Re: [tied] Danubian homeland?

----- Original Message -----

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 1:12 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Danubian homeland?

> Aha, that changes things.  What about the Caspian groups: younger still?

 

Not sure, they were not covered by the Ukrainian/Polish project I referred to. I wouldn't be surprised if the dates given in the literature were too deep. They are rarely based on reliable series of radiocarbon datings, more often on comparative analyses (Asia Minor analogies, etc.).

> The pastoral, horse-breeding communities of the Yamnaya culture would nicely correlate with (the earliest stages of) Indo-Iranian.

Indeed.  Because of the early dating, I was more or less forced to include at least Pre-Greeks in there as well, but that doesn't seem to be necessary anymore.

>> The separation of Tocharian must have happened early enough to account for its centum character and the conspicuous absence of common innovations with Indo-Iranian (or, for that matter, with any other non-Anatolian branch). On the other hand, Tocharian has some lexical affinities with the "North European" areal grouping.

> So that means that there's something to my suggestion that they may be descended from earlier (LBK/Lengyel era?) penetrations into the steppe area?

 

Either this (if Afanasyevo was Tocharian), or some TRB "lost tribe".

> The Afanasyevo hypothesis is difficult to prove, but it's the best thing we have right now.

 

Possibly the best, given the extremely isolated character of Tocharian (even compared to, say, Armenian), I only wonder if some lexical fields in Tocharian are not too young for Afanasyevo -- in particulat kuk&l/kokale 'wagon'. But *kWekWlo- may have meant "circle (as a geometrical concept), wheel (as a round object)" even well before the invention of wagons.

> I assume you're talking about Georgiev/Merlinge/van Windekens Pelasgian, and not the Herodotus variety?  Well, I'm pessimistic about the chances of tracing that demonstrably back to the Tripolye area. Even so, this "Pelasgian" substrate is sometimes curiously reminiscent of Germanic and sometimes of Armenian (which I consider to be the most "archaic" West and East IE languages, respectively [taking Anatolian and Tocharian out of consideration]).  Tripolye as the Proto-Armenian homeland?  Why not?

 

Maybe the Volhynia/Podolia area was where the later "minor satem" groups were formed. I don't think all of Tripolye could realistically be connected with Proto-Armenian, but the Tripolye/GA interaction zone (with Proto-Greek and Proto-Thracian near by, and Proto-Getic/Albanian/whatever somewhere near the upper Dniester or even in southern Poland.

> I think we're in agreement then.  Let me try to resume in my way: Proto-Indo-European was spoken ca. up to 5500 BC by "Balkan Neolithic" peoples, specifically in the middle Danube area (Körös culture).  Ca. 5500 BC the Linear Ware culture (LBK) spread out from that area along the rivers and loess-covered areas of Central and Northern Europe. This marks the separation of what was to become the Anatolian group [which in fact were the ones who stayed behind].  The LBK complex split into several local varieties (SBK, Roessen, Lengyel etc.), but before 4000 BC a new culture (TRB = Funnel Beaker) reunified most of the area, absorbing also the hitherto non-agricultural autochthonous peoples in N.Germany & Denmark (Erteboelle-Ellerbek culture) [which may account for the substantial non-IE substrate in Germanic].  At some time during the LBK/TRB era, Indo-Europeans also infiltrated the steppe from the north-west, ultimately to become the historical Tocharians.  The exact position of the Tripolye culture, maintaining contacts with the Balkans, the Steppe, and North-Central Europe, remains to be determined.  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], and into the steppe area (Indo-Iranian). This assumes that Germanic and Balto-Slavic more or less stayed behind in the western and eastern parts of what had been the home area [of non-Anatolian-IE].

> Whether the Balkan Neolithic itself was an autochthonous phenomenon or of ultimately Anatolian origin is irrelevant to the development of PIE itself.  If a new language was indeed introduced by Anatolian farmers, it was not PIE, but a language ancestral to it ["Indo-Tyrrhenian" is a plausible hypothesis].

 

Yes, except that, in my opinion, Balto-Slavic originated in the eastern part of the area colonised by the Globular Amphora culture (the forest zone of eastern Europe), i.e. not quite in the non-Anatolian home area. The whole (pre-)Satem grouping would have moved east from Kujavia in central Poland.

 

Piotr

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.