J Crary:
>Marija Gimbutas' Kurganish culture-language would be a very primitive
>proto-IE type.
You mean... Tyrrhenian, perhaps? :) I've already presented the
idea of Tyrrhenian (the ancestor of Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic) spreading
into Europe, ahead of the IndoEuropean peoples. The
spread would start at around 5500-5000 BCE where it moves from the
north down into the Balkans but later also west into Central
Europe.
Thus we have an "IE-ish" speaking agricultural people already in
Central to Eastern Europe well before the IndoEuropeans whose
languages are easily overtaken by the related IndoEuropean tongues,
except for Rhaetic whose placement might be testimony to the
Tyrrhenian expansion. This also explains the surprising lack of substratum
in Eastern Europe even though common sense tells us
that there must have been non-IE languages there before the IEs
came.
Lastly, when Germanic and especially Celtic venture further west,
they finally come across some truely exotic substrate languages
beyond the blaz� Tyrrhenian fringe, like Vasconic, Iberian and
Tartessian languages. These quite different substrate
languages help to alter these IE languages in unique ways, thus
explaining EVERYthing!
No more theories, folks. We found a winnah. :P
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