page_title: Indo-European migrations
section_title: Phases of Proto-Indo-European
hierarchical_section_title: Indo-European migrations / Fundamentals / Linguistics: relations between languages / Development of the Indo-European languages / Phases of Proto-Indo-European
context_page_description: The Indo-European migrations were the migrations of Proto-Indo-European language speakers, as proposed by contemporary scholarship, and the subsequent migrations of people speaking further developed Indo-European languages, which explains why the Indo-European languages are spoken in a large area from India and Iran to Europe.
  While there can be no direct evidence of prehistoric languages, both the existence of Proto-Indo-European and the dispersal of its daughter dialects through wide-ranging migrations are inferred through a synthesis of data from linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics. Comparative linguistics describes the similarities between various languages and the linguistic laws at play in the changes in those languages. Archaeological data traces the spread of cultures presumed to be created by speakers of Proto-Indo-European in several stages: from the hypothesized locations of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, into their later locations Western Europe, Central, South and Eastern Asia by migrations and by language shift through élite-recruitment as described by anthropological research.
context_section_description: According to Anthony, the following terminology may be used:
  Archaic PIE for "the last common ancestor of the Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE branches";
  Early, core, or Post-Anatolian, PIE for "the last common ancestor of the non-Anatolian PIE languages, including Tocharian";
  Late PIE for "the common ancestor of all other IE branches".
  The Anatolian languages are the first Indo-European language family to have split off from the main group. Due to the archaic elements preserved in the now extinct Anatolian languages, they may be a "cousin" of Proto-Indo-European, instead of a "daughter", but Anatolian is generally regarded as an early offshoot of the Indo-European language group.
caption: 2500 BCE
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