Atlantiker and the IE arrival

Mark replying to Piotr's point

>You should really ask Vennemann about it, but I think he does believe

in this >kind of influence. His story is, in a nutshell, that before the coming of >Indo-European and Finno-Ugric tribes all of northern, central and western >Europe was occupied by only two families: Vasconic, the older of the two, >which expanded all over the North European Plain as the Pleistocene glaciers >receded, and which he claims is the source of the oldest European toponymy, >and Atlantic (= Afroasiatic), which was brought to Iberia, France, the British >Isles and Scandinavia by neolithic sailors from northwestern Africa, the

>carriers of Megalithic cultic practices. > >The Basques are the last surviving Vasconic people in an originally >Atlantic area, and Basque can accordingly be expected to have been

affected by

>Semitoid languages. Vennemann identifies the Picts as the last

Atlantic >Mohicans and reinterprets Germanic mythology in terms of an Afroasiatic >substrate in Scandinavia. Wrote

>I've read of Vennemann's views second-hand. What he proposes is not >unreasonable, only unproveable. Quite clearly, there was at least one >other language family besides Vasconic in Western Europe before IE

took over,

>and it is the soul of reason to look to Afro-Asiatic as the most

logical

>family for such a language. At the same time, it is just as likely,

just

>as reasonable, just as logical for any such language[s] to represent an >extinct family. > >If the Germanic substrate is to be considered of Afro-Asiatic origin, >the time depth and geographic distances involved are so great, we would >have to speak of a separate branch of A-A, with at least several

thousand >years of drift from anything in the historic record we can compare with

>today. > >Whoever these 'Atlantic' people were, they were there. It's my view >the move northward was motivated by the extraordinary riches of the >cologically pristine coastal region, and its abundance of seafood and

marine

>mammals. The then fabulously rich Atlantic salmon runs began at the

Loire and

>ran all the way north to Norway and, as I remember from a map, well

into the

>Baltic.

