Re: [cybalist] SV: Re: avestan and vedic

Mark wrote in reply to Tommy's post

> The similarities are so striking that
> neither branch could have had time to
> change very much, which should put the
> earliest Vedic stratum well back in
> the second millenium BC.
> --end quote--
>
> This reflects what I've gotten from my reading.
>
> I do admit my comment about the proto-Indics
> being north of Afganistan at the back end of
> China was wrong; I know better, and knew better
> then, but was not thinking. The 'Aryans' entered
> India up the Oxus (I guess that's the name, the
> river flowing into the Aral from the southeast)
> and then over the mountains into the Indus
> catchment.
>
> There is also the reality that proto-Indic seems
> to be attested in Iran and the southern Caucusus
> before proto-Iranian is attested. It's as if the
> Indics were a first wave, with the Iranians as a
> second wave that never made it to India, but
> replaced Indic in Iran and thereabouts.
>
> Am I correct? Balto-Slavic (and Uralic) got its
> loans from Iranian, and NOT Indic.
>
> Chariots. The Indics had them first, then the
> Iranians (who seem to have been to the north and
> west of the Indics) and finally everyone else
> (and in probably a remarkably short period of time).

Yes, I see a Proto-Indo-Iranian taking off from the Volga mouth of
the
Caspian and stretching out east and southwards across the steppe into
Transoxania. The northwestern part of this group would have
developed
as Iranian, the south eastward part of this group developed as
Indo-Aryan. It seems that the cultural efflorescence of the Oxus
culture gave the Indo-Aryans the lead, and they spread out from
Ariana
(henbce Iran) west into Mesopotamia and east into India. With the
collapse of the Bronze Age economies circa 1,200 BCE, they were
eclipsed by the Iranians to the north, who having a "purer
pastoralism" seem to have wealthered the climatic collapse of the
late bronze age better than did the agriculturalists. Iranian Madai,
Asargartiya, and Parsua tribes crossed the eastern Caucasas into
Azarbaijan and Armenia, slowly moving down the Zagros chain and out
eastwards into the Iranian plateau. They were later followed by
Iranian Cimmerians and later Scyths propper. Meanwhile the extension
of the Scyths into the Transoxus, led to the replacement of the early
Indo-Aryan horizons here with an Iranian one.

Hope this helps

John