Proto-Indo-European Culture

Reconstructing culture based on a reconstructed language.

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The pictures for this video were SO MUCH FUN to make, you guys! I used to make all my pictures with the trackpad on my laptop, but I got a tablet about a week ago and I used it to make the pictures for this video, which is great, because I'm basically drawing the lives of the Proto-Indo-Europeans! SO much fun. That picture with the two drunk ones is my masterpiece. I don't think I'm going to be able to best that one in my lifetime.

[thatdrummerperson]

"We know they were making something out of something." Lol this is a fascinating history of our ancestors.

[Warjacki]

The Polish word for "door" is "drzwi", which is plural, thus retaining the double-door concept from PIE.

[fummy]

On a related note, in Semitic languages like Hebrew, the word for man "Adam" comes from the word for Earth "Adamah"
You know, the whole making man from Earth scene in genesis.
Also, I heard that they have no word for "Sea" or "Ocean" implying they were landlocked.

[kyrakia]

Tldr: They had houses but no computers.

[Werrf]

My favourite deduction is that we know they had silver and gold, but that they didn't smelt it themselves because they had no word for 'lead' - lead is produced by the smelting of silver. it's truly amazing what we can know about a people long gone from the words they left us. That's one of the reasons I love English so much, and dislike attempts to spell it phonetically - the older spellings tell you not just the word, but the history of the word and something of its meaning.

[eruno_]

To fart loudly in Lithuanian - persti, To fart softly in Lithuanian - bezdėti

[unvergebeneid]

The Sky-Father should've enacted a law requiring all civilizations that are this influential and spread this widely to develop a writing system and keep a written history _before_ they scatter all over the map.

[shawntco]

The give-take and the Sky Father segments are really fascinating to me. :o

[nakenmil]

Hey, I study anthropology, so this was a fun view. I have a few thoughts:

That they viewed a wife as part of her husband's family doesn't necessarily mean that the she would move to her husbands family (a practice called "virilocality"), it could be that it was expected of them to move somewhere for themselves ("neolocality").

However, if we assume virilocality, that kind of explains the practice of bride price, imagine that you have a daughter who helps around the house and field, but one day she's off to the her husband's family. That can seriously impact your own family's labour power, so financial recompense for loss of her labour power (and conversely, their gain of it) is a fair move in their eyes.

Even more complexly, imagine that you have a son of your own that you want to get a wife. After all, the procreative power of women is the base on which survival of family is based on. So when you marry off your daughter, you gain the financial means of helping your son get married in turn. All in all, wealth circulates around as marriages occur, and no clan or community is left bereft of women and to die a slow death by attrition as no one gets any babies.

It's not very gender-equal, true, but PIE-speaking people probably had it rough in other matters as well.

[carj]

When you were talking about the concept of a "sky father" you mentioned the Sanskrit, the Greek and the Latin. But the Nordic pagans also had a simmer concept. They would sometimes refer to Odin as Alföðr (all father),   Aldaföðr (father of all), Herjaföðr (father of men) and many many others, I just thought that was interesting :)

[corvo_queso]

By the way, the Spanish word for "Computer" is "Computadora" but that's only in Latin America, the Spain Spanish for "Computer" is "Ordenador".

[Counterstream]

I remember when I learned about concept of Proto Indo-Europeans one day while randomly researching the origins of languages on Wikipedia. It utterly blew my mind. I don’t understand why it’s not taught more in school.

[烏梨師斂]

This is so fascinating. Languages basically tell the history of mankind. I actually found some Thai words that were borrowed from Sanskrit, which was related to Latin, and then English! Thats why I know some Thai words that sound the same in English! For example Tewi"godess" in Thai, Devi "sanskrit for god", then latin, then english Devine!!!!

[WillyTheComposerOfficial]

I gotta say, those PIE people knew how to describe humans. The only two aspects of life that every single human has had in common are our earthliness and our mortality.

[Crick]

0:58
I'm now imagining a linguists and archeologists knifing each other about if the origin of PIE.
I am amused.

[morgankitchen]

6:24 continuing the trend, in Irish "sky god" is "día spéir"

[BharathKumarIyer]

I'm from South India, and I feel like a lot of what you describe as Proto-Indo-European language and culture, is still very much alive today in large parts of the sub-continent. And the language and it's sounds/pronunciations are part of most languages in India to this day. India is a living record of these peoples' mentalities.

[shamanthjilla]

You mention the difference+similarity between Give and Take.One more interesting example is 'Ahura' in Zoroastrian means GOD where as 'Asura' in Sanskrit means Demon.

[stopfidgetting]

I showed this video to my cousin and he had a problem with your map at the beginning. He said it shouldn't include all of India because that's Dravidian.

[wires-slgs]

2:33 am I the only one that spotted what he actually used for a horse?