Dyeus: The Indo-European Sky Father 

Learning Jupiter came from Sky-Father rather than being an independent name really blew my mind.

thank you for prioritizing historical contexts around religions and not just theology! your channel is an important reminder that both the past and present are richly nuanced

I remember reading a paper by an Irish scholar on similarities between Old Irish language and rituals and those of India. It was fascinating.

Dyus Pitr is directly mentioned in Rig Veda And when we Hindus perform rituals we chant - Dyuas Shanti which means - the sky is peaceful

As a geneticist, I want to point out that we now have access to a lot of valuable genetic data that can help answer these questions about the origin of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language. We don't have to rely on linguistic and cultural data alone anymore. For example, when considering the distribution of clades within the R1 hablogroup in modern humans as well as from DNA from preserved human remains, it is likely that the original speakers of the PIE formed after hunter gatherer populations from Eastern Europe mixed with hunter gatherers from the Caucus mountains. And given that important domesticated animals associated with the spread of Indo-European (IE) languages, such as horses, are grassland species that naturally inhabited steppe regions, such as the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, it is quite likely that the ancestral Indo-European culture formed in that region, where it eventually spread west into Europe and East into India and parts of the Middle East. From a genetic perspective, there was a westward migration into Europe from the East around 4,500 years ago, where many of the original inhabitants of Europe were mostly displaced by the new migrants, with some genetic mixing. These migrants are referred to as Western Steppe Herders (WSH), and most Europeans derive most of their ancestry from these people. Since the arrival of these WSH corresponds with the timing of the spread of Info-European languages into Europe, it is very likely that these WSH spoke the PIE language. Also, the amount of loanwords shared between modern Indo-European and Uralic languages suggest that there was linguistic mixing between the early speakers of the two language families. And since the Uralic languages are distributed in the regions near the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, this is further support that the the Indo-European languages originated there, as opposed to further south in the Eastern Mediterranean. In fact, genetic data shows that the peoples who lived in Europe before the WSH were agriculturalists who originated on the Islands of the Aegean Sea, referred to as Eastern European Farmers (EEF). So there definitely is good evidence for a migration of people into Europe from the Aegean, but those peoples were mostly displaced by the WSH, where most modern Europeans have more WSH ancestry than EEF ancestry, which suggests that it was the WSH who spread Indo-European languages, not these Aegean farmers. It is usually the language of the displacers that survives, not the peoples being displaced. I personally believe that the Basque language is a descendent of the language spoken by the EEF. Not only is the Basque language not of Indo-European-European origin, the Basque people have the highest EEF DNA of all Europeans. In summary, using genetic data to determine migration patterns into Europe, which correspond with the spread of languages, I think there were three major language families brought to Europe since the beginning of the Holocene: There was an original migration of hunter gatherers into Europe after the end of the Ice Age (11,700 years ago). And those hunter gatherers probably spoke a family of language belonging to a language family that has no living representatives, because those hunter gatherers were then replaced by the Eastern European Farmers, who came from the Aegean a few thousand years after and spread agriculture into Europe. And then, the Western Steppe Herders, from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, spread into Europe some 4,500 years ago, bringing horses and mostly displacing the EEF and their languages. And it was the WSH who brought the Indo-European-European languages into Europe. I hope more research goes into determining whether Basque could be a descendant of the languages spoken by the EEF. I honestly don't know here else Basque could have come from, especially since the Basque people have so much EEF ancestry. Interestingly enough, using the DNA from bodies buried around Stonehenge, we can see the major shifts in ancestry.

I would love to see a whole series on reconstructed Indo-European religion because it's so fascinating. One of my favourite examples is how we can be pretty sure that the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived inland because we know they had words for bodies of water but not specifically for the sea. Many sea gods from Indo-European mythologies had strange associations with things other than the sea (Poseidon was the god of horses and storms, Neptune was the god of springs) that suggest that they weren't originally worshipped as sea gods and only became associated with the sea after their peoples migrated to coastal areas.

8:34 The powers of Dyaus Phter was transferred to his son -the God Indra -in Vedic mythology. Indra is the supreme God and the king of the Gods. He wields a thunderbolt weapon and has slayed a serpent demon . This is almost identical to Zeus and Jupiter. Similarly, in Germanic mythology the thunderbolt weapon and serpent slaying are attributed to Thor but his father Odin is the king of the Gods . So there are some regional variations.

