The IE migrations and the Black Sea

From: aquila_grande
Message: 44987
Date: 2006-06-15

In all the treaties and discussion I have seen about the early IE
migrations, the Black Sea is concidered as a hinderance or even a
fence for the migration. The question of how the IE tribes got
around to Anatolia (or the other way) allways pop up. In the same
way the Caspian sea is considered a fence for the migration eastward
that had to be circumvented.

I think tink is a wrong way of thinking. It is higly probable that
the IE tribes around the Anube delta or in Anatolia could use boats,
and effectively migrate across these seas or at least along the
shores, and probably great groups of IE people could migrate
simultanously at these seas. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl
did show that it is possible to even migrate across the Atlantic
Ocean and the Pacific in simple fleets, and that the Sea in fact
made long distance migration easier.

Then the Black sea or Caspian Sea would not be any problem for
migration. On the contrary, they would facilate the migration, and
make mass migration, colonization and trading easier.

I therefore think the migation to or from Anatolia, and the
migration down to Greece likely occured by boat and most likely
streightacross the sea.

If migration by boat is considered as the most likely form of
migration in this area, I think it will be easier to establish a
theory about a migration pattern that explaines the structural
groupings of the IE languages.