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A common origin has been ascribed to Indo-European humanity, dating back to its sojourn in the southern parts of the vast land known since medieval times as Russia, the name of which is derived from Rus’ in Old East Slavic. More precisely, this people lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, adjacent to the northern shores of the Black and Caspian Seas. This location of the Urheimat, or ancestral homeland, of the prehistoric Indo-Europeans has been demonstrated on the grounds of historical linguistics, archaeology, quantitative analysis, and archaeogenetics. Other possible locations of the Indo-European Urheimat advanced by scholars include Central or Northern Europe, Northern Mesopotamia, and even the Arctic regions. However, none of these are as convincing as the Southern Russian hypothesis.1

What kind of culture did these original Indo-Europeans possess? A leading scholar in this area, the archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, has enumerated some of the features of their Kurgan culture, named after its burial mounds (singular, kurgan in Russian). These features include a patriarchal society, a class system, the existence of small tribal units ruled by powerful chieftains, a predominantly pastoral economy including horse breeding and plant cultivation, small villages and massive hillforts, and religious elements including a Sky/Sun god and a Thunder god.2 Evidently, the early Indo-Europeans valued patriarchy, social differentiation, leadership, agriculture, communal defense, and nature-based religion.

Migrations and Languages

From their ancestral homeland on the steppe the Indo-Europeans ventured forth in successive waves, first westwards into Europe from around 3000 B.C. and then southwards into the Near East and the Indian subcontinent from around 2000 B.C. Through these migrations new cultures arose, such as the Corded Ware culture in Northern Europe and the Vedic culture in the Indian subcontinent. The western branch of the Indo-Europeans developed into the Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Italic, and Hellenic peoples, while the eastern branch unfolded as the Indo-Aryans of Iran and India. An offshoot of the western branch migrated south between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, eventually settling in Asia Minor where they became known as the Hittites.3

Due to these extensive migrations, the Proto-Indo-European language (abbreviated as PIE) of the Kurgan culture developed into the numerous Indo-European languages spoken or studied today, of which Sanskrit, Classical Greek, and Latin are the most venerable ones. That the European languages only developed after the arrival of the Indo-Europeans is suggested by the fact that Europe is hydronymously uniform – that is to say, the names of watercourses from the Baltic to Spain occur in an identical form. To this observation, Jean Haudry adds that differentiation into Proto-Baltic, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Celtic only occurred later, so that the languages diverge at the same time as the different peoples come into existence. Arguing along similar lines, Francis Parker Yockey remarks that language is no barrier to the formation of a people. This is suggested by the fact that all existing Western languages appeared after the formation of their respective peoples.4

By juxtaposing the Kurgan hypothesis in archaeology with the Three-Stage theory in linguistics, the Spanish scholars Carlos Quiles and Fernando López-Menchero found that the deployment of the Indo-Europeans and their languages occurred in the following stages:

i. Between around 3500 and 3000 B.C. the Late Indo-European language (LIE) became differentiated into at least two dialects, namely southern (or Graeco-Aryan) and northern.

ii. Between around 3000 and 2500 B.C. these dialectical communities began to migrate away from their Urheimat, so that the resultant Corded Ware culture eventually extended from the Volga to the Rhine.

iii. Then, between around 2500 and 2000 B.C., when the Bronze Age reached Central Europe, the southern LIE dialect had differentiated into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian.

iv. The invention of the chariot enabled the rapid spread of the Indo-Iranians over much of Central Asia, Northern India, and Iran during the next stage, dated between around 2000 and 1500 B.C. This stage also saw the break-up of Indo-Iranian into Indo-Aryan and Iranian, the differentiation of European proto-dialects from each other, and languages such as Hittite, Mitanni, and Mycenaean Greek being spoken or written down.

v. By between around 1500 and 1000 B.C., the European proto-dialects had evolved into Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Baltic, and Slavic, while Indo-Aryan became expressed in its sacred language Sanskrit, notably in the composition of the Rig-Veda.

vi. Finally, with Northern Europe entering the Iron Age between around 1000 and 500 B.C., the Greek and Old Italic alphabets appear in the south of the continent, and the Classical civilization flowers among the Hellenic peoples.5

Ethnicity

At this point we may well pause to consider if there is, or was, such an entity as an Indo-European race.6 As remarked by Jean Haudry, “For more than a century, linguists have never tired of repeating that ‘Indo-European’ implies simply a linguistic, and not a racial homogeneity.” However, despite this long-standing prejudice it is legitimate to speak of an Indo-European physical type, as is confirmed by the evidence from two sources: (a) anthropological study of human skeletal remains, and (b) ancient texts and representations. Concerning the former category, skeletal remains found in the Kurgan sites display a predominance of tall, long-headed types with a straight aquiline nose, and a narrow face with much finer features than that of the massive Cro-Magnon skulls found in the Dnieper basin.7