I always wondered why the Spanish words dia (day) and Dio (god) were so similar! This is so interesting!

Note that the word Dyeus is still being used in modern Romance languages for "God" - dios in Spanish, dio in Italian, dieu in French, deus in Portugese etc., as well as in other modern Indo-European languages - deity in English, theos in Greek (d became th), dievs in Latvian, Deva/Devas in modern descendants of Sanskrit, but also diva in many south Asian languages...

I absolutely adore linguistics and religious studies separately, and it's awesome watching these videos of you putting them together. Thank you so much

I learned pashto for the military and it was very interesting first learning about these similarities. I feel like most people would expect pashto and latin derived languages to be extremely different, yet they have so many similarities and root words it is almost absurd. One thing I find very interesting is that words that are closer to the family, and closer to needs tend to stay very similar- we go from pater and even in pashto, the word is now 'plaar'. It is familiar but not identical. Two is 'dwa', which of course is EXTREMELY similar. Those basic numbers are so important to every day life that they must have stayed common throughout history. Words that mean water are also highly similar through all of these languages (Aqua, agua, and in pashto, auba- very silly). Family names and things like agriculture too- for instance, when English was conflated with Norse, many of the family names stayed similar to old English. The 's' plural indicator was a norse thing that was applied because of English women being... well, adopted into their new families by those who stayed. Those old english words (Children? BRETHEREN? Bretheren became brothers, but children never became childs. who decided to call cows cattle????) are still with us today, but lots of the less familiar ones are gone or heavily corrupted. English may be a mutt language but so is everything else!!!!!

While Indo-European is the biggest language family in terms of the number of speakers, Austronesian is actually the family with the most languages in it.

Pre-Indoeuropean is literally the most interesting concept ever. It might be because I was already interested in Greco-Roman civilization AND Hinduism, but the whole idea is just endlessly fascinating. Mention PIE and you've immediately got my attention!

Indian here, who speaks Malayalam and Hindi. I love my culture and how there are so many similarities around the world. In Malayalam we still say Daevam ദൈവം in the south, and Hindi we still say Daev देव in the north. The Sanskrit version of our Vedic texts do refer to Dyaus Pitr द्यौष्पितृ, and his consort पृथिवी Pritvi Ma (Earth Mother). What's interesting though is इन्द्र (Lord Indr) is the one shown to have the abilities that Zeus is also shown to have, like his lightning bolt, Vajra वज्र which appears in two forms, as a hammer, and as a pure lightning bolt forged by Twastr (त्वष्टृ). Indr is also known as the king of Gods, like Zeus is. It seems almost like Zeus is a combination of Dyaus Pitr and Indr. And of course there is the connection between Indr and Thor of Nordic Culture, including the story with Jormungandr. In the Rig Veda, Indr slays a giant serpent called Vritr वृत्र, the serpent that holds the waters of the world captive. And it goes deeper! Vritr is a Danava, a child of Danu दनु the primordial water, and Kashyapa कश्यप. If you know Celtic Mythology, you know about the Tuatha De Danu, the children of Danu. In Irish myth, Danu is also a water Goddess. Fascinating!

Sky Father, Mother Earth and Sun Deity (who serves Justice/Sees everything) (sometime divided into two deities, like Varuna-Mithra) are very common across various cultures and probably propagated from one common ancient religion. Also, Avesta and Veda share a lot of cognate terms, hinting that both had a common parent language which branched into their own thing.

The way you present this information and the way you are wary of the uncertainties regarding such historical, archaeological and linguistical studies shows an acute sense of truth and a healthy dose of scepticism. Wish more people would approach subjects with as much care and knowledge as you do, especially when presenting those subjects publicly. Never stop spreading knowledge please, people like you are a gift and should be cherished!

I'm actually reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language right now! Pretty dense, but observing the similarities between Sanskrit and Latin is extremely cool.

On the point of reconstructing myths, it is telling how many cultures share similar stories (not just in the indo-european family). A deity associated with the sky defeating a mighty serpent associated with chaos and using its remains to construct the world (Chaoskampf), a dog that watchfully guards over the underworld, a pair of twins who travel to the underworld, etcetera.

This is such a fascinating topic and I am incredibly grateful you are talking about it! I hope to see more in that regard in the future ☺

Your channel is one of the most interesting ones on RU-vid. Every single video is so engaging and educational, I'm extremely grateful for the work you put into your videos.

