed at the foundation ceremony of the house, and it suggests that amber may have had a special significance in these people’s religion. The deceased were buried in a contracted position lying on their side, men on the right, women on the left, in pits within hut-like structures which had floors paved with flat stories, and timber roofs. The barrow was fenced with timber posts as shown in the reconstruction of the stratified burial mound in Kaup in the district of Fischhausen (present Primorsk) in Samland, East Prussia. In this barrow, excavated in the nineteenth

53 century,5 four graves were found one above the other, the oldest belonging to the Chalcolithic period, and the others to the Bronze Age. Separate graves of cattle and dogs have been found in the cemeteries of the Zlota group in southern Poland, and in all other graves cattle and sheep or goat bones are frequent. Fig. 7. A stratified barrow (cross section and plans) from Kaup near Cranz, eastern end of the peninsula of Samland. About 14 m. in diameter. I, c. 2000 B.C.; II, c. seventeenth sixteenth centuries B.C. III, thirteenth–eleventh (?) centuries B.C. I and II are encircled by two rows of vertical timber posts with a ditch in between. III shows remains of a stone ring.