Re: IE & linguistic complexity

From: John Croft
Message: 4559
Date: 2000-11-01

Mark Odegard wrote to Piotr's point:

> Hypothesis 2 avoids such pitfalls and that's why I prefer it,
though unlike Renfrew I see no good reason to move PIE all the way
back to Anatolia. A Danubian homeland with the Linear Pottery
colonists providing the human material for the "population wave"
would be just fine, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that PIE was a
language of considerable grammatical complexity would square best
with its original position as a member of a rather old and well-
established dialectal network in "equilibrium mode", as Dixon ("The
Rise and Fall of Languages") puts it, disturbed and fragmented but
not completely destroyed in the transition to the early Neolithic.
The subsequent simplification of the daughter languages would have
resulted from spread and contact effects, as the author (Jonathan
Adams, I presume) correctly remarks.

Mark
> As I currently think about it, Colin, Lord Renfrew of K. might have
some of it right, in that the pre-PIEs likely inhabited Anatolia ca.
7000 BCE. But his big book was written before any of us knew about
the Euxine event, or even about the 'in publication' bits about the
climate and hydrology of the Euxine region ca. 5500 BCE. And the
historical linguists tells us they were either up there somewhere
from Kiev to Samara, or north of the Carpathians south of a line
drawn by Berlin and Warsaw.
>
> My book (EIEC) gives a map for LBK Linearbandkeramik Linear Band
pottery. It's the Seine, from its mouth to the big bend of the Loire,
to the Seine's headwaters, and thence the upper Danube into Middle
Europe, ending approximately where the Northern Bug branches off from
Warsaw.
>
> LBK seems to the the earliest archaeological horizon this far
north. The ice age kept people out of it before then.
>
> It seems that Europe got quite warm ca 3500 BCE or earlier. It's as
if a close, tight-knit linguistic community suddenly and peacefully
moved northward into the newly warm northern climes. Or to say it
another way, the linguistic community fell apart quite peacefully.
>
> Then the world got cold again, ca. 3150 BCE (Oetzi gets covered by
the glacier). And Greece and Thrace become habitable again
(presumably because of increased rainfall, but maybe because they are
into transhumance of goats and sheep).
>
> Did Oetzi speak PIE?

I don't go back to the movement of PIE out of Anatolia as does
Renfrew. I am convinced there is no evidence of an IE or a PIE
horizon in Anatolia prior to the arrival of the Anatolian languages
(Hittite, Luwian, et al), which seems to have occurred 23-2200 BCE.

There is, however, the evidence of the proto-Tyrrhenian language,
which I believe did come out of Anatolia (despite what Glen says).
This is, I believe, the origin of Tyrrhenian, Pelasgian, Lemnian,
Etruscan and may be the substrate to Luwian, Lydian and Carian.
Certainly there was a single cultural provnce stretching between
western Anatolia into Gimbutas's Old Europe. These I believe were
the Neolithic farmers, from Sesklo to Starcevo, and ence to Vinca and
the others.

In the mesolithic Danubian Gorge culture which preceeded Danubian
LBK, there is clear evidence of a process of neolithicisation along
its North West frontier. I believe LBK came from the indgenous
Danubian Gorge people adopting a farming technology from their
neighbours and applying it to the lighter loess soils to the north
and west. There is much evidence for this hypothesis. If this is so
then Danubian LBK is not "Out of Anatolia" and Renfrew is wrong.

By the way, a similar series of events seems to have occrred on the
Pontic steppe a la Bug-Dneister and Don-Donetz mesolithic cultures
both undergoing neolithicisation from Old Europe in the same way.
The position of Tripolye at this stage I feel is questionable.

The Renfrew OoA hypothesis as applied to the neolithic period
therefore is not possible on the cultral evidence. But a version of
it does apply to the Mesolithic.

For instance there is clear evidence that pre-Neolithic Palestinian
Kebaran and later Natufian were the substrata for the development of
Anatolian mesolithic cultures (Beldabi and Belbasi). There is also
clear evidence that the meslithic of Greece at Franchthi cave came
across from Western Anatolia. Furthermore, the Danubian Gorge
mesolithic at Lepinski Vir and elsewhere shows clear Aegean
afinities. Finally Murzak Koba (the predecessor of Grebeniki and
hence Bug-Dneistr and Don-Donetz) also shows affiliation to the the
Danubian Gorge mesolithic culture. Here we have a clear line of
derived cultures stretching from the Pontic steppe all the way back
to Africa. This I believe is the archaeological evidence for
Nostratic. It also explains the archaic features linking PIE with
Proto-Tyrrhenian that Glen claims to have found. This movement is
very old, extending from 18,000 through to 7,000 BCE (i.e. pre-Black
Sea event), and does show a movement north from Palestine into
Anatolia, and thence out of Antolia into the Balkans and points north.

If this is so, then all the mesolithic cultures of the Balkans and
the Pontic Steppe were part of a single language phylum. Kuban and
LBK could have been cognate languages. Which one was the PIE
ancestor, I don't know. There is a difficlty getting LBK languages
out as far as Andronova and Yamanaya cultures (seen as Proto-
Tocharian and Proto-Indo-Iranian), but hey! it may be possible!

I'd be interested in others comments.

Regards

John