From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 71421
Date: 2013-10-18
> Dear listfolk,
>
> Of course I know that Russian did not only spread 7000 km or so to the
> east, all the way to Alaska, but also a few hundred kilometers to the north,
> Murmansk etc. I had no intention of putting all the details of millennia and
> thousands of kilometers over very diverse terrain etc. in an ordinary
> e-mail. Fact remains that Russian spread much farther to the east than in
> all other directions combined.
>
> Moreover, these amendment about Russian originating in a "corner" of its
> historical area of expansion would also apply to Indo-Aryan. Haryana, the
> area of the Vedas, is not an absolute corner of the IE area, for Indo-Aryan
> spread to Bengal and Sri Lanka. Nonetheless, Haryana is "corner" enough to
> make it unpalatable as homeland to most Indo-Europeanists.
>
> But to make a complicated issue simple: fact remains most of all that, as I
> maintain, the homeland usually postulated for IE is in the middle of its
> historic expansion area, whereas in all the languages or language groups I
> mentioned, this is not the case. Unless someone maintains that Russian
> originated in mid-Siberia, Amerind originated in Panama, Arabic originated
> in Libya, Austronesian originated in Indonesia, Turkic originated in
> Turkmenistan. Given these facts, seeking the homeland in another area than
> in Russia is not far-fetched at all.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Koenraad Elst
>
>
> ---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
> I am not going to pretend to know much of anything about the Indo- parts
> of the Indo-European language family. But I do know highly selective data
> plucking and overly smoothed expressions of what those data say.
>
>
> This is an example of such:
>
> Thus, at least a dozen Indo-Europeanists have given me as their very first
> reason for rejecting the OIT that the homeland can't be at the far end of
> the area of expansion (whereas the Volga is neatly in the middle). But in
> fact, starting an expansion from a far corner is the rule rather than the
> exception: Austronesian (ca. Taiwan > south), Bantu (ca. Nigeria >
> southeast), Amerind (Canada > south), Turkic (western Mongolia > west);
> Russian (ca. Kiev > east), Arabic (Arabia < west). This is of course not
> enough to prove the OIT, but it undermines one of the common assumptions
> behind the AIT,
>
>
> I'm not going to go through them all. But let's take Russian.
>
>
> First, Russian is part of the Slavic language family. This family likely
> originated somewhere in what is now Poland or Belarus, which is northwest of
> Kiev.
>
>
> From this location, it migrated in every direction - north as far as north
> can go (i.e., the Kola Peninsula), west (Czech Rep), southwest (Balkans),
> south-southeast (Ukraine), and west (modern Russia).
>
>
> Now let's take Russian. The Kiev region is a small area, but that's ok,
> because languages generally start in a small area. But to claim that Russian
> spread west only is blatantly false.
>
>
> From the Kiev region, it spread south toward the Black Sea, southeast
> heading toward the Caspian, southwest heading toward Moldova aka Bessarabia.
> It also spread east (southeast, northeast) to other parts of Ukraine,
> Belarus. And north, northwest to Kola, the modern Russia core territories,
> and then through Siberia and to the Russian Far East. This was generally an
> eastward progression, but eastward from Moscow, not Kiev. And only
> generally. When large rivers were encountered it spread north, mostly,
> because that is the way rivers flow in Asiatic Russia, but also in a
> southerly route as rivers permitted. It also took a hook south-southeast
> into what we can generalize as Manchuria. And northeast/east to Alaska.
>
>
> Two things are notable, however. To the east of Kiev is an area where
> Russian faced some of its greatest difficulties expanding to. Too many
> Turkic tribes already living there. Beyond that, more Turkic tribes, then
> Mongols of various ethnicities.
>
>
> Second, we are playing games with time as well as distance. We are dealing
> with about 1500 years here. Long enough that Russia was no longer spoken in
> Ukraine, with similar linguistic differentiation in other areas of eastern
> Europe.
>
>
>
> Russian returned to Ukraine in a not-very-friendly manner from roughly the
> late 17th century onward. In between, cities like Moscow and Novgorod became
> the centers of the Russian language. Again, there was little expansion out
> of the core cultural region until the 17th century. It was then that Russian
> explorers went north to found Arkhangelsk on the White Sea. Then that they
> began their long battle to the Pacific, requiring many wars against the
> Turkic and Mongol peoples who were already occupying locations such as Kazan
> and Samara.
>
>
>
> Ultimately, the invention of the railroad was needed to successfully get
> Russian moved eastward. Until then, it arguably had as much success
> expanding north, south, and west as it did east.
>
>
> The rule is that languages expand as a consequence of cultural expansion.
> They will generally attempt to expand in every direction possible. Certain
> things will hinder expansion. Geography and other cultures powerful enough
> to resist the expansion are the two major factors. There is also culture -
> unless you are a member of a culture with domesticated animals that you can
> ride on, or have agriculture, you generally don't have an expansionist
> policy due to absence of resources.