Haudry also submits the following examples of texts and representations:

i. The Roman historian Tacitus (writing around A.D. 98) described the Germans as ‘a separate nation, pure of all admixture’; they had ‘wild blue eyes, bright blond hair, [and] large bodies’ (Germania, 4); however, as Haudry notes, this depiction has been somewhat modified by modern anthropology;

ii. In Vedic India, we find the blond (Sanskrit, hari) god Indra granting the Aryan warriors victory over their dark-skinned adversaries, the dasa; here whiteness of skin reflects the whiteness of the day-sky, while black is the color of the night-sky and of Hell;

iii. The Hellenic poets, from Homer to Euripides, depict heroes who are blond and tall, while all statuary from Minoan to Hellenistic times represents gods and goddesses with golden hair and of tall stature; this physical type was idealized because it was that of the upper classes of the population, as is confirmed by the portraits of Hellenic nobles;

iv. When Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590–604) received a number of Anglian prisoners, he was struck by their fair complexions and beautiful hair, which led him to remark that the name of their nation is appropriate for their angelic appearance.8

Francis Parker Yockey has remarked that the peoples which appeared in Europe under various names between around 500 B.C. and A.D. 1000 were all of similar stock, of which the physical characteristics correspond with the examples mentioned above. (It should be noted that Yockey rejected any rigid classification of races, arguing instead that race is something fluid due to the interaction between a population and the soil on which it lives; this mutability applies to humans, animals, and plants). These Indo-European peoples include the Celts, Franks, Angles, Goths, Saxons, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Belgae, Norsemen, Vikings, Danes, Varangians, Germani, Alemani, and Teutones. They eventually formed the ruling strata in the countries now known as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and England (with Scandinavia added to this list elsewhere in the same work), from which the Western Culture arose around A.D. 1000.9

Religion and Spiritual Philosophy

Having established this anthropological reality, let us consider the religion of these people. The evidence shows that the Sun, together with the Day-sky, was the highest god of Indo-European religion in its oldest form.10 It has further been suggested that at an early stage, possibly before their migrations into Europe, the western branch of the Indo-Europeans became divided into northern and southern groups, called the Proto-Nordics and Proto-Mediterraneans, respectively. The religious beliefs of both groups were apparently based on the worship of a benign Father-god, with whom it was possible to be reunited in the afterlife. This paternal God was evidently conceived in two different though related aspects: while the Proto-Mediterraneans worshipped a Sun-god whose symbol was the Sun, the Proto-Nordics worshipped a Sky-god whose symbol was the thunderbolt. Regarding the former, it should be noted that it was probably not the physical Sun that was worshipped, but rather the Spirit that created the Sun with its heat and light, and of which the Sun was the physical symbol.11

Among the ancient Akkadians and Babylonians this Sun-god was called Bel, the memory of which has been preserved among some of the Celtic peoples in the annual fire-festival known as Beltane. This festival was mostly held on the first day of May, and used to be widely observed across Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Also found among the Celts was a Druidic prayer in which God was entreated to grant his supplicants the love of the right, the love of all things, and the love of God.12 This Indo-European notion of a benign, paternal Divinity is also encountered in a prayer ascribed by Plato to Socrates: “King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us; what is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it” (Second Alcibiades, 143a). Such a prayer is evidence of a lofty spirituality indeed.

As the Indo-European cultures developed in their respective abodes, it was only a matter of time before intellectual reflection, i.e., philosophizing, began walking hand in hand with religious beliefs and practices. The spiritual-intellectual tradition (Sanskrit, sanatana dharma; Greek and Latin, sophia perennis, ‘eternal wisdom’) of the Indo-Europeans came to be expressed above all in classical Indian and Hellenic philosophy, the combination of which remains unsurpassed in the profundity of its thought and the brilliance of its exposition. However, this does not imply that metaphysical thought has been limited to the Indo-European worlds, since major contributions in this regard also came from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. The eminent Traditionalist author Frithjof Schuon affirmed that this perennial wisdom is of Aryan (i.e., Indo-European) origin and is typologically close to the Celtic, Germanic, Iranian, and Brahmanic spiritual philosophies.13

Contrary to the prevailing rationalistic paradigm in Western academic circles, it must be emphasised that Indo-Hellenic thought is primarily rooted in spiritual experience. We could say that the mystical vision (Greek, theōria) of the Reality that surpasses and underlies the world of empirical phenomena preceded the philosophising of the Vedantic, Presocratic, and Platonic thinkers. This mystical vision of the One and all found its earliest literary expression in the Upanishads and the works of early Hellenic thinkers such as Heraclitus and Parmenides. It is therefore not surprising that the Hellenic metaphysical tradition of Orphism, Pythagoras, and Plato is akin to the mysticism of the Upanishads. In both traditions one encounters a shift of emphasis from the physical to the spiritual and from the temporal to the eternal. The salient dictum of this Indo-Hellenic mystical vision is the recognition that ultimate Reality (variously called Brahman, God, or the One) lies beyond sense perception.14 In other words, reality is not limited to the physical world, contrary to the claims by those who reject transcendent reality, such as atheists and materialists.

