Re: Odp: Danubian Urheimat

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: Gerry Reinhart-Waller ; cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2000 11:42 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Danubian Urheimat

> Mark, you write the following:
>
> <The idea seems that the PIEs were not Kurgans, but rather, were
> kurganized by linguistically unrelated migrants from the
> east.>
>
> Gerry here:  I have a very small suggestion.  Your reference to Kurgans
> could possibly be a bit unclear?  In which sense are you using the word?
> As a particular group of folks who used kurgans for tumuli and/or houses
> or for the people themselves?

'The Kurgans' defines a culture associated with an archaeological horizon. It speaks to their inhumation practices. I don't think I'm being unclear. Some or all of these Kurgans may have been PIE speaking; the standard model regarding Sredney Stog suggests at least some of them were.

 

Mark.

---

 

In my Slavic mind the word "kurgan" or "kurhan" is so strongly associated with a burial mound (a romantic and folkloristically important feature of the boundless Ukrainian steppes) that calling actual people "the Kurgans" has a comic effect for me. They are not the only extinct people who must suffer such indignity. Some Old Europeans are nicknamed the Beakers, for example (one undesirable effect is that laymen tend to confuse Funnel Beakers with Bell Beakers).

 

Piotr