In indigenous Siberian and Mongolian religions, we know the highest deity as Tenger, тэнгэр (Tengri/Taniz in other languages). A very common epithet is Tenger Etseg, тэнгэр эцэг. Tenger means sky and etseg means father; the epithet names them Sky Father. I've always wondered if there was a cultural connection between the Mongolic Tenger Etseg and the Indo-European Father Sky, and other deities. It is not inconceivable, as they both originate in the Eurasian steppe and are known to have had contact.

I’m a big fan of linguistics and religious studies so I’m very happy to see you talking about this, keep up the great work!

The videos about Antiquity are the ones I enjoy the most. The quality of information you provide always impresses me. Thank you.

The Indo-Europeans were da real MVPs and OGs.

As a linguist I always enjoy hearing people talk about historical linguistics 😊

I like the Eos-Eostre-Ostara-Ishtar-Inanna-Isis-Astarte-Ushas-Uzume-Aurora-h2éwsōs goddesses best myself. Sun Lady!

This is so cool! Years ago I took a seminar course on P.I.E. and Lithuanian in college and I remember being pleasantly surprised that after only a few weeks of study in the basics of P.I.E., they had us reading the first ever Lithuanian printed book (Mažvydas' 1547 catechism) in the original with no real difficulty. Granted, according to the course write up, Lithuanian is hypothesized to have been the least-changed of all surviving Indo-European languages, so maybe it wasn't so amazing, but it was still pretty neat! Now that's 15 years later, all I can remember is the words for "hi!" and "eggs" (labas and kiaušiniai, respectively), but the discussion of historical linguistics in this video brought back some happy memories. Thank you, RFB!

I've been intrigued by this concept of a common root for many religions since I first heard about it, it just makes so much sense when you start to compare, especially the creational and foundational myths of different cultures. There are still so many depths to uncover.

A funny thought about the prehistoric wagons that occurred to me is that it establishes an ancestral link between the modern concepts of "live in a van down by the river" and "return to tradition"

I love the study of etymology. This is such an interesting video.

I could imagine that the sky's universality played a role in the sky fathers popularity

Great video! Fell down a PIE rabbit hole, especially in relation to religion and migration and was wondering if anyone on RU-vid had anything about it. Found your vid and immediately subscribed upon watching.

If I looked up at the open sky I would also assume that there was something sacred up there Have you ever SEEN a sunset?

Love the video! I particularly like that the Lithuanian language had a brief cameo in it. For those who don't know, among all modern living languages, the two Baltic ones; Lithuanian and Latvian, are said to have retained the most Proto-Indo-European features. Also, Lithuanians technically were the last "pagans" in Europe to be baptized.

This is the video I've been looking for for a while. Thank you!

I would absolutely love it if you did more Proto-Indo-European religion videos. It's one of my favorite topics in the field of ancient religion.

YES. I would absolutely LOVE more PIE religion content from you. Your way of presenting information is next level and everything Proto-Indo-European is massively underrated! 🙏

The relationship between religion and language seems fascinating, it would be interesting to see how religions differ depending on the language family associated with them.

Congratulations on a great episode. You mentioned the Hittite language, have you any plans for a show on the “Land of 1000 Gods” including the Hittite or Hurrian Pantheons? Or any episodes on pre Indo European Paleolithic or Neolithic religion, or the groundbreaking work of Jacques Cauvin on the development of symbolic thought and the “Birth Of The Gods”

Love this channel, it's truly enriching. Well researched and formulated.

Interestingly, the most important* god of the vedas is Indra, who is the god of war, sky, storms, and lightning, and who literally uses a ligthning thunderbolt weapon called vajra. I had no clue Dyaushpitr was a thing before this video and just assumed that Indra was the Zeus-Jupiter equivalent, and looking into it it seems that though Indra's parentage is inconsistent in the vedas, he is sometimes in fact identified as son of Dyaushpitr. So it's clearly more complex than i thought before, maybe the introduction of Indra was a later development within vedic tradition and the roles and attributions once given to Dyaushpitr were associated to Indra instead, Dyaushpitr being relegated to a minor deity *important as by far the most mentioned and praised, as there's no fixed hierarchy of gods implied in the vedas, whenever a god is invoked, they are spoken of as the supreme being

For more on language development, NativLang here on YT is pretty darn good. If you're interested in the history of the English language, starting with PIE, The History of English Podcast is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for this coverage which brings together two favorite topics.