>
>
> So what made Russian stop expanding west compared to east? Germanic
> peoples, and to a lesser extent, Baltic peoples. South? Ottoman Empire.
> Often with the support of various Germanic groups. What worked in favor in
> the east? After the Turkic groups in the relatively near eastern region from
> the Russian core (i.e., up to the Urals), the weather was terrible and the
> population was mostly subsistence hunter gatherers in small groups without
> coordinated governments. They're still there. They just have been given
> restricted access to the areas where the major rivers and the railroads
> are.
>
>
> The furthest southeast was much harder. Manchuria was full of Manchus and
> other Tungustic peoples. And there were Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans to
> contend with as well. The result was lots of wars. Relationships there are
> still not so good. Competing claims over territories.
>
>
> Northeast, nomadic tribes. So far east it's west, Alaska, was sold. Russian
> expansion east stopped. But if you live in a major city in the American east
> coast or Great Lakes area, you know that Russian expansion west has not
> stopped.
>
>
>
> We can play similar games with other languages. For example, Arabic. I'm
> pretty sure that Iraq is not west of Arabia. I am also sure that what we
> know as Arabic was not spoken throughout what we now call the Arabian
> peninsula at the time of the Koranic expansion. Again, this is common.
> Languages expand from a small territory. But again, with Arabic, we can't go
> west. We have to go north and then west. Then we might go north again
> (Spain). We might take boats south along the African coasts (and Nile River)
> and across the Arabian Sea to India and beyond (Indonesians did not
> spontaneously become a Muslim nation. Nor did the Kazakhs. Neither group are
> west of Arabia).
>
>
>
> Similarly, Turkey is rather far south of western Mongolia. And under the
> Ottomans, it went into a period of expansion south to Arabia, and famously
> to the walls of Vienna. Then it was pushed back.
>
>
>
> Also, the further you go back in history, the greater the difficulty in
> determining whether a group of people is Turkic, Mongol, Tungustic, or
> otherwise. Since these groups were nomadic throughout most of history, the
> information comes from the people they invaded. The Slavs and the Chinese
> were not incredibly skilled at distinguishing among the men on horses that
> were attempting to kill them and ride off with their valuables. And the
> apparent lack of expansion of Turkic peoples to the east rather than west
> may very well be due to the Chinese being more skilled at repelling
> invaders. Or having a large belt of desert between them and north central
> Asia, and building a large wall.
>
>
>
> Eurasia north of the Himalayas has had so many ebbs and flows of Slavs,
> Mongols, Turks, Chinese, Manchus, Persians and many other peoples (even
> Greeks) that it is extremely overly simplistic to say that any particular
> group expanded in any particular direction without being much more specific
> about the group, the locations, and the time.
>
>
>
> And Amerind? It spread 10000 miles from northwestern Canada to populate two
> continents and hundreds of offshore islands, yet is considered to have just
> expanded south. Amerind expanded in all directions possible. Pretending that
> the Brazilian coast is south of the Canadian Rockies requires massively
> distorted cartographic thinking. Let's also remember that Alaska comes
> before Canada, and would be west, not south, of the route taken by the
> proto-Amerinds. Who came from northeast Asia, also not south of Canada.
> When, exactly, did Amerind become a group separate from the northeast Asian
> languages it is descended from? Again, without some sort of specificity of
> dates, we can play around with the information until we get our desired
> result.
>
>
>
> OK, we have two left. Bantu spread with the development of advanced
> agriculture and metallurgy. It expanded because the peoples already living
> there did not have these technologies. However, it is again rather crude to
> consider the bulk of Subsaharan Africa as "southeast" of Nigeria. Kenya and
> South Africa are a few thousand miles apart.
>
>
>
> Bantu did not expand north because of the Sahara Desert. It did not do so
> well in the Nile region due to the presence of cultures with technology
> equivalent or better than the Bantu. Even this ignores important details -
> there were non-Bantu groups who survived the Bantu expansion, including
> those who moved into or already lived in regions where Bantu agriculture and
> metallurgy were not feasible. Bantu expansion was also halted and forced to
> retreat by the expansion of people with better technology, Europeans.
>
>
> Austronesian: Again, rather crude to refer to Madagascar and Tonga as being
> south of Taiwan. And the most likely reason for a lack of expansion to the
> north and west was the existence of more advanced (technologically), more
> populous, and more politically organized cultures. In particular, the
> culture that would conquer Taiwan, the Chinese.
>
>
> I would say that the rule is, where possible, a linguistic group will expand
> in all directions. Whether a group can expand in any particular direction is
> dependent on the local geography, demography, and technology. I would also
> add that ignoring scope is a poor idea - comparing a single language
> (Russian) to a family of hundreds (Bantu) provides another way to pluck
> examples to fit the data to the theory.
>
>
>
>
>