Re: Fw: [cybalist] Re: Tyrrhenus (was Easter)

Glen replied

> Mark:
> >5500 BCE. I've read stuff published before Ryan and Pitman's

findings

> > >which give this date as a reasonable one for the

'falling-together' of

> > >PIE.
>
> Yes, it's the date we often find for the arrival of IE to the area,

so who

> am I to argue. (Well I DID argue for a while, but I've come around

:)

There seems to be an archaeological connection that fits in well
just before this date. The Zarzian culture of the Zagros (out of
which the first neolithic Chemi-Shanidar and Jarmo cultures
developed)
extended northwards into Armenia and Georgia. The Kobystan
Zarzian site on the eastern end of the Caucasas shows connections
cultures to the north, and seems to have been a "half-way" house in
the development of the epipaleolithic of the middle east with the
mesolithic cultures of the steppes.

> >A reasonable question, however, is what effect the filling of the

Sea >of

> >Azov, as well as the 'bays' on either side of what now is the
>Crimea had
> >on those living along the lower reaches and at the ancient >mouth

of the

> >Dneister: The falling apart of Indo-Uralic and the >falling

together of

> >Proto-Uralic to the east and PIE to the west? Or >perhaps

'Indo-Tyrrhenian'

> >to the west, and PIE to the east, with >Uralic further away

towards
the

> >Volga?
>
> I love these questions but I don't think the rising of the Black

affected

> IE's development or the breakup of "IndoUralic" at all (which would

be circa

> 9000 BCE if Bomhard is correct).

Such an early date definitely places the breakup in the mesolithic
period.

> Apparently Mallory's "In Search of Indo-Europeans" seems to be

suggesting a

> very early southeasterly influence (South Caspian) which I'm

concluding

> based also on some of Allan Bomhard's thoughts on Pre-IE and NWC

(based in

> turn on Nichols and Kosko's archaeology) may be early speakers of

native

> Caucasian languages bringing innovations to the north to north-east

shores

> before IE's arrival from as far back as 7000 BCE.

This is another one of the growing list of reasons why I have to read
Mallory. If Mallory is correct he seems to be confirming the
Zarzian-Kobystan connection that I mentioned above.

> Bomhard, substantiated by Kosko, mentions a "subsequent reversal"

in
this

> eastern cultural flow. Bomhard just says that it was the arrival of

IE that

> caused this... but I now presume something more complex: As soon as

the IE's

> arrived on scene, they already met and started trading with the

advancing

> Semitic agriculturalists to the west. As they did, the IE speakers

would

> have became, at least on the western side, agricultural and/or

pastoral with

> many novel items like purdy shiny metals to trade with the eastern

cultures

> that once had cultural influence on the area. Hence, a reversal of

the

> cultural flow resulted, since the South Caspian "innovations" were

totally

> old-hat now that the Semitics provided for everything.

Glen, here we must agree to disagree. There is no evidence that the
neolithic cultures of Gambutas's Old Europe (the cultures to the
west)
were Semitic. The nearest Semitic speakers would have been in
Northern Syria. We have crossed paths on this before....

> As for Uralic, it is linked with Yukaghir and would seem to be

related close

> enough to consider a family called Uralic-Yukaghir located more

easterly

> around the Urals circa 5000 BCE. We can't speak of IndoUralic

without at

> least Yukaghir involved in the picture.
>
> Now, I think overall what must have happened is that from an origin

in the

> eastern steppes around 9000 BCE, IndoTyrrhenian, Altaic, Gilyak and

Boreal

> (UralicYukaghir, EskimoAleut) spread out. Boreal spread directly

north from

> there and then split in two (c. 7000 BCE?) with EskimoAleut

obviously

> spreading north and east and UralicYukaghir slowly spreading west

to
the

> Urals until its 5000BCE split.

Glen, The way I see this is that with the warming of climate and the
movement of Nostratics out of Africa (15,000 BCE) and into the Middle
East, and the dispersal of the "wide-spectrum hunter-gatherer
microlithic (mesolithic) cultures" out of the Middle East. There
were
three routes for this movement.

1. North-West (Uralic) moving into the forests of the Balkans, and
hence north into the Taiga (Boreal) forests across northern Eurasia,
moving into the arctic 6,000 - 7,000 years ago, with the post glacial
warming.

2. North-East (Altaic) moving through the Djeitun, and hence to the
Hissar cultures into the Altai mountains, and hence over the Upper
Paleolithic peoples (Yenesei and others) as far as the Amur river
mouth.

3. Due North (PIE & I-T) moving through Armenia, and hence into
Georgia and over the eastern end of the Caucasas and up to the Pontic
steppes.

> Further south and much further west, IndoTyrrhenian arrived to the

area

> north of the Black and Caspian Seas (c. 7000 BCE?) while Boreal was

still

> splitting. The direct linguistic ancestor(s) of IE would have

arrived at the

> Black Sea at 5500 BCE and I assume now that the more northerly

Tyrrhenian

> portion continued expanding westwards from 7000 to 6000 BCE, into

the

> Balkans and perhaps beyond (?).

Glen, as I have mentioned before I have great difficulty fitting this
into the archaeology. It makes sense to have the PIE- I-T split
occurring just before the movement over the Caucasas.

> So now 6000 BCE would be a perfect time to encounter the expanding

Semitic

> language from Anatolia into the Balkans, which would affect

Tyrrhenian

> (north of Balkan-based Semitic) and IE (to its east along the

northwest

> shores of the Black).

The Semitic languages would not have been expanding from Anatolia,
but
from the Ghassulian core in Northern Syria (this is the culture
associated with the appearance of Semitic archaeologically). They
would have encountered I-T languages in Anatolia, and any Semitic
loanwords and connections would have occurred there, not in the
Balkans or in Old Europe.

With the new-fangled agriculture at their
disposal,

> hitherto unidentified Pre-Tyrrhenian languages (perhaps together

with

> Semitic lgs) may have spread out into Europe in advance of the

later
IE

> dialects, sopping up most of the non-IndoTyrrhenian and

non-Nostratic

> languages in Europe which IE dialects would have encountered

otherwise,

> whilst the true Tyrrhenian core from which would spring Etruscan,

Lemnian,

> etc. remained in the Balkans up to 3500 BCE or so.

This is basically my understanding too, except that I see the
movement
of I-T out of Anatolia and into the Balkans and hