According to Penka, the first to propose a Nordic Urheimat, the primitive Indo-European people had to be sedentary farmers native of the north, formed without external interference since the
Paleolithic. The presence of a term to indicate
copper (*
ayes) in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European vocabulary would restrict the homeland (Urheimat) in a culture of the late
Neolithic or the
Chalcolithic. Terms in favor of a northern location would be, among others, the ones to indicate the
beech (
bhāghos) and the sea (*
mori). Another issue was the
Salmon problem. Others, such as Kossinna, identified specifically the Chalcolithic
Corded Ware culture (c. 2900–2300 BC, but at the time known as Battle-Axe culture or, in German,
Streitaxtkultur, and dated to c. 2000 BC) with the Proto-Indo-Europeans. For Boettcher, the very first period of formation of the future proto-Indo-European peoples began in the late Paleolithic, when global warming, which followed the
Würm glaciation, allowed to the
hunter-gatherers settled in the glacial shelters to repopulate northern Europe, now free of ice. They gave rise to archaeological manifestations such as the
Hamburg culture and the
Federmesser culture. In these areas of the north are common boreal phenomena apparently described in some Indo-European myths. These groups of hunters and fishermen are the basis of the next
Maglemosian culture (9000–6500 BC approximately). The rising of the sea level in northern Europe caused the flooding of part of the territories occupied by Maglemosians (
Doggerland) and drove them south. The heirs of this culture developed the cultures of
Ertebølle and Ellerbek. Boettcher compares their activities with those of the
Vikings of the following millenniums. They are described as a developing warrior society, which deals with trade and piracy, going up the rivers to raid the lands occupied by the
Danubian farmers of the southern plains, subduing them and become their leaders. The fusion of these two populations gave rise to the so-called
Funnelbeaker culture (4200–2600 BC), extended from the Netherlands to north-western
Ukraine, which would be the original habitat of the first Indo-Europeans. For
Jean Haudry, "The Neolithic Funnelbecker culture agrees well with the traditional image of the Indo-European peoples confirmed by linguistic paleontology: in this culture there are simultaneously breeding and plant cultivation, the horse, the
wagon and the
battle axe, fortifications and signs of a hierarchically organized society". The first Indo-European culture would be then a synthesis of the Ertebølle culture and the final stages of the
Linear Pottery culture. This prehistoric fusion of two different populations would explain some common myths to the
Indo-European mythology that were studied by
Georges Dumézil, such as the
Rape of the Sabines in Rome and the war between the
Æsir and
Vanir of
Norse mythology, which would show the union between warrior groups and groups of producers/farmers. Later cultures, such as the
Globular Amphora culture and the
Corded Ware culture, would represent the expansion of the Indo-Europeans (or
Indogermanen according to this hypothesis) from their original locations in the
North European Plain toward Russia (
Middle Dnieper culture,
Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture) and Asia (
Koban culture). Similar movements of
Nordic populations would have radiated from Northern Europe to Western and Southern Europe, including
Anatolia (
Troy),) between the
Bronze Age and the
Iron Age. ==See also==