Re: Prehistoric Ethnogenic Processes

From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 246
Date: 1999-11-12

>> >> 4) Greek & Germanic are in the centre of your IE homeland. Could this
be due (only?) to the fact that these languages had the largest number of
words used in your analysis?

>I say, that the location of each of the 9 IE languages is determied by the
8 other. Therefore mistakes in data of one language can be corrected by the
data of other languages.

Yes, I see, but I wonder whether the differences are big enough to be
statistically relevant. What if some "tribes" left earlier than others?

As for the resemblances between Uralic, IE, SH (AA), Altaic, Drav. & Kartv.,
I can think of other possibilities. Say, eg, that Andreyev was right and
that IEs, Uralic & Altaic (his "Boreal") split somewhere in the Carpathians
12-10,000 BS or so, and Uralic went north or stayed in Europe, IEs went to
the Dniepr and Altaic went farther east. Suppose that ca.10-8,000 BC PAA was
spoken in the Middle East by farmers. These farming terminology was brought
to Europe by the Bandkeramik after 6000 BC (where it influenced Uralic), to
the Dniepr (where it influenced PIE) and to the eastern steppes (Altaic)
ca.4000 BC. Kartvelian (in the mountains) was less strongly influenced as
well as the geographically remote Dravidians. Couldn't this explain your
results? IOW, I'm not sure whether it's allowed to translate your data
directly into a geographical map. IMO you're perhaps omitting the temporal &
other aspects? Perhaps only the (famirng) technology (+words) was
transmitted but without physical migrations of peoples? I certainly think
your method is worth of being considered seriously, but whether you can
place a 6-fold split in a small geographical area at exactly the same time
is rather doubtful IMO. In any case, your scenario would situate the
splitting times a lot later than commonly believed, wouldn't it?

>>Is this a "real" homeland, or were these IE languages only in close
contact at that time?

>The Old Germanic and Old Greek languages were formed in the next areas. I
mean that these areas were homelands of Germanic and Greek. Do you want to
have my maps? I can send them to you.

By email? yes, please, or perhaps you send them to "cybalist" so everybody
can see them.

>> >> 5) Some of your word identifications are not very convincing (eg, Eng.
jump – Yagn. jumb "to move",

>Some mistakes in my etymology can be. It can concern to the word "jump".
What do you think about other my English-Iranian correspondences?

Well, "jump" was just one I thought was imitative. For the rest, I don't
know much of these things. I think you could better ask Piotr.

Best regards --Marc