The journal publishes papers in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, mythology and linguistics relating to the cultural history of the Indo-European-speaking peoples.

Since 2020, the journal's editor-in-chief is Emily Blanchard West, Associate Professor of Classics and History at St. Catherine University.

JIES was founded in 1973 by Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, Belgian-American philologist Edgar C. Polomé, Finnish linguist Raimo Aulis Anttila, and British publisher Roger Pearson, and published through Pearson's Institute for the Study of Man.

[2] Pearson's Institute for the Study of Man has been said to publish "debunked pseudoanthropological claims of a racial Aryanist diaspora".

[3] In 2002, American psychologist William H. Tucker noted that, unlike Pearson's other publications (Mankind Quarterly and the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies), editorial control of JIES was left to Gimbutas and Polomé.