Indo-European people

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indo-Europeans are speakers of Indo-European languages.

The term may refer to:

  • speakers of the not known but hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language
  • Bronze Age (third to second millennia BC) speakers of Indo-European languages that had not yet split into language families we know today, like Centum and Satem dialects (speakers of languages predating Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Greek, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Balto-Slavic etc.)

Speakers of Indo-European languages in historical times and nowadays usually are not called Indo-Europeans but with the name of their language family like: Anatolians, Tocharians, Aryans (Iranians, Indo-Aryans), Greeks, Celts, Italic peoples, Germanic peoples, Baltic peoples, Slavic peoples, Armenians, Albanians (or subdivisions of these groups).

Note that in any case the term "Indo-European" means matters of language, which do not necessarily correlate with divisions of ethnicity or even of specific culture.