Societal Structure
Whether these people regarded themselves as a linguistic or ethnic community cannot be known, nor by which name they may have referred to themselves.
Inferences have been made for sacral kingship, suggesting the tribal chief at the same time assumed the role of high priest. Georges Dumézil suggested for Proto-Indo-European society a threefold division of a clerical class, a warrior class and a class of farmers or husbandmen, on his interpretations that many historically known groups speaking Indo-European languages show such a division, but Dumézil's approach has been widely criticised.
If there was a separate class of warriors, it probably consisted of single young men. They would have followed a separate warrior code unacceptable in the society outside their peer-group. Traces of initiation rites in several Indo-European societies suggest that this group identified itself with wolves or dogs (see Berserker, Werewolf, Wild Hunt).
The people were organized in settlements (*weiḱs; English -wick "village", Sanskrit viśvas "world", Ancient Greek woikos "home"), probably each with its chief (*h₃rēǵs—Sanskrit rājan, Latin rex, reg-, Gaulish -riks). These settlements or villages were further divided in households (*domos; Latin domus), each headed by a patriarch (*dems-potis; Ancient Greek despotes, Sanskrit dampati).
Read more about this topic: Proto-Indo-European Society
Famous quotes containing the words societal and/or structure:
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)