Re: Pelasgian Italy

Rex

Thanks for the reminder of diversity. The Arizona tale is a good
one... I suspect that linguistic diversity was huge in the past, far
greater than we imagine. Italy is an amazing example that survived
until fairly late... imagine

Rhaetic
Ligurian
Cisalpine Gauls
Latin
Volscan
Umbrian
Sabine and related dialects
Mesapian
Venetic
Greek (of various dialects)
Sican
Sikel
Carthaginian

I suspect that each area had an equivalent linguistic diversity, before
having a kind of uniformity imposed upon it through the process and
enlargement of state formation. And to have created such diversity in
the first place would have had a history stretching back over
millennia. Thus a huge diversity may have existed in hunter gatherer
times, once humans were living in an area for a period of time,
diversity would grow.

Human (h.sapiens) hunter-gatherers were in Italy for at least 38-35,000
years before the neolithic. Given Glen's reconstructions there appear
to have been three waves of culture - Aurignacian Dene Caucasian S,
Aurignacian Dene Caucasian T, and Nostratic mesolithic. Between each
wave there were huge amounts of time - 15,000 years from Aurignancian
to Gravetian, 10,000 years to Mesolithic. Micro-movements and
linguistic diversification could easily have created a Papua New
Guinean situation where we have 736 distinct languages in a fairly
small area.

With Neolithic, we have a case where Impressed Ware Cultures coming out
of the Aegean (the Cardial) introduced new technology via the sea. In
many cases they were settlements of fishermen who introduced pottery
and elementary farming to the people of the vacinity, and amalgam
cultures quickly grew up having elements of both the migrants and the
indigenous mesolithic cultures... As for which language they spoke in
each case - that is anyones guess. Nevertheless a similarity of
cultural features, religious, settlement patterns, technology, and no
doubt elements of language as well grew up into the phase that Gambutas
calls "old Europe". It is interesting that this is the area that we
are here calling "Macro-Pelasgia". Culturally it includes western
Anatolia as well.

Then historically we have the secondary products revolution - the use
of horse and ox for traction, sheep for wool as well as meat, and
cattle and goats for milk - which ushers in nomadic pastoralism on the
steppe, and the growth of more complex, socially stratified cultures.
Whether Italian Bell-Beakers came from Iberia by Sea (as the older
school thought) or from the Rhineland by land (as the intermediate
school thought) or were introducted because indigenous cultures had
reached a certain level of complexity (as the new school thinks) is
irrelevant, no doubt new levels of linguistic complexity were
introduced. And then comes the Urn Field Folk, with the arrival, it is
thought, of Villanovan's in Italy with the great famines and
volkerwanderungen of the end of the Bronze Age, with arrivals of
Etruscans and Greeks attested in the south and in Tuscany during the
Dark Ages that followed.

Until the creation of states and empires, linguistic uniformity must
have been the exception rather than the rule. In Greater Pelasgia as
much as anywhere else. Thus the appearance of linguistic isolates,
remnant languages, a mosaic hotchpotch of languages would have
classified all modern areas characterised by single national languages
today. The world was Arizona.

Hope this helps

John