MCV:
> [...] At the end of the TRB stage (ca. 3500/3000
> BC), important social and economic transformations took place,
> resulting in the Globular Amphora, Corded Ware and Bell Beaker
> phenomena. As a result of this, Indo-European languages eventually
> spread out into Western and SW Europe (Italic and Celtic), into the
> Balkans ("Daco-Thracian", Albanian, Greek, Armenian) [in the process
> pushing pre-Anatolian, "Tripolyean", and possibly Etruscoid
languages
> into Greece and Anatolia],
On a couple of occasions, I've quoted the article from a recent JIES
which makes vacant for some-hundred years prior to 3200. Climate and a
sea-level higher than present seem to be involved in this
depopulation. After this, the earliest cultural horizon seems related
to the Cyclades, with nothing related to the north.
If this all be true, one is left considering the idea that Greek could
somehow be autochthonous to Greece. This was the JIES's author's idea.
Pushing all these theoretical languages into an empty Greece does not
solve the Greek substrate problem; it actually would seem to
complicate it. My current thinking is that the Ezero culture was at
least partly Anatolic-speaking and that they went directly to Anatolia
via the Troad, and on the whole, ignored Greece.
I remind everyone of Homer's description of Patroclus's funeral. If
this is not a kurgan burial, I don't know what is. A tumulus,
sacrificed horses, dogs, servants, even suttee -- the whole ball of
wax. Even tho' we all seem to be happily dumping the Blessed Gimbutas'
theory, there are still these archaeological and literary realities.