The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia. Attested since the Bronze Age, in the form of Mycenaean Greek and Anatolian languages, the Indo-European family is family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language and Nuristani The Nuristani languages are a third separate group of the Indo-Iranian language family, and they are spoken primarily in eastern Afghanistan. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages[1]. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language Proto-Indo-Iranian, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are usually connected with the early Andronovo archaeological horizon, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians Indo-Iranian people consist of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani people, that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, are usually associated with the late 3rd millennium BC Sintashta-Petrovka The Andronovo culture, or Sintashta-Petrovka culture is a collection of similar local Bronze Age cultures that flourished ca. 2300–1000 BCE in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe. It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The name derives from the village of Andronovo , where in 1914, several culture of Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern Pakistan in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. Various definitions of its exact composition exist and no one. Their expansion is believed to have been connected with the invention of the chariot The chariot is the earliest and simplest type of carriage, used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Chariots were built in Mesopotamia by the Mesopotamians as early as 3000 BC and in China during the 2nd millennium BC. The original chariot was a fast, light, open, two or four-wheeled conveyance drawn by two or more.
The contemporary Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European, with more than one billion speakers in total, stretching from Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast. Europe is washed upon to the north by the Arctic Ocean and (Romani Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is the language of the Romani people. It is an Indo-Aryan language, sometimes included in either the "Central" or the "Northwestern" group, sometimes treated as a branch of its own) and the Caucasus The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain (Mount Elbrus) (Ossetian Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains) to Xinjiang Xinjiang is an autonomous region (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) of the People's Republic of China and also claimed by the territory of Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million km2 (comparable in size to Iran), which takes up about one sixth of the country's territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet (Sarikoli The Sarikoli language is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by Pamiris in China. It is officially referred to in China as the "Tajik language" although it is different from the Persian dialect which is official in Tajikistan) and Bangladesh Bangladesh (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ, pronounced [ˈbaŋlad̪eʃ]; Bangladesh), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh (Bengali: গণপ্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশ Gônoprojatontri Bangladesh) is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma (. SIL SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development. SIL provides a database, Ethnologue, of its research into the world's in a 2005 estimate counts a total of 308 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani Hindustani , also known as "Hindi-Urdu," is a term covering several closely related dialects in Pakistan and northern India, especially the vernacular form of the two national languages, Standard Hindi and Urdu, also known as Khariboli, but also several nonstandard dialects of the Hindi languages (Hindi and Urdu, ca. 540 million), Bengali Bengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages (ca. 200 million), Punjabi Punjabi or Panjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region (in Pakistan and India) and their diasporas. Speakers mainly include adherents of the religions of Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism (ca. 120 million), Marathi and Persian Persian or Farsi is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Bahrain and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Dari, Farsi, Parsi or (ca. 70 million each), Gujarati Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is native to the Indian state of Gujarat, and is its chief language, as well as of the adjacent union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli (ca. 45 million), Pashto Pashto , also known as Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. There are 26 million Pashtuns according to Encarta and . As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is a national and official language (40 million), Oriya Odia or Oriya is an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is mainly spoken in the Indian state of Orissa. The language is also one of the many official languages of India (ca. 30 million), Kurdish Kurdish is the language spoken by Kurds in western Asia. Unlike many other languages it does not have a single standardized linguistic entity with the status of an official or state language. On the contrary, it is a continuum of closely related dialects that are spoken in a large geographic area spanning several national states, in some of these (ca. 40 million) and Sindhi Sindhi is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by approximately 18 million people in Pakistan, and is also spoken in India; it is the third most spoken language of Pakistan, and the official language of Sindh in Pakistan. It is also an official language of India. The government of Pakistan issues national identity cards to (ca. 20 million).
Indo-Iranian languages were once spoken across a wider area still. The Scythians The Scythians or Scyths were an Ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scyths in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scyths comes from were described by Roman Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world writer Strabo Strabo was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher as inhabiting the lands to the north of the Black Sea The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to the Aegean Sea region of the Mediterranean. These waters in present-day Ukraine Ukraine /juːˈkreɪn/ (Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev (Kyiv) is both the, Moldova Moldova /mɒlˈdoʊvə/ , officially the Republic of Moldova (Republica Moldova) is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east and south and Romania Romania /roʊˈmeɪniə/ (dated: Rumania, Roumania; Romanian: România, (help·info) pronounced [romɨˈni.a]) is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its. The river-names Don, Dnieper The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers in Europe (fourth by length) that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea. Its total length is 2,285 kilometres (1,420 mi), of which 485 km (301 mi) lie within Russia, 595 km (370 mi) within Belarus, and 1,095 km (680 mi) within Ukraine. Its basin covers 504,000 square, Danube The Danube is the longest river in the European Union and Europe's second longest river after the Volga etc. are of Indo-Iranian origin. The so-called Migration Period The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions or Völkerwanderung , was a period of human migration that occurred roughly between the years 300 to 700 A.D. in Europe, marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. These movements were catalyzed by profound changes within both the Roman Empire and the so-called ' saw Indo-Iranian languages disappear from Eastern Europe with the arrival of the Turkic The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family-speaking Pechenegs The Pechenegs or Patzinaks (Turkish: Peçenek, Hungarian: Besenyő(k), Greek: Πατζινάκοι, Πετσενέγοι, Πατζινακίται, Latin: Pacinacae, Bisseni) were a semi-nomadic Turkic people of the Central Asian steppes speaking the Pecheneg language which belonged to the Turkic language family and others by the eighth century AD.
The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit (ancient Indian), Avestan and Old Persian (two ancient Iranian languages). But there are written instances of a fourth language in Northern Mesopotamia which is considered to be Indo-Aryan. They are attested in documents from the ancient empire of Mitanni and the Hittites of Anatolia.
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