Re: Euxine Event.

Mark wrote:

> As I mentioned earlier, IE seems to have not a whisper of
> evidence to suggest a native flood myth. What we do have was
> borrowed. This silence reinforces the notion that the IE
> homeland was in North Central Europe.

This is indeed very strong evidence for an Non Pontic Steppe origin.

> I won't reproduce John's valuable post here, but he brings up
> some interesting points. The genetics of the dog is very
> interesting. Unless we are to say the IEs came from Central
> Asia (unlikely), they had to come from Anatolia, via the
> Bosphorus Land Bridge, or had to enter via Iran east of the
> Caucusus at a rather late date. Whatever the case, the split
> from Uralic was likely someplace like Mesopotamia, or even
> further south.

This is my point exactly in the discussions with Glen. "Steppe"
languages are misnamed. Although they are later found across the
Eurasian Steppes, they did not start there. Nor did they split on
the steppes. If they exist (and taking Glen's word that they do),
they came out of a split between Eastern and Western branches of
Nostratic, occurring in the Middle East. The Western Branches
(Tyrrhenian and PIE) moved west, possibly as a single unified
language at first. The Eastern Branches (Uralic and Altaic) moved
east and north into Central Asia

> Glen should chew on this path of entry for a while. It makes
> Tyrrhenian a stay-at-home language in Anatolia, whereas IE
> pushed itself north before returning southward millennia
> later. I suspect the IE's moved around the lake shore, then
> followed the Danube up into Central Europe, following a
> hunter-gatherer lifestyle, modified by contacts with
> agriculturalists. The language[s] spoken along the lakeshore
> are a mystery, but Kartvalian must have been one of them, and
> something related to Urartian must have been there too.

I agree strongly with what you are posting here Mark. would think
that initially PIE and Tyrrhenian was a single language family that
split into two. One group stayed put as the Tyrrhenian-Lemnian group
in West Anatolia and NW Aegean. A second group moved north as the
Danubian Gorge Mesolithic culture of the Balkans and developed as a
possibly PIE, possibly a third (now extinct) language group, whilst
others others moved north to become the Murzak Koba culture of the
northern Pontic Seppes. This group then developed as the Grebeniki
culture, which split as the Bug-Dneipr and the Don-Donetz mesolithic
groups. These cultures in turn were undergoing neolithicsation at
the time of the Black Sea event, and if they were PIE should have had
memories of the flood.

> The founders of Central Danube agriculture, ca 5300, would
> seem to have been descended from refugees from the Black Sea
> flood. I imagine the archaeological record from this time
> needs to be thoroughly re-assessed. These people are usually
> not considered to be IE-speakers.

Interesting.

> This is fascinating stuff. Changes in sea level, the climate,
> and hydrological features all need to be thoroughly
> documented.

Agreed. I cannot await to here Glen's cut on all of this stuff.

Regards

John