This is an interesting point. The "Megalithic People" debate has run hot in archaeology for about a century. The earliest megaliths, rather than being found in North Africa, as the Atlantiker hypothesis would suggest are in fact found in Britanny, closely follwed by the separate passage graves of South Eastern Portugal. Rather than a wave of settlers, that the Atlantiker hypothesis would suggest, (with an AA substratum language) the current theory is that it was a spread of a major religion, in which the onstruction of massive collective graves was a major mark of social cohesion. The spread of this religion seems to have occurred within the group of hunter farming cultures known as the "first western", which had carried neolithic cultures northwards from Spain and Portugal, particularly along old sea lanes that ran from Galicia in Northern Spain, up the coast of France to Britanny, thence through the Irish Sea, around the top end of Scotland and thence to the Jutland Straits and Scandinavia. Unlike the spread of Danubian Corded Ware cultures, which seem to have been associated with a movement of peoples (Renfrew believes them to have been IE), the movement of farming in the first Western culture seems much more a movement of a technology, rather than an ethnic group, as local destinguishing features from earlier hunter-gatherer mesolithic and sub-neolithic cultures (such as the Ertbolle in Scandinavia) seem to have survived. Neolithic technologies in Western Europe did have an Eastern Mediterranean origin, but not from an AA area. The first Neolithic farmers in Western Europe seem to have been people of the Cardial culture complex, sailers and fisher folk who spread from the Adriatic coast of Greece and Albania 6-7,000 years ago. The Cardial culture has been shown to have a great deal of similarity with the Sesklo and Starcevo cultures of the Balkans, using similar pottery traditions. They may have spoken a language related to my hypothesised Japethic language family (see my earlier posts about Iranian-Anatolian-Aegean substrate languages). In origin they certainly seem to have come originally from Anatolia. Setting up colonies along the Italian, French Riviera and Andalusian and Catalan coast lines, it seems that relations with the mesolithic cultures in which they settled were basically peacefull (they were exploiting different resources), which led to rapid acculturation and the creation of the widespread first western culture spoken of above. Megalith building saw its last hurrah after the coming of the Bell-Beaker folk. There has been a great deal of discussion about these people ethnographically too, whether they are IE or non IE in language. The earliest Bell Beakers seem to have been made in Spain, by the early Iberian copper culture, and have been associated with the making of Beer (pollen analysis shows everywhere an increase in hops and barley growing where beakers were introduced). It used to be thought that there was a "race of Bell Beaker peoples", carrying copper technology and beer drinking out of Spain along valley trade routes. Vast amounts were written about these "tinker folk", with their bows and arrows, who moved semi-peacefully amongst pre-existing First Western farmer-hunter cultures, marrying local women and settling down to create local Beaker traditions out of the earlier Pan European style. There is evidence to suggest that a secondary site of dispersion of Beakers was along the Rhineland. Here it was believed that Beakers fused with the Battle Axe IE cultures spreading from the Ukrainian forest regions to create a new hybrid culture with a conquering aristocracy that carried Beakers into the Netherlands, Northern France and the British Isles, and becoming the originators of both the Hallstaat and La Tene Celts. There is some evidence for this thesis as new Bell Beaker using aristocracies created the Wessex culture that built Stonehenge, and the contemporary Armorican culture that built the Carnac allignments. The modern theory is somewhat different. While not denying that movements of small groups of people may have occurred, the current theories all suggest that a certain degree of technological and agrarian complexity had been achieved by Bell Beaker times that encouraged the development of vertically stratified cultures, in which differences between elite aristocrats and common folk could occur. In such cultures, warrior bands, armed by itinerant smiths, and bound together by communal beer drinking became a common culture. What does this mean for us linguistically? Firstly, as modern research has shown, there was not a "Celtic invasion" of the British isles with a Bythonic Wave being followed by a Gaelic wave - as some early students had previously proposed. The situation was a great deal more complex, with different cultures developing on the lowlands (grain supported plough agriculture and the eventual development of Oppida towns) and the highlands (transhumant cattle pastorage - with frequent cattle raiding between local tribes). Linguistically the situation seems equally complex, with non IE people, and various IE dialects all being found in an intriguing mixture. For instance the Belgae seem originally to have been a non IE people (First Western remnants) sandwiched between Celtic La Tene expansionism, and a Germanic movement along the Friesland littorial. A Celtic aristocracy arrived and they underwent an explosive development carrying them into Southern Britain (the Atrebates were on both sides of the Channel). Their arrival in Britain led to a number of mobile tribal leadership groups capturing dominance in pre-existing British cultures. The Catuvelauni seem to have developed in this way, and taken their name from their leaders. Others adopted La Tene technology and cultural features as a way of maintaining their independence. The Matriarchal Iceni seem to have been an example of this. In Yorkshire, a European warrior band seem to have moved into the mouth of the Humber. Historically they seem to have come from around the Seine as they were known to the Romans by the same name - Parisi. The substrate culture, however, quickly reasserted itself as cultural fusion between indigenous and imigrant elements occurred. Similar trends were present in Ireland. There, small bands of elite European arrivals seem to have moved into a land already densely populated. Thus the Belgae Menapi settled on the east coast in a country that may have been peopled by also by Celts fleeing Roman conquest along the Spanish and Aquitanian Atlantic seaboard. The shift of the Celtic p to g turned the Menapi into the Monaghan of today. So by the Dark Ages Britain had a number of competing languages. Firstly in the Lowlands Roman Latin was grafted over the earlier Brythonic Celtic. In the North and West in the cattle raiding lands this grafting was fairly superficial. Here, the language of Arthur's Companions (Cumbrogi becoming later Cymry) developed. North of that was another language grouping known as Prydain in the Scottish Highlands, and as Cruithne in Ireland (where the P-C shift had occurred). These people were the hisorical Picts. Then in Ireland early Gaelic, a fifth Celtic language was found. Even further North up the Irish Sea the language of the Iardomnan seems to have been pre-IE and may have been the indigenous language of the First Western People. These survivals were considered to be the elves or fairy folk, and moved into British folk lore as the cattle raising small people who lived in the hollow hills (from their habit of living communally with turf covered circular constructions with their cattle. Survivals of these people may be linked to the name Albany being used as an alternative for Scotland in historic times. Where does that get us? Firstly it moves away from the spread of single large uniform language groups, to a much more complex mosaic pattern similar to that found in Pre-Roman Italy. Secondly, it seems to run against the AA substrate Atlantiker hypothesis. Thirdly, there were probably many hundreds of pre-IE languages in Europe, of which Basque is the only modern survival. These languages were probably destinct from Upper Paleolithic times and were as different from each other as any two members of the Nostratic family are today. Hope this mammoth posting is useful. John