Shallow Chronology.

From: markodegard@...
Message: 107
Date: 1999-10-26

junk Piotr writes:
As you may remember, my favourite scenario is different and requires a deeper chronology, but the "West Pontic" area (Bulgaria, Transylvania, the lower Danube and Dniester basins) plays a crucial role in it, too, and so do the sites alluded to above. I'm curious to know what the other CyBaList members think of the local Neolithic/Chalcolithic/Bronze Age cultures and their possible IE affiliations.
 
As you may remember, my favourite scenario is different and requires a deeper chronology, but the "West Pontic" area (Bulgaria, Transylvania, the lower Danube and Dniester basins) plays a crucial role in it, too, and so do the sites alluded to above. I'm curious to know what the other CyBaList members think of the local Neolithic/Chalcolithic/Br onze Age cultures and their possible IE affiliations.


Deeper chronologies.

At the moment, I am deeply influenced by Mallory's caution that we (1) keep the putative IE homeland within reasonable geographic limits, and (2) to not make assumptions out of line with what we know in terms of change to other languages. He tells us to keep the IE homeland reasonably sized, roughly that of Germany or Poland, and asks how anyone can seriously take the notion that the Corded Ware horizon was monolithically PIE-speaking -- this is everything from the Urals west to the North Sea, encompassing what was the North European forest! Just look at how many different languages there are here today. Without saying so directly, Mallory questions the identification of the Corded Ware horizon as PIE-speaking.

It's wrong to assume the remains of a single material culture also represents the remains of a single language: look at present day Europe! It is equally wrong to assume the remains of different material cultures represent separate languages: consider the historic distinction between Bedouin Arabs and village Arabs (identical language, identical religion, mostly identical legal system, but radically different economies and material cultures).

I'm not saying I believe in a 'shallow chronology'. Rather, I just wonder if a shallow chronology fits in with what we know from archaeology as well as from our experiences and intuitions about how fast languages really change.

There is nothing to preclude us from assuming Anatolian was south of the Danube ca. 3200 BCE, and, in keeping with the archeological record, from moving into Anatolia proper from that time. At the same time, you have the remaining group of IE speakers centered about Kiev.

This latter group only need to remain in place, developing it's technological skills until ca. 2500 BCE, at which time the Bronze Age is in flower. You get a Big Bang. It's the Kiev group of IE-speakers who put it all together in terms of Steppe-nomadism and sprawl eastwards clear into the headwaters of the Yenisey and the back-end of the Hindu Kush -- and in the meantime, harass, conquer, or co-opt their fellow IE-speakers south of the Danube, as well as west in Hungary and beyond, perhaps in is as few as a 100 years.

I'm not talking about Hunnic confederacy style invasions, but rather, the first exploitation of an otherwise unfilled ecological niche -- the grasslands up and away from the rivers, places suitable only for grazing herds of domestic animals. You cannot do this without sturdy wheeled vehicles, and to build such vehicles, I think you probably need bronze tools. They didn't walk there.

Some of the IEs, however, go north, into the forest. Steppe-IEs vs. forest-IEs, which is probably not that un-analogical to Bedouin Arab vs. village Arab. Germanic and Balto-Slavic took a different tack. I suspect, their economy was based on unspoiled Atlantic salmon runs, which were infinitely richer than all the horses, sheep, goats and cattle you can imagine.

Mark.