Hi! I'm new to the channel but I very much enjoy your videos! I'm a history major with a minor in religious studies student and your videos sometimes are better than some of my classes hahaha. I was wondering if you ever considered in making a video about Kardecism and Allan Kardec. Thank you! Keep up the amazing videos

Here’s another weird one, Cerberus in Greek mythology and an underworld dog named Sarvara in Hindu mythology, they think they both go back to the same mythological creature in the Proto-Indo-European religion.

Sky Father is pretty universal in Eurasia. Turkic and Uralic people also had a main/central sky father god: Kök. Which probably meant the color blue.

Yes I'm high school dropout with a GED but I absolutely love this stuff my whole life and I've read books and now watch all the RU-vid channels I can on the subject for the last 50 years so thank you for this it is wonderful 👍😊

Great video mate. Thanks for the knowledge.

What? This was awesome! A combination of lessons on god and early language. What a jam packed episode!

The thing I think is the most cool about PIE, is that we can infer the development of society. Like IE languages share a root for wheel and cooper, but not all share a word root for iron. We can then infer that iron production was a development that occurred after PIE started to split into new language groups and copper production and use of the wheel occurred before the split. Ik there are others, but that is the example that comes to mind. Its so cool that linguistics can point that stuff out.

the title freaked me out cause "Deus" is portuguese for God and children (at least here in Brazil) do call god "sky father" (or sky daddy) 💀☠️

This is my first video from you but this topic is so interesting for me that I feel that you could have dug so much deeper into every point you talked about, all the connections and similarities between the PIE society and people to the ones that followed them in early history

The way linguistic relationships can imply or preserve aspects of long gone cultures, preserving small hints of long gone stories and beliefs, just really tickles my interest in world-building for science fiction and fantasy; I am definitely going to be learning more about it!

I made a presentation on Proto Indo European and their mythology for one of my classes. It's such an insightful video. I wished this video came out two months ago.

Nice episode there about the Proto Indo-European history and their ancient religion. I hope you should also make an episode about the usage of the ancient symbol of Swastika and why the Nazis used that symbol on their evil ideology.

This is such an entrancingly fascinating subject!

Five minutes in and this is already easily among the more accurate representations of knowledge from several branches of linguistics I've seen in a RU-vid video 😅

To connect the God and the Sky, in Latvian we have slightly outdated expression "Dieva diena", "a God's Day", to describe perfect, cloudless sky/day. Sounds like "There is only God above today". But to entangle it even more, "Tēvs" in modern Latvian is "Father", which sounds like Greek "Theus". So, just one consonant apart, we have a single word for God, Sky, and Father. I got slightly excited on the slide at 9:15. I knew about PIE Héwsōs being Greek Eos and Latvian Austra, but never met Iranian version. The thing is that our deity of spring renewal and guardian of horses is called Ūsiņš. While the ending "-iņš" is mostly perceived as a diminutive, it (debatably) could mean "subordinate" or "descendent", like English "-ling". Spring, the son of Daybreak, huh? Makes me ponder the cosmology of our nomadic ancestors.

I did my undergrad in both linguistics and religious studies, so I am elated whenever PIE tcomes up as a topic!

Yes! I love this, what an absorbing topic. Thank you for the great content

Sky Father, Earth Mother. As Above, So Below.

Another great video as always many thanks

Awesome video, so much knowledge!

Great video, always nice to watch content about the indo-europeans. On the prominence of the "sky father" in the indo-european mythology, they seemed to worship as primary gods more grounded ones. For greeks of the mycenian age it's seemed to be poseidon, but in a hades like "god of the underworld" and earthquake position. For romans mars, but in a agriculture god position.

On the subject of sky gods, it'd be really interesting to learn about tengrism and related belief systems.

I like the coherent narrative of your videos, which even make an amateur like me understand the concept

Very informative content. Thank you.

so interesting! thank you for your work!

Haha watching this before my Proto-Indo-European Exam tomorrow :D

Crecganford covers this and other proto-Indo-European stuff too! I highly recommend checking is channel out.

