I'm not sure what date is "usually
assumed". In my chronology of IE splits, the Satem development should be
dated at ca. 3000 BC. The very existence of Tocharian suggests (and to
my mind even proves) that the Satemised area, while eccentrically placed,
did not include all the eastern IE languages. If the Bangani
substrate proves to be real, it will strengthen such a scenario. The
spread of Indo-Iranian and especially the wildfire expansion of Iranian in the
last centuries of the second millennium BC led to the extinction of numerous
local languages in Central Asia, most of them presumably non-IE, but perhaps
including a few non-Satem IE ones. The Tocharian group alone survived long
enough to be recorded thanks to its relative isolation in the Tarim Pendi. I do
not suggest that Proto-Tocharian was already spoken there in the third
millennium, or that the ancestor of the Bangani substrate had by then reached
the area where Bangani is now. Relict languages for obvious reasons _survive_ in
natural refugia like the Caucasus, the Pamirs or the Himalayas, which desn't
mean that they have always been spoken there and nowhere else.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 11:55 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Bangani
--- In cybalist@......, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@......>
wrote:
> My opinion is that as the Satem innovation spread in the
eastern
> part of "Indo-Europia", it left a residue of isolated
Centum
> dialects in the east: the "Hellenoid" languages (Greek,
Macedonian,
> Phrygian) close to the Euxine, the Tocharian languages on
the
> easternmost fringe, plus God knows what else.
This has the
corollary that either the satem development was later
than usually assumed,
or that IE spread southeast of Aral Sea was
earlier (with the question of any
relation with IA speakers). That
is to say, IE speakers could have been
present in presentday
Afghanistan/Kashmir or even further east by 2500 BCE.
This is
comepletely immaterial to IE studies, but there are others to
whom
this is unacceptable.