From: Mark Odegard
Message: 1691
Date: 2000-02-26
If an alternative to the traditional Urheimat is to be considered, the best candidate is, in my opinion, the Danubian theory, locating PIE west rather than north of the Black Sea.
Piotr has alluded to this before. I've also read elsewhere of this. As I understand it, the PIE homeland is more or less into the western Carpathian curve, essentially modern Hungary and Transylvania. This would perhaps be the predecessors of the Baden culture (apparently the Tiszapolgar (4400-3700) and Bodrogkeresztur (4000-3600) Cultures), and its eastern relatives across the Carpathians via eastern Hungary (Tripolye, Cernvoda I). There does not seem to be any association with the Lengyel Culture (5000-3400) to the west of it, and the maps I see don't allow the LBK (Linear Ware / Linearbandkeramik ) culture to precede it either. The idea seems that the PIEs were not Kurgans, but rather, were kurganized by linguistically unrelated migrants from the east. Am I following the sequences right?
Provided you can maintain PIE unity for something approaching 3,000 years, this is possible; PIE in its earlier stages, then, would have been a small language located in a compact region, and relatively uninfluenced by adjacent languages. Franz-Josef-Land is too big for this. Alternatively, you have to reduce PIE to a single surviving line, with many daughter languages having suffered unrecorded births and deaths.
The problem, of course, is the Sherrat's 'secondary products revolution' and the associated IE words. That, and wheeled-vehicle terminology.
Anyway. Could Piotr elucidate further on his views? And perhaps correct any mistakes I've made in the archaeological/ethnographic sequences?
Mark.