In 1956 Marija Gimbutas introduced her "Kurgan hypothesis" combining archaeology from the distinctive "Kurgan' burial mounds with linguistics to unravel the problem of the origins of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" and traced its migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European research.

Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a Kurgan people as an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the fifth to third millennia BCE.

Some excavated kurgans

• Krasnodar region of southern Russia, ca 2700 - 2200 BCE
• Scythian, ca 275 - 250 BCE (unusually late), at Ryzhanovka, south of Kiev, Ukraine

• Kurgan Culture