Clipboards in paradise: comparative philologists and Proto-Indo-European institutions

Abstract

The techniques used by comparative philologists to reconstruct proto-languages are not applicable to reconstructing culture, which may spread horizontally and involve convergence and coincidental parallel development. Examples discussed include the alleged ‘Proto-Indo-European’ royal horse-sacrifice ritual, coercive fasting, and institutionalised pederasty. Ignoring material from non-Indo European-speaking areas has tended to skew the evidence in favour of ‘Indo-European’ and ‘Celtic’ continuity (‘Celtic head hunting’, for instance). It may also result in contrived syntheses of quite disparate material. The example given is an attempted association, as ‘Celtic’, of monosandalism in late medieval Irish royal inaugurations with the ‘Three Golden Shoemakers’ in Middle Welsh literature and the pair of golden shoes excavated at Hochdorf, near Stuttgart.