From: anthonyappleyard
Date: 2003-01-04
> What support is there for a theory that I have come across, that
> the Indo-Europeans came from northwest India? The immediate
> scenario is that a bad drought in northwest India caused
> migrations, and invasion and immigration pressure on the remaining
> fertile land in
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
> This has been widely discussed, and by far the consensus is that
> such a scenarios does not explain the linguistic evidence. For
> example, there would have had to be several waves of emigration,
> not just one, because of links that Indo-Iranian has to some IE
> languages and not others. Indian scholars link the theory, and wish
> it to be true, but it does fly - in my opinion absurdly - against
> the evidence. Peter
About what dates, or range of archived message serial numbers, was
this theory discusssed?
--- "matt6219 <matt62@...>" <matt62@...> wrote:
> I have always thought that the idea of a single migration from
> India to be absurd, and that a number of migrations to be much more
> likely. Why would this scenario be a problem ?
Likely in the beginning, northwest India was wetter than now, and
could support a dense population, not only from the River Sarasvati,
but also from rain. As deforestation and overgrazing gradually
destroyed the forests in the Indus / Sarasvati plain, the land dried
up, and recurrent droughts drove successive waves of emigrants from
the area, who were likely also encouraged to leave and get right away
by the army of the king of the remaining fertile area who got tired
of being invaded and raided by people from the drought-affected areas.
I have the book "Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization" by
Navaratna S.Rajaram and David Frawley, ISBN 81-85990-36-0, publ. by
Voice of India.
This book says that Natwar Jha has decipered the Indus valley script
and that it turned out to be Sanskrit written in a syllabary that
largely ignored vowels. What support is there for this decipherment?
If this is correct, then when the Indus Valley script started to be
used, I suspect that its language was likely more like PIE than
Sanskrit, and in early inscriptions linguists should look for forms
with these features:-
(1) Second palatalization not yet happened: e.g. *[kakara] instead of
[cakara] = "I have made".
(2) First (satem) palatalization not yet happened.
(3) Laryngeals represented by consonant signs.