From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17084
Date: 2002-12-10
----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 2:39 AM
Subject: Re: [tied]_Does_Koenraad_Elst_Meet_Hock´s_Challenge?
> *****GK: I don't see how one can demonstrate on
> archaeological grounds that Balto-Slavic and
> especially Indo-Iranian (+Nuristani) expanded from a
> central area identified with the territory occupied by
> LBK.
Well they didn't. LBK ended a long time before these two branches arose. The eastward diffusion of IE was certainly a long-term process. I'd date the Satem shift to around 3200-3000 BC, and the Balto-Slavic/Indo-Iranian split a few centuries later. The Satem innovation should probably be correlated with the quick territorial expansion of a speech community: the change was a radical one and it led to the isolation of a few distantly related groups such as (pre-)Tocharian, "Palaeo-Bangani" and (pre-)Greek in the east. A phenomenon of this kind could be expected to leave clear traces in the archaeological record.
The further fragmentation of Proto-Satem (producing several "basal" lineages) was presumably less dramatic until the eventual separation of Indo-Iranian, a close-knit group with numerous common innovations dividing it sharply from Balto-Slavic (despite such common features as the RUKI treatment of *s). This again suggests an "inflationary scenario" -- a pioneering community moving into a new niche and expanding after a time, while their language gave rise to a large and enormously successful branch.
My tentative guess is that the spread of the Globular Amphora culture can be connected with the growth of Proto-Satem. It's difficult to resist the hypothesis that Indo-Iranian established itself as a separate branch as its speakers became highly specialised steppe pastoralist. Which particular steppe culture could serve as the earliest archaeological correlate of Proto-Indo-Iranian is an open question as far as I'm concerned. It's easier to indicate putative Indo-Iranian-speaking cultures at the end of the third millennium, always with the reservation that language and material culture may or may not co-evolve.
Piotr