Odp: No Subject

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 421
Date: 1999-12-05

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Brent Lords
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 1999 6:15 AM
Subject: [cybalist] No Subject
Brent wrote:
Again I was surprized.  

I know some others have indicated dates as early as Early Bronze Age
for the Tocharian and 3000 BCE for the Anatolian split off. (I don't
know your field enough to know if there are even later dates, you
indicated that there were others who thought even earlier dates were
possible). 
I am used to seeing discussions dealing with several of hundreds of
years amoung archaeologists, for events during this time frame. 
Thousands of years is a little different for me.  
As I have stated before, I am not a linguist, and not even that
familiar with linguists work, aside from some very very basic material
dealing with Semitic languages. I assumed that languages related to
specific cultures had been identified (via artifacts with writing,
place names, or later written stories, mythologies, documents etc -
which I understood to be more or less typical for Semitic work) - I
assumed that was how linguists were able to establish the locus for a
group, shown on their maps.  
But if your talking about periods prior to 2500-3000BCE, obviously you
can't be talking about there being any sort of contemporary artifacts
with writing.

Archaelogists dealing with the Middle East haven't been able to
identify any languages much before 3500BCE, as far as I know. They have
a hard enough time telling if any two settlements are related via
artifacts - from this time period.  It is amazing what you have done. 

Which brought up the question in my mind - how far back does written IE
go back? After reflecting on it, the oldest I heard about, was Hittite
about 1900 BCE.  Anything older?

How does a linguist go about estimating dates prior to this time?
And finally - how do linguists go about tying a language to a group of
peoples and a location, when there is no written document available to
identify the language, or the group?

Sounds to me like a very difficult job.  Now I understand the fixation
on Sun gods and goddess, mythical beings etc. at this board - I think I
would turn to the occult too, if I faced such a task. 

Again - my gratitude.

Brent
Dear Brent,
 
So you're beginning to realise how difficult the job is. It would be nice if we had more written records dating back to really remote times. We are like palaeonthologists trying to trace back the evolution of a group of animals with just a few relatively recent fossils to go by. On the other hand, it's a real miracle that our methods enable us to reconstruct partly the vocabulary, phonology and grammatical structure of languages which were never written down. The reconstruction is so convincing that the linguistic community generally accepts its general framework as something demonstrated 'beyond reasonable doubt'; there are controversies regarding various details, but that's normal in any science. Our asterisked forms can be discussed just as if they were words taken from any recorded language, and the way people speak about Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic etc. indicates that such entities are regarded as something more than mere hypotheses.
 
The task of dating unrecorded languages and relating them to archaeologically known 'peoples and locations' is a daunting one. Indeed, the oldest directly documented (and therefore absolutely datable) IE language is Old Hittite. Anything older than Hittite can only be dated on circumstantial evidence -- if we are able to propose a convincing scenario of linguistic spread and diversification in prehistoric times that fits the archaeological record. The trouble is that various competing scenarios may be compatible with the same evidence, hence the differences of opinion among scholars. There are a number of possible homelands and time-scales in question. Most specialists accept a Pontic steppe homeland and a date ca 3000 BC for the dispersal of PIE, and attribute the historical success of IE-speaking peoples to factors like the domestication of the horse and the invention of wheeled transport. However, alternative possibilities should also be probed. My own favourite hypothesis locates the last common ancestor of the IE languages in the Danube basin ca 5600 BC and connects the IE-isation of central Europe with the spread of the Linear Pottery culture--the very first phase of the neolithic in those parts. I'm not fanatically devoted to that scenario, but there are a number of reasons which have led me to value it more highly than the Pontic steppe hypothesis (my previous favourite). I think I'd better prepare a concise summary of those reasons and post to CyBaList; it should be ready in a few days' time.
 
Piotr