From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 8400
Date: 2001-08-09
>As I understand it, some linguists recognize about 30% of GermanicProbably not. Glen says the Finns came to Europe much later.
>languages are non-IE words. This substatum must have been the
>aboriginal population the incoming IE peoples found in northern
>Europe.
>There were two layers of peoples previous to the IE arrival:
>the earliest was the mesolithic/neolithic population of the Ertebolle
>culture of Denmark. Related groups must have ranged beyond this area.
>This culture basically stretches back to the terminal palaeolithic
>Maglemose culture that also included Britain and much of the northern
>European plain and Baltic. Was this somehow related to Finnish?
>I know of no study that shows the non-IE vocabulary in Germanic wasYes, likely.
>related to Uralic or anything else.
>The other group was the megalithic peoples that spread up the
>Atlantic seaboard during the warm Atlantic climatic period. While it
>might be intruging to equate these peoples to the modern Basques or
>ancient Iberians, there is no evidence other than being part of the
>same broad cultural tradition and apparently skeletal type that
>either was the case.
>Nautical terms were especially adopted by the early proto-Germanics
>as, being the continental pastoralists that they were, their
>technology and familiarity with the sea and navigation was inferior
>to that of the locals'.
>This is one clue that navigation was surprisingly developed in
>Neolithic Atlantic Europe. How else would the early farmers make it
>to Ireland, Britain, the Orkneys and Shetlands? We should not doubt
>that they settled in southern Scandinavia, largely absorbing the late
>Ertebolle and related people.
>Might not the Skagerrak and Kattegat be corruptions of words the pre-Because it was not only Scandinavian but "international"? The names could
>IE ancient mariners had for these bodies of water? Why would a
>Scandinavian need to go to the Netherlands to find a name for a sea
>in his own backyard?