Re: Odp: Odp: Urheimat

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

From: John Croft

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 10:56 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: Urheimat

Piotr wrote > BTW, I don't think the IEs (as a speech community) were "linked" with > anything -- other than loosely and more or less accidentally. Languages are > not necessarily tied to archaeological cultures, ways of living and types of > husbandry, or to horses, for that matter. I would agree, languages are not necessarily tied to anything. Yet successful and widely distributed languages have a reason for being "successful and widely distributed". Culture, ways of living, types of husbandry and mobility (horses) are all reasons why some languages are more widely distributed than others. So Piotr, given that, what was the "motive" you see for the spread of IE... or do you think it was a purely accidental "conspiracy of fate"? Regards John Dear John,   The way I see it, the early European spread of the IEs was due simply to the fact that they were the first farmers there -- from Belgium to Ukraine and from Denmark to the Alps. There was no competition and hence their easy success and wide distribution in a relatively short time. I do identify them with the carriers of a single cultural package (Linear Pottery), but during a quick expansion cultural uniformity coinciding with linguistic uniformity is not surprising. Once the initial impetus of the spread was spent, the IEs began to diversify linguistically as well as culturally. I certainly do not interpret the cultural transformations of the Late Neolithic in purely migrationist terms (though e.g. the distribution of the Bell Beaker culture can hardly be due to the diffusion of ideas alone).   The later successes of various IE groups belong to their individual histories and there is no single reason for all of them (Alexander's wars, Roman conquests, the expansion of the Slavs in the 5th-6th c., Latin America, or the British Empire). Of course the early IEs had a good starting position, being safely established in Europe, and from the 3rd millennium on they all had wagons and horses, and in some parts they were the first people to have them, which certainly was of help. Remember, however, that the history of IE is not one of continuous success. There have been spectacular setbacks too. Quite a few IE branches have become extinct and their speakers absorbed into non-IE populations. Where is the Hittite empire? Where are the Tocharians? Others have been done for by their IE cousins (the Veneti, the Thracians, the Getae, most of the Celts and Balts ...). Whatever happened to Magna Graecia? And the once so successful Scythians were replaced by the Sarmatians, who were replaced by ... etc.   Piotr