20 Facts About Proto-Indo-European mythology

Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language.

Proto-Indo-European mythology pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates – linguistic siblings from a common origin –, and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as *Dyews Ph2ter, the daylight-sky god; his consort *D?eg?om, the earth mother; his daughter *H2ewsos, the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and *Seh2ul, a solar goddess.

Nonetheless, scholars of comparative mythology have attempted to reconstruct aspects of Proto-Indo-European mythology based on the existence of linguistic and thematic similarities among the deities, religious practices, and myths of various Indo-European peoples.

Ritual School, which first became prominent in the late nineteenth century, holds that Proto-Indo-European mythology myths are best understood as stories invented to explain various rituals and religious practices.

Structuralist School argues that Proto-Indo-European mythology was largely centered around the concept of dualistic opposition.

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Baltic Proto-Indo-European mythology has received a great deal of scholarly attention, as it is linguistically the most conservative and archaic of all surviving branches, but has so far remained frustrating to researchers because the sources are so comparatively late.

Consequently, Greek Proto-Indo-European mythology received minimal scholarly attention until the first decade of the 21st century.

Proto-Indo-European mythology eventually gives the recovered cattle back to a priest for it to be properly sacrificed.

Archaic Proto-Indo-European mythology language had a two-gender system which originally distinguished words between animate and inanimate, a system used to separate a common term from its deified synonym.

Diversely personified, they were frequently seen as fulfilling multiple functions, while Proto-Indo-European mythology goddesses shared a lack of personification and narrow functionalities as a general characteristic.

Proto-Indo-European mythology was however likely not their ruler, or the holder of the supreme power like Zeus and Jupiter.

Proto-Indo-European mythology's is associated with fertility and growth, but with death as the final dwelling of the deceased.

Proto-Indo-European mythology's was likely the consort of the sky father, *Dyews Ph2ter.

Proto-Indo-European mythology is often portrayed in connection with stone and mountains, probably because the mountainous forests were his realm.

Proto-Indo-European mythology embodied the flames of the sun and the lightning, as well as the forest fire, the domestic hearth fire and the sacrificial altar, linking heaven and earth in a ritual dimension.

Proto-Indo-European mythology was closely affiliated with goats or bucks: Pan has goat's legs while goats are said to pull the car of Pushan .

The earliest attested set of fate goddesses are the Gulses in Hittite Proto-Indo-European mythology, who were said to preside over the individual destinies of human beings.

Proto-Indo-European mythology provided wives to the Cruithnig, a reflex of the marital functions of *h2eryo-men.

Proto-Indo-European mythology religion was centered on sacrificial rites of cattle and horses, probably administered by a class of priests or shamans.

The Khvalynsk culture, associated with the archaic Proto-Indo-European mythology language, had already shown archeological evidence for the sacrifice of domesticated animals.