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TFNA 39 minutes ago

Reconstructing a PIE religion (as opposed to a few rather vague lexemes like "sky god") is regarded as less tenable today than in the past. The well-described features of Indo-Iranian religion are largely innovations and not found among speakers of IE branches that split off before. Some of Greek and Roman religion is actually the result of areal contact, not inheritance from earlier IE times.

You might want to read a scholarly introduction to the field (not a pop-sci one that is likely to be unreliable by definition) from recent years.

OutOfHere 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

Each descendant subregion of PIE of course imposed its own religious beliefs and local gods. There is no surprise there. The key thread of derivative localized polytheism, often rooted in the same nature-based phenomenon, however persisted across the regions.

Refer to the sibling comment by drivers99. Sky god is not a vague lexeme; it is a critical rooting evidence. You're fooling no one by attempting to cover it up. A shallow dismissal of valid evidence is an attribute of a conman.

The Indo-Iranian branch of religion connects directly to the PIE religion via the commonality in their religious poetry, rituals, myths, rituals, and words. The Greek branch connects similarly.

TFNA 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

I am an actual Indo-Europeanist and currently employed in the field. Please stop trying to oversell this. The sibling comment is referring to the aforementioned vague lexemes, too vague for much reconstruction of anything meriting being called a common IE religion. Earlier work by scholars like Dumézil, which are common to pop-sci shit and still hang on here and there on Wikipedia, are generally discussed within the field now as cautionary tales.

No one has any problem with reconstructing some branch-level stuff like Italic or Indo-Iranian. But projecting it back to even Nuclear/Core Indo-European, let alone Proto-Indo-European, is too fraught with problems.

muststopmyths 10 minutes ago | parent [-]

would you recommend a more recent book comparable to "Empires of the Word" by Nicholas Ostler on the subject of languages ? I am really enjoying the book, but it's over 20 years old at this point. I wonder how much of the information is out of date now.