The beech argument (german: Das Buchenargument) is a now mostly outdated argument in
Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
that is in favour of placing the
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
urheimat
In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...
in an area west of a line connecting
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad ( ; rus, Калининград, p=kəlʲɪnʲɪnˈɡrat, links=y), until 1946 known as Königsberg (; rus, Кёнигсберг, Kyonigsberg, ˈkʲɵnʲɪɡzbɛrk; rus, Короле́вец, Korolevets), is the largest city and ...
and the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
, based on the current distribution of
beech trees
Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engl ...
. The argument, as summarised by Friedrich and Mallory goes that the Indo-European term *bʰāg(ó) most probably refers to the beech tree. Hence the presence of descendants of the term *bʰāg(ó) in Italic, Germanic, Albanian, Greek and (Indo-)Iranian, and potentially Celtic, Slavic, and Baltic, indicates that this word belonged to the most widely-spoken Indo-European language. And thirdly that since the beech tree distribution was limited historically to the regions west of the
Eurasian Steppe, this is where this language was spoken.
However much like the
salmon problem, this is now an outdated argument, based on many factors including that the historical distribution of the beech trees was historically different from that of today, with certain species potentially extending to the
Don River
The Don ( rus, Дон, p=don) is the fifth-longest river in Europe. Flowing from Central Russia to the Sea of Azov in Southern Russia, it is one of Russia's largest rivers and played an important role for traders from the Byzantine Empire.
Its ...
or to the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...
, due to the beech being climatically sensitive, and that with the exception of the
Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
''buz'', these words for beech are only found in Western Indo-European languages.
See also
*
Comparative method (linguistics)
*
North European hypothesis
The North European hypothesis was a linguistic and archaeological theory that tried to explain the spread of the Indo-European languages in Eurasia from an original homeland (Urheimat) located in southern Scandinavia or in the North German Plain. ...
*
Salmon problem
References
Fagus
History of the Black Sea
Indo-European linguistics
Indo-European studies
Kaliningrad
Origin hypotheses of ethnic groups
Trees in culture
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