From: markodegard@...
Message: 191
Date: 1999-11-06
The poll (your opinion) about Lithuanian being the 'oldest' IE language (as a linguistic non-professional I didn't take part of...) made me think:For reasons I cannot fathom, this posting shows only two blanks and a less-than symbol in both the email version and in version you read on the web; but if you hit reply on the web version, it *does* show up. Bizarre.My house is near one of the (ceramically determinating for this phase, cf. Kanta) LM III A/B graves of Milatos/Crete, where a wonderful necklace of Baltic amber was found (this word reminds me of German 'Ambra', a product of the - dead - whale head produced by the sea, but in modern/ancient GR 'Elektron - with GR 'H', - a name also used for a mixture of silver and (more) gold in ancient - and later alchemist, too - times). The only connection I see is the golden-clear color of the material.
But there must be more - we are talking about an important part of north-south connection (trade) in the LBA (there are other finds of Baltic amber from - at least - Mycenaean Greece, too). I believe the language of Linear A to be a very early IE (and Etruscan too, by the way, on purely mythological grounds).
We know there is an archaeological connection about the 14th-15th century.
What about linguistical connections? (Bearing a Lithuanian-suffixed name myself I'd really like to know - I'm German, by the way - that's how wars make connections you can't imagine later ...)
The Baltic-Mycenaean (Minoan?) link is certain on archaeological grounds - how about linguistical contributions?
Yes, 'Electra' means 'amber'. It's also the root of 'electricity' because of the static charge it can build and the 'shock' it can give off. In Greek mythology, small pieces of amber were the tears of the gods. Aside from it's beauty, I suspect the electrical charge in amber gave it extraordinarily mythic properties: it was magic!
I've read of the Baltic amber trade, but cannot comment much. In later times (Mycenaean and later), the main center for the Mediterranean trade seems to have been at the head of the Adriatic Sea, somewhere at the mouth of the Po, or perhaps, at what is now Trieste, with the overland route taking over from there, either via Austria or Hungary, or right over the Alps into Bavaria. There was also an extraordinary trade in Polish salt in ancient times too (rock salt, for preserving food).
I cannot imagine a linguistic connection, not really; at least, I've not read of any. Still, at 1500 BCE, it might have been possible for a speaker of one of the more archaic Greek dialects, and a speaker of an equally archaic Balto-Slavic dialect to actually understand each other in some significant degree; there would have been only 1,000 years difference, depending on your view of when divergence occurred.
Everything I've read denies the IE-ness for any of the Aegean cultures until the arrival of the Greeks.
Mark Odegard