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2.1 Stages of Expansion
Gimbutas identifies four successive stages of the Kurgan culture and three successive "waves" of expansion.
- Wave 1, predating Kurgan I, expansion from the lower Volga to the Dnieper, leading to coexistence of Kurgan I and the Cucuteni culture. Repercussions of the migrations extend as far as the Balkans and along the Danube to the Vinca and Lengyel cultures in Hungary.
- Wave 2, mid 4th millennium BC, orginating in the Maikop culture and resulting in advances of "kurganized" hybrid cultures into northern Europe around 3000 BC. In the view of Gimbutas, this would correspond to the first intrusion of Indo-European languages into western and northern Europe.
- Wave 3, 3000– 2800 BC, expansion of the Yamna culture beyond the steppes, with the appearance of the characteristic pit graves as far as the areas of modern Romania, Bulgaria and eastern Hungary.
2.2 Secondary Urheimat
The "kurganized" globular amphora culture in Europe is proposed as a "secondary Urheimat", separating into the bell beaker and corded ware cultures around 2300 BC and ultimately resulting in the European branches of Italic, Celtic and Germanic languages, and other, partly extinct, language groups of the Balkans and central Europe, possibly including the proto- Mycenaean invasion of Greece.
2.3 Interpretation
Gimbutas viewed the expansions of the Kurgan culture as a series of essentially hostile, military invasions where a new warrior culture imposed itself on the peaceful, matriarchal cultures of " Old Europe", replacing it with a patriarchal warrior society, a process visible in the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains:
- The Process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of imposing a new administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups.
In her later life, Gimbutas increasingly emphasized the violent nature of this transition from the mediterranean cult of the Mother Goddess to a patriarchal society and the worship of the warlike Thunderer ( Zeus, Dyaus), to a point of essentially formulating feminist archaeology. Many scholars who accept the general scenario of Indo-European migrations proposed, maintain that the transition may well have been much more peaceful and gradual than suggested by Gimbutas. The migrations were certainly not a sudden, concerted military operation, but the expansion of disconnected tribes and cultures, spanning many generations. But to what degree the indigenous cultures were peacefully amalgamated or violently displaced remains a matter of controversy among supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis.
James Mallory advocates the Kurgan hypothesis as the de-facto standard theory of Indo-European origins, but he recognizes valid criticism of Gimbutas' radical scenario of military invasion: almost all the arguments for invasion and cultural transformation are far better explained without reference to Kurgan expansion.
The Kurgan scenario is widely accepted as the most likely answer to the question of Indo-European origins, but its status remains speculative. The main alternative suggestion is the theory of Colin Renfrew, postulating an Anatolian Urheimat, and the spread of the Indo-European languages as a result of the spread of agriculture. This view implies a significantly higher age of the Proto-Indo-European language (ca. 10.000 years as opposed to ca. 6.000 years), and among linguists finds rather less support than the Kurgan theory, not only on grounds of glottochronology, but also because the geographical distribution of the Indo-European branches are difficult to correlate with the advance of agriculture.
