John:
>At Kobystan in the Eastern Caucas[u]s, there is a cultural link >between
>Zarzian and the Pontic mesolithic from which IE eventually >developed.
Seems so very unlikely to me. If this is the same cultural link that I just
examined in more detail in Malloy's "In Search of IndoEuropeans" around 7000
BCE or so (a link between round pot styles and a possible source of goats
and agriculture in the Eatern Pontic), then I can't agree that these were
the IE speakers.
As I'm trying to get a further handle on archaeology, here's a different
scenario that I'm currently trying to develop further. Note my ideas have
changed somewhat and I no longer associate Tyrrhenian with Kurgan I which
does appear mostly IE to me now.
There were, as Bomhard suspects, Caucasian-speakers (specifically Pre-NWC)
in the area before the arrival of the IE, spreading northward from the
Caucasus towards the northeast shores of the Black Sea around 7000 BCE. I
presume they were taking advantage of the better post-Ice-Age climate.
Pre-NWC speakers were the first to bring agriculture to the eastern Pontic
and one would assume that they would have been the source of many IE
terms... but...
By 6000 BCE, a Semitic speaking group was inching out of Anatolia into
Europe on the other side of the Black Sea with their own agriculture and
further spreading into the North Pontic.
At around 6000 to 5500 BCE, speakers of Old to Middle IE arrived into an
area already occupied by a group of Semitic-speakers. Due to this prevailing
Semitic language, agricultural terms and items were adopted from them in the
Western Pontic and these terms would persist as IE-speakers spread eastwards
into further NWC territory, pushing that language back towards the Caucasus.
Oh, the Tyrrhenian-speakers, by the way, must have been further north and
west than the core IE homeland in NorthWest/Central Pontic. Tyrrhenian might
have spread into the Balkans from the north with seperate contacts with the
same Semitic language than IE (no across-the-Black-Sea theory necessary),
positioning it amidst the spread of agriculture into Europe. Also, IE would
not have interacted directly with Uralic except via hitherto unidentified
IndoTyrrhenian dialects until Satem IE dialects, spreading east, and
FinnoUgric, spreading south, came together.
It's a thought (but then thoughts seem to get me into trouble in this
brainless world. Oops, see that? There I go again...)
- gLeN
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