PDF In Search of the IndoEuropeans J P Mallory 9780500276167 Books

Product details Paperback 288 pages Publisher Thames & Hudson; Reprint edition (April 1, 1991) Language English ISBN-10 0500276161

In Search of the IndoEuropeans J P Mallory 9780500276167 Books Reviews

• J.P. Mallory is an Irish-American archaeologist and expert on Indo-European studies. He approaches his subject like a detective, examining the clues to the origins of the Indo-Europeans with precision and dedication. Yet his writing style is straightforward and easy to read. I enjoy reading classic British murder mysteries, and I found this book not unlike the best of those. Dr. Mallory presents the facts in the case and all the arguments, disects the red herrings and brings the case to its inevitable conclusion.
  
  If you think this makes the book sound trivial and lacking in scholarship, you'd be wrong. Judging from the number of citations this book has received in other scholarly works, Dr. Mallory is very well respected in his field. For me, the interest in reading this book lay in understanding the history and prehistory of Europe and Asia in preparation for writing on a matter that had its origins in the Eurasian Steppe. I came away from reading /In Search of the Indo-Europeans/ feeling that of all the books I have read on the subject, this one finally afforded me a grasp on the situation.
• This is an excellent and readable treatment of the Indo-Europeans which favors the Russian and Caspian Steppes theory of Indo-European origins. The book seems to largely dispense with politically correct and Marxist Archeology.
• This book debuted in the 1980's and was probably reasonably current at the time. It explores the general questions relating to the question of who the speakers of Proto-Indo-European were, and when and where they lived. It is a generally interesting and useful book for people who are not well versed on the subject (although Mallory takes a general knowledge of phonemes for granted).
  
  This work is a classic for which there is no simple replacement today. However, it was written over 20 years ago, and the fields involved have advanced considerably in that time. New, and better, models of how the Indo-European languages are related to eachother have been developed, and better approaches to the question of archaeological confirmation of specific Indo-European home lands have also been found. Hence while I would highly recommend the world, I must point out that it is still best suited to introducing someone to the field which would then be followed up with later study.
• Linguists define "Indo-European" as a language entity or unity from which all Indo-european languages derived. By analyzing linguistic patterns of change, scholars can "reconstruct" the language and situate it in a time period when it was a unified language. The task is then to provide this abstract language entity with a living group of people and a homeland.
  
  The first chapters and the last ones, where the author presents the problem, geographically locates where Indo-Europeans are to be found and where he draws some conclusions, are really good. He lost me a bit in the middle, where the book acquires a "scholarly" taste (by this I do not mean difficult to understand); I mean that the author does not get carried away by his own hypothesis. He explains all the existing ones and then proceeds to present the evidence for and against each, mainly from the linguistic perspective, but also considering evidence from other areas (comparative philology, archeology, comparative mythology, etc.). For each hypothesis, evidence was found that contradicted it and I felt that no matter how many pages I read, we were as far from the "promised homeland" as in the beginning. In the end, no hypothesis is conclusive, but the one in which the contradictions could be "bridged" more easily is pesented as the most probable one. In his conclusion, the author himself kind of apologizes for having lead the reader through a lot of "cul de sacs". I myself prefer when an author writes more like fiction telling a clear and unified story at the expense of maybe drawing conlusions a bit to far. Then you can still read his opponent's book to have a more complete picture and enjoy both.
  
  All in all, I learnt a lot from this book, for example, how do you analyze nomadic groups from an archeaological perspective if they left no "settlements"? Well, the answer is that they might have left some cemeteries or lonely graves and luckily some "gifts" for the deceased, as well as some ritual places or camps. The maps in the book are very useful.