Re: [tied] Acceptance of the Indo-Hittite Family

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 45026
Date: 2006-06-20

I think he's referring to speculation that the Gutians were early Tokharians. Does anyone know how strong the evidence is for this?

"Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...> wrote:
The latest nonsense dug up by Mr. Melkar is from:

http://everything2. com/index. pl?node_id= 1674658
>
> "The Tocharians themselves are the first Indo-Europeans to appear in
> the recorded history of the Near East--and the lexicon of PIE supports
> this contention, as evidenced by the many words for high mountains,
> mountain lakes, and rapid rivers flowing from mountain sources--very
> much unlike the steppes north of the Black Sea."

>
M. Kelkar
>
The historical Tokharoi "were known to the Greeks to have emigrated
from Turkestan to Bactria in the second century B.C. (Mallory)". I'm
not sure if Turkestan and Bactria are properly considered Near East,
but if so, and if these people were Indo-Europeans, they are a bit
later than, for example, the Mitanni's Indic horse-trainers.
In any case, the historical Tokharoi probably have nothing to
whatever to do (except by having their name adopted in the early 20th
century A.D.) with the people who wrote an Indo-European language in
Turkestan in the 6th to 8th centuries A.D.
There are mummies in Turkestan with "European" features from as
early as the 18th century B.C., but it is a risky assumption these
spoke the language of manuscripts from 2 1/2 millenia later, and
anyway these belong to archeology, not "recorded history".
And "the many words for high mountains, mountain lakes, and rapid
rivers flowing from mountain sources" -- care to cite some of them?
Dan



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