urheimat

In historical linguistics, the homeland or Urheimat ( German: [ˈʔuːɐ̯ˌhaɪ̯maːt]; lit. 'Original home') of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the reconstructed or historically attested parent language of a group of languages that are genetically related.

Depending on the age of the language family under consideration, its homeland may be known with near-certainty (in the case of historical or near-historical migrations) or it may be very uncertain (in the case of deep prehistory). Next to internal linguistic evidence, the reconstruction of a prehistoric homeland makes use of a variety of disciplines, including archaeology and archaeogenetics.