Socio-political Organization

Having touched upon aspects of Indo-European religion and philosophy, let us briefly look at some socio-political aspects of these trailblazing people. In his informative book The Indo-Europeans, the French linguist Jean Haudry writes that the Indo-European people is identified by its name, as is the case with the individual. He adds, “We might even say that it [the people] identifies with its name, as is demonstrated by the formulaic parallelism of Latin nomen Latinum, ‘the Latin people’ and Vedic aryam nama, ‘the Aryan people’ and Indo-Iranian aryaman.”15

Furthermore, the Indo-European people is not an undifferentiated mass of individuals, but a structured community articulated by functions. Accordingly, Aryan society was divided into three function-classes in both India and Iran, each class associated with a symbolic color (it is relevant to note that the Sanskrit word Varna means type, order, color or class). In India, a fourth class came to be added to accommodate the manual laborers (drawn from the native Dravidians). Arranged from highest to lowest, the Indo-Aryan function-classes and their symbolic colors were the following (with names in Sanskrit): Brahmins, i.e., priests (white); Kshatriyas, i.e., warriors and rulers (red); Vaishyas, i.e., artisans, merchants, and farmers (yellow); and Shudras, i.e., peasants and other laborers (black).16

The Traditionalist author Frithjof Schuon has remarked that these castes are related to fundamental tendencies of human nature, which are different ways of envisaging an empirical reality. Thus, for the Brahmin, it is the changeless and transcendent which is real; for the Kshatriya, it is action which is real; for the Vaishya, it is material values such as security and prosperity which are real; and for the Shudra, it is bodily things such as eating and drinking which are real. Interestingly, even the outcast, or Chandala, is related to a basic human tendency, namely an inclination to transgression due to a chaotic character. Psychologically speaking, a natural caste is a world, and people live in different worlds according to the reality on which they are centred. On the relation between caste and race, Schuon writes that race is a form [or formal reality] while caste is a spirit [or spiritual reality]. Therefore, caste takes precedence over race because spirit has priority over form.17

It has been pointed out by Hans Günther that the caste system in India corresponded to the universal order of life, as conceived by the Indo-Europeans. In this understanding, the whole cosmos, including divine rule and responsible human life, comprises a divine order. The Indians called it rita, of which the gods Mitra and Varuna (the latter called Ouranos, meaning Heaven, by the Hellenes) are the guardians. The meaning of rita in Sanskrit is order, rule, or truth. Rita is thus the principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. Such a cosmic, ordering principle is also recognized in Hellenic philosophy (where it is called the Logos) and Chinese philosophy (where it is called the Tao). As Günther remarks about the Indian system, “The caste law was regarded as corresponding to the law of world order (Sanskrit, dharma), or the ius divinum as the Romans described it. Participation in the superior spiritual world of the Vedas, Brahmanas, and Upanishads originally determined the degree of caste. The higher the caste, the stricter was the sense of duty to lead a life corresponding to the world order.”18

In a later chapter we will see how Plato appropriated this Indo-European social organization in his political philosophy. Now, when considering traditional Indo-European thought, we could say that Indian and Hellenic philosophy represent its Eastern and Western branches, respectively. Henceforth, we will focus on various themes encountered in Hellenic philosophy and their continuation (in a qualified manner) in traditional Christian theology, both Greek and Latin, as well as in socio-political thought, including forms of government.

1. Quiles and López-Menchero, Grammar, 58–66; Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 104–111.

2. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 105–106.

3. Wikipedia: Indo-European migrations; Campbell, Race and Religion, 9; King, Origins, 28–33.

4. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 107; Yockey, Imperium, 323.

5. Quiles & López-Menchero, Grammar, 67, 75.

6. In the scientific sense, as used here, ‘race’ means a subspecies within a given species, since most animal and plant species consist of subspecies, or races. Consequently, there is no such entity as ‘the human race,’ as one often hears in political propaganda and media disinformation. Instead, the human species (Homo sapiens) consists of several races, or subspecies.

7. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 112–113.

8. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 112–113.

9. Yockey, Imperium, 276, 282, 289.

10. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 63, 66.

11. Campbell, Race and Religion, 8, 13–14.

12. Wikipedia: Beltane; Campbell, Race and Religion, 8–10.

13. Schuon, Ancient Worlds, 64.

14. Günther, Religious attitudes, 51; Marlow, “Hinduism and Buddhism,” 39.

15. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 38.

16. Haudry, Indo-Europeans, 38–39; Wikipedia: Caste system in India.

17. Schuon, Castes, 11–14, 33, 36.

18. Wikipedia: Ṛita; Günther, Religious attitudes, 33–34.