Re: Tripolyie (was: Bell Beakers in the Ukraine? and Germanic loan

From: Alexander Stolbov
Message: 95
Date: 1999-10-22

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To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 4:29 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Fwd: Odp: Bell Beakers in the Ukraine? and Germanic loanwords in Finno-Ugric


<<About Ukraine and PIE: could anyone help me in understanfing why a key
factor as the Tripolyie cities (Tauropolis & Co?) is still remaining
out from the general debate on PIE. Should I be informed about
something I still don't know?
Do you have suggestions about articles or congress papers on this
matter?
Shouldn't it be of enormous impact on IE studies, specially when
considering the M. Gymbutas theories?
Thank you for any help and, please, forgive this first attempt of
participation of a newcomer, if it may look a bit naif
best regards to all participants and compliments to Cyril & Co. for the
site
Pietro Giurickovic>>


Dear Pietro,

Tripolyie is a prominent Eneolithic East European culture, therefore it must be in the sphere of interests of IEists, no matter
which homeland hypothesis seems to be more likely for them. As to me, I believe that people of the Sredny Stog culture, a
contemporary and a neighbour of Tripolyie, can be attributed as PIE (see details at http://siem.newmail.ru ).

The chronological and geographical localisation of these 2 cultures is almost the same, so why do I prefer Sredny Stog? There
are several reasons:

1) Many highly specific features of IE (obvious prevalence of livestock breeding, domesticated horse, light wheel, chariots,
no matriarchy) can be found in Sredny Stog culture and their direct descendants, but can not in Tripolyie.
2) Tripolyie is a bright but local phenomenon, I don't know evident offspings of this culture.
3) Tripolyie was a long living and highly specialized culture ("protoagrocities" is an example). It's hardly possibly to
imagine that sach unlike civilisations as Hittite, Greek, Indic, Germanic etc. are the "daughters" of it. No one of them
demonstrates Tripolyan peculiarieties.

On the other hand we can't say that Tripolyie culture disappeared without any traces. There was a mixed Usatovo variant, which
combined both Tripolyan and "steppe" features. As it was placed in the Southwest part of the Sredny Stog area, we could try to
associate people of that culture with future Anatolians or folks of the Western branch of IE (Celto-Italics, Illyrians,
Tocharians etc.)

For referencies I usually use "Eneolit SSSR" (The Eneolithic of the USSR), Moscow: Nauka, 1982 [in Russian], where a detailed
and well illustrated description of Tripolyie culture is given. There must be a rich literature ussued in Romania as well.

Alexander Stolbov