I very much appreciate this unbiased approach to this subject, many who are very knowledgeable about this subject and make videos on these site tend to be pretty biased. It's good to listen to a true academic who says what he knows, stays true to fact, and doesn't imply anything further

*deiwós is also the root for Finnish meaning the sky. Amazing philological work as always! 💖

You gave a great presentation of this topic! I'm speaking as someone with both an MA and a BA in linguistics

Imagine thousands of years from now, some aliens trying to reconstruct our mythology of Spiderman, with nothing to go on but his name, Spiderman, and that he was some kind of hero figure. They could never dream of the richness and all the particulars of his story, the things that make him what he is, the backstory and everything. Likewise, when we are looking back at these ancient peoples, we should keep in mind that they surely had rich stories for their mythological characters, too, and what we can deduce from just a name, like DeusPater, is just a tiny tip of big iceberg.

Very informative! Enjoyed!

Wonderful video, as always, with some great ideas backed up by research. It also reminds me, however, of the many "leaps of faith" made by Robert Graves in his seminal text, The White Goddess. I would love to see a Religion for Breakfast video on the pitfalls and follies of armchair anthropologists/religious studies figures like Robert Graves and James Frazier. These men wrote two texts that have had profound impacts on literature and popular culture, but have understandably fallen out of favor with "real" scholars. Exploring their notions of research, and where they go wrong, compared to how contemporary researchers work, would be a fascinating video.

Wow two of my favorite topics, linguistics and religions, in one video. Awesome!

In turkic and mongolian languages, there is also a sky father god : Tengri or Tenger. It seems plausible that there was an ancient religion of the steppes, which transcended the language barriers, and was common to both PIE and Turko-Mongols nomads. In Uralic langages, Jumala is a sky god and that word has become synonymous with god.

Excellent video, thanks!

Great video - I can't help but see similarities between your description of Indo-European culture of the Pontic Steppe and modern day Romani gypsies (including wagon burials) - maybe a throwback to the region's nomadic past?

This is really fascinating. It's becoming more and more evident that ancient people were more interconnecting than we moderns would intuitively give them credit for

I'd love your take on the relationship between Indo-Iranian religions, comparing the Avestan and Sanskrit, the Vedas and the Gathas, the Ahuras and Asuras, Devas and Daevas relationships etc

Great video. Thank you.

Doing great job. Thank you.

I am absolutely thankful for your videos about the Indo-European 'gods', I've tried to read into these subjects, but they were a little complicated for me, especially with the Indo-European ""spellings"" of words - I'd be very grateful if or whenever you feel like making more of those!

OMG it’s about time this got brought up!

I love watching videos of highly knowledgeable people like this guy Fascinating 👍😉

Great research, and super interesting 👏

This was a favorite topic of mine when back in the day as an undergraduate (not quite the Neolithic) I began reading up on linguistics. I found out that in the late 19th c it was usual for anyone studying linguistics to master Lithuanian, which was thought to be the closes European relative to PIE. As it happened, I ended up marrying a Lithuanian, but I'm no closer to the PIE in the sky (father)...

This makes my heart so happy 🥺 what a beautifully old world we live on

i love stuff like this. wish i had adopted this as a pursuit in school early on but i got turned off to school early, did not enjoy my studies at all

Thank you for this!🙏🏻💖

I just wanna say, as a historical linguist, this is, like, the best video you could’ve ever put out, at least for me specifically

i'd LOVE to see more stuff about prehistoric religion both speculative and archaeological, if you have any interest in doing that. also as a linguistics nerd i love any discussion involving p.i.e. and other super early languages. prehistoric cultures are my biggest interest in history (besides very early christianity) but they're usually not very accurately discussed on youtube thanks to all the alternate history/atlantis proponents that live here. it's a shame.

Thanks for sharing 🙏🏾

Great job! More on The Topic please

im also interested in the hammer/club/mallet wielding god traditions too. its neat stuff.

i was aware of the linguistic evidences some suggest for PIE people being potentially nomadic animal herders with horses (words like axle, vehicle, etc) , but i had not heard of the hypothesized connection to the archaeological group of yamnaya people - really interesting stuff!

Very intereseting. Thank you for the informative content.

I learned about PIE existence just after finishing my university PR degree and before my specialisation in Teaching, way back in 2001. It has fascinated me ever since, I have read tons of materials, wrote a couple papers and bought some books. What I highly recommend for going deeper into this (although it will be an advantage if you speak more than one modern European language) is the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo European roots. Hard to read and check but fascinating through and through. Greetings from Argentina.

Well presented.