Otto Schrader (born 28 March 1855 in Weimar; died 21 March 1919 in Breslau) was a German philologist best known for his work on the history of German and Proto-Indo-European vocabulary dealing with various aspects of material culture, such as the names of domesticated plants and animals, the names of the metals, etc. Education and early life Schrader came from a civil servant family in Thuringia, attended Gymnasium in Weimar, and studied in Jena, Leipzig, and Berlin. When he received the Dr. phil. degree, in 1878 he received a teaching position at the Großherzogliches Gymnasium in Jena. There he received his habilitation in 1887 and in 1890 received the title of Professor. In 1909 he moved to Breslau, where he was an "ordentlicher Professor". In 1879 Schrader married Marie von Wilms, with whom he had four children. He described himself as a national liberal. Support of Hehn's Theory Schrader supported Victor Hehn's thesis that the Indo-Europeans were originally nomads. According to this thesis, they domesticated only the horse, which they ate. Since there are no common Indo-European words for donkey or camel, Schrader assumed that the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans was in the steppes north of the Black Sea, on the Caspian Sea, and on the Aral Sea, an area referred to as the Pontic–Caspian steppe, where wild horses were a native species. Schrader's theory would ultimately serve as the basis of Marija Gimbutas' Kurgan theory. Publications No complete list of Schrader's works has been compiled up to now, so the list below is incomplete. Quaestionum dialectologicarum Graecarum particula, Dissertation, Leipzig 1877 Die älteste Zeittheilung des indogermanischen Volkes, Berlin 1878 Aus der Geschichte der Hausthiere. Eine linguistische Studie, in: Nord und Süd 15 (1880), pp. 335–348. Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte. Linguistisch-historische Beiträge zur Erforschung des indogermanischen Altertums, 1st edn. Jena 1883, 2nd edn. Jena 1890, 3rd edn. Jena 1906. Thier- und Pflanzengeographie im Lichte der Sprachforschung. Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, Heft 427 (1883), Berlin 1884. Victor Hehn. Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Übergang aus Asien nach Griechenland und Italien sowie in das übrige Europa: Historisch-linguistische Skizzen, new edition by Otto Schrader. With botanical contributions by Adolf Engler, 6th edn. Berlin 1884, 7th edn. 1902, 8th edn. 1911 Linguistisch-historische Forschungen zur Handelsgeschichte und Warenkunde, vol. 1, Jena 1886 Über den Gedanken einer Kulturgeschichte der Indogermanen auf sprachwissenschaftlicher Grundlage, Jena 1887. Probevorlesung vom 7. Februar 1887 “Etymologisches und Kulturhistorisches”, ZVS 30, N.F.