From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 154
Date: 1999-11-02
----- Original Message -----From: Alexander StolbovSent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 4:29 PMSubject: [cybalist] Re: Cowboys on HorsebackPiotr wrote:<< I suggest, instead, that PIE was spoken as a relatively homogeneous language some 7500 years ago in the Danubian area (certainly "within credible boundaries"), from which the bearers of the Linear Pottery culture took its descendants to northern Europe, and from which its other descendants spread to Anatolia and to the steppes.>>According to this, the scheme of the initial IE branching must look like the following, must not it?P I E/ \/ \Northerh Southernbranch branch(apparently Germano-Balto-Slavic) / \/ \Anatolian Steppe groups(all other IE)If so, the degree of similarity of, say, Indic and Slavic languages must be less, than of Indic and Anatolian and much less, than of Indic and Celtic. Does linguistics confirm this?This is not what I believe to be the case. In particular, I didn't wish to imply that Anatolian was more closely related to the steppe groups than to the rest of IE. In fact, I believe the first split was into (Proto-)Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE. The latter (possibly after the separation of Proto-Tocharians, though it's extremely difficult to place Tocharian anywhere in any schema) underwent differentiation into two blocks; let's call them Western and Eastern.The Western group arose as a result of a migration up the Danube basin. After a few hundred years of independent existence it was divided into three major dialectal groupings. We need new names at this point, so let's call these groups Pannonian (the ancestor of Illyrian, Messapic and other extinct languages), Italo-Celtic (north of the Alps, on the upper Danube and Rhine, including odd fellows like Venetic, probably a northern subbranch of Italic) and Northern (possibly more than one branch, occupying the lower courses of the main rivers of the North European Plain, the only surviving group is Germanic, originally a periferal northernmost subbranch; this branch is responsible for most of the so-called Old European hydronymy).The first branch to split from the main Eastern stock was Hellenic, which migrated southwards into the Balkans; after its separation the other groups underwent phonological innovations known as the satem palatalisations, let's therefore call that group Satemic. (Note that Satemic is a monophyletic taxon, while the "Kentum" group is not!) The Satemic-speakers partly remained in the Danubian homeland, partly spread into the Black Sea steppes (perhaps in the wake of the Proto-Tocharians). The "Transylvanian" group gave rise to Thracian (+ Armenian) and Getic (+ Albanian) languages; the "North Pontic" group split into Balto-Slavic (ocupying the northern zone of the Pontic region, between the Bug and the Dnieper) and the Aryan (= Indo-Iranian) branch (the steppe horsemen proper).This is the "family-tree" part of the story, but the history of IE has areal aspects as well. Interaction between distantly related languages occurred frequently in the North European Plain, where the Northern, Balto-Slavic and northward-migrating Pannonian dialects formed a Sprachbund during the late Neolithic. For some reason the Northern branch suffered a severe crisis at the beginning of the Bronze Age (epidemic diseases? destruction by Pontic nomads? -- but the Scandinavian outpost remained unscathed); the vacuum was filled by the Veneti who moved from their Alpine cradle (also the starting point of the Indo-Europeanisation of Italy at a later date) to the Elbe and the Oder, creating trading routes that linked the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic. Even before that happened there had been IE movements towards the eastern Baltic area and Finland by diverse Eastern groups including the Proto-Aryans.The beginning of the Iron Age was marked by a Celtic expansion in Western and central Europe; they wiped out the northern Veneti and established contacts with the survivors of the Northern branch (the Germani). The Slavs still lived in the shadow of the Pontic Iranians and within the sphere of Scythian cultural influence. The rest is familiar history.I do not insist that all of the above is true; there are many speculative details that you may find implausible. I'll be grateful for any comments.<<... some distinctly "Indic" Aryas were present in Anatolia and Babylonia before 1500 BC.>>Do you mean anything besides (and earlier than) Mitanni Aryas? I'm ready to expect some Aryas there about 18th c. BC but have no evidence.I mean -- in addition to the Mitanni, of course -- the more-or-less contemporaneous Kassite ruling clans in Babylonia. Their lists of official divinities include such familiar Aryan names as Surias 'Sun God' and Maruttas 'War God'.<<By the way, the neolithic cattle of central and northern Europe were derived from the native subspecies of the aurochs, different from the one domesticated in Anatolia and brought from there to Greece (while sheep and goats were simply imported).>>Very interesting! Does this conclusion made on the base of genetic investigations? Could you supply us with the relevant references and/or quote the principal propositions? Do the authors mention cattle of the Saharan origin? Do you have data on pigs?Several Polish prehistorians repeat this piece of information, noting also that the proportion between cattle and sheep/goats changed drastically in favour of the former among the Danubian cultures. This is hardly surprising, given the ecological differences between the Balkans and the plains to the north. I gather that the inference was made on the basis of anatomical features rather that genetic data, but I don't know, really. Nor do I know much about the origin of European domestic pigs. If I find any precise references to archaeozoological publications, I'll send you word. Perhaps somebody on the Cybalist knows something of relevance to these questions.Piotr