Mark:
>5500 BCE. I've read stuff published before Ryan and Pitman's findings
> >which give this date as a reasonable one for the 'falling-together' of
> >PIE.
Yes, it's the date we often find for the arrival of IE to the area, so who
am I to argue. (Well I DID argue for a while, but I've come around :)
>A reasonable question, however, is what effect the filling of the Sea >of
>Azov, as well as the 'bays' on either side of what now is the >Crimea had
>on those living along the lower reaches and at the ancient >mouth of the
>Dneister: The falling apart of Indo-Uralic and the >falling together of
>Proto-Uralic to the east and PIE to the west? Or >perhaps 'Indo-Tyrrhenian'
>to the west, and PIE to the east, with >Uralic further away towards the
>Volga?
I love these questions but I don't think the rising of the Black affected
IE's development or the breakup of "IndoUralic" at all (which would be circa
9000 BCE if Bomhard is correct).
Apparently Mallory's "In Search of Indo-Europeans" seems to be suggesting a
very early southeasterly influence (South Caspian) which I'm concluding
based also on some of Allan Bomhard's thoughts on Pre-IE and NWC (based in
turn on Nichols and Kosko's archaeology) may be early speakers of native
Caucasian languages bringing innovations to the north to north-east shores
before IE's arrival from as far back as 7000 BCE.
Bomhard, substantiated by Kosko, mentions a "subsequent reversal" in this
eastern cultural flow. Bomhard just says that it was the arrival of IE that
caused this... but I now presume something more complex: As soon as the IE's
arrived on scene, they already met and started trading with the advancing
Semitic agriculturalists to the west. As they did, the IE speakers would
have became, at least on the western side, agricultural and/or pastoral with
many novel items like purdy shiny metals to trade with the eastern cultures
that once had cultural influence on the area. Hence, a reversal of the
cultural flow resulted, since the South Caspian "innovations" were totally
old-hat now that the Semitics provided for everything.
As for Uralic, it is linked with Yukaghir and would seem to be related close
enough to consider a family called Uralic-Yukaghir located more easterly
around the Urals circa 5000 BCE. We can't speak of IndoUralic without at
least Yukaghir involved in the picture.
Now, I think overall what must have happened is that from an origin in the
eastern steppes around 9000 BCE, IndoTyrrhenian, Altaic, Gilyak and Boreal
(UralicYukaghir, EskimoAleut) spread out. Boreal spread directly north from
there and then split in two (c. 7000 BCE?) with EskimoAleut obviously
spreading north and east and UralicYukaghir slowly spreading west to the
Urals until its 5000BCE split.
Further south and much further west, IndoTyrrhenian arrived to the area
north of the Black and Caspian Seas (c. 7000 BCE?) while Boreal was still
splitting. The direct linguistic ancestor(s) of IE would have arrived at the
Black Sea at 5500 BCE and I assume now that the more northerly Tyrrhenian
portion continued expanding westwards from 7000 to 6000 BCE, into the
Balkans and perhaps beyond (?).
So now 6000 BCE would be a perfect time to encounter the expanding Semitic
language from Anatolia into the Balkans, which would affect Tyrrhenian
(north of Balkan-based Semitic) and IE (to its east along the northwest
shores of the Black). With the new-fangled agriculture at their disposal,
hitherto unidentified Pre-Tyrrhenian languages (perhaps together with
Semitic lgs) may have spread out into Europe in advance of the later IE
dialects, sopping up most of the non-IndoTyrrhenian and non-Nostratic
languages in Europe which IE dialects would have encountered otherwise,
whilst the true Tyrrhenian core from which would spring Etruscan, Lemnian,
etc. remained in the Balkans up to 3500 BCE or so.
As for Semitic, the language began to retreat back into Anatolia and further
south (perhaps from expanding Tyrrhenian dialects?), fully extinct to the
north by 3500 BCE with only suspicious remnant traces in IE, Tyrrhenian,
Kartvelian, Hattic, etc. to suggest of its once more northerly existence.
So the rise of the Black Sea seems kind of unimportant as a whole, so far as
I can ascertain. How fast was the rise exactly? Would it honestly have
caused such epidemic distress to somewhat unsettled peoples like the IE
speakers anyways?
- gLeN
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