*Kóryos

The kóryos (Proto-Indo-European: 'army, people under arms' or 'detachment, war party') refers to the theoretical Proto-Indo-European brotherhood of warriors in which unmarried young males served for several years, as a rite of passage into manhood, before their full integration into society.

Scholars have theorized the existence of the kóryos based on later Indo-European traditions and myths that feature links between landless young males, perceived as an age-class not yet fully integrated into the community of the married men; their service in a "police-army" sent away for part of the year in the wild (where they hunted animals and raided foreign communities), then defending the host society for the rest of the year; their mystical self-identification with wolves and dogs as symbols of death, lawlessness, and warrior fury; and the idea of a liminality between invulnerability and death on one side, and youth and adulthood on the other side.