On Wed, 11 Dec 2002 02:18:49 +0100 (MET), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>And could the Kurgan raid reflect an assault of some
>IE-ans on others, whereby for large parts of the territory it would only
>be the language of the victorious ones we would be reconstructing?
For the "Kurgan raids" that is exactly my position. Indo-Europeans
from the steppe area entered the Balkan peninsula and imposed their
language on the people that were already there, most of them
Indo-European or para-Indo-European (Tyrrhenian?). Some of them were
pushed back into Anatolia (Hittite cum suis) and Greece (Greek
"Parnassos" [Anatolian] substrate, Lemnian?), others did not survive
linguistically (of course there were langauges in the Balkan
peninsula, such as "Illyrian", of which we know virtually nothing, and
they may or may not descend from the pre-Kurgan inhabitants).
In relation to this, George Knysh wrote:
>But the
>reverse relationship, viz., the growing and eventually
>overwhelming influence of steppe cultures on the west
>is richly documented in the archaeological
>literature.*****
The influence of steppe cultures on the "west" is only richly
documented for the Balkan peninsula. There is no proof of steppe
involvement in the genesis of the Globular Amphora and Corded Ware
cultures more to the north. In my opinion, we have an archaeological
stalemate: The Pontic/Caspian ("Kurgan") theory cannot explain the
Indo-Europeans of the "north" (because there is no direct (genetic)
link Sredny Stog/Yamnaya => TRB/Globular Amphora/Corded Ware. And the
Linear Pottery theory cannot explain the Indo-Europeans of the "east"
because there is no direct (genetic) link Tripolje/LBK/TRB =>
Bug-Dnestr/Dnepr-Donets.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...