Tocharian Languages - Discovery and Significance

Discovery and Significance

The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even suspected until archaeological exploration of the Tarim basin by Aurel Stein in the early 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in an unknown language.

It soon became clear that these fragments were actually written in two distinct but related languages belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of Indo-European, now known as Tocharian. The discovery of Tocharian upset some theories about the relations of Indo-European languages and revitalized their study.

Prior to the discovery of Tocharian, it was thought that the division between Centum and Satem languages was a simple west–east division, with Centum languages in the west. The Tocharian languages are a major geographic exception, however, as they are the easternmost branch but nonetheless belong to the Centum division. The contemporary identification of the Anatolian branch, also Centum but in a relatively eastern location, further muddied the picture. The result was a new hypothesis, following the "wave" theory of Johannes Schmidt, suggesting that the Satem isogloss represents a linguistic innovation in the central part of the Proto-Indo-European home range, where the Centum languages are simply the linguistically conservative remainder, found along the eastern and western peripheries.

Tocharian probably died out after 840 when the Uyghurs, expelled from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz, moved into the Tarim Basin. This theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur. During Uyghur rule, the peoples mixed with the Uyghurs to produce much of the modern population of what is now Xinjiang.

The Afanasevo culture is a strong candidate for being the earliest attested representative for speakers of the Tocharian languages.