The Indo-European family tree

Within the framework of the research project The Homeland: In the footprints of the early Indo-Europeans, financed by the Carlsberg Foundation, we welcome you to an international workshop presenting speakers from Denmark (Copenhagen), USA (UPenn), Germany (Jena) and the Netherlands (Leiden and Utrecht).

The topic of the workshop is the Indo-European family tree. Did all the Indo-European branches depart from each other at one time in a “big-bang” scenario? Or did Anatolian, and then possibly Tocharian, branch off first, and then the remaining branches followed in a “big- bang” scenario? Or did the branches branch off from the main stem one at a time, or in groups comprising two or more branches such as Italo-Celtic and Graeco-Armenian? If the branching-off was mainly binary, in which order did the branches or groups of branches split off from the main stem?

Both general methodological problems and more specific problems related to the individual branches will be discussed in the context of the state of the art, and new perspectives will be outlined.

Each presentation is expected to last approximately half an hour, followed by half an hour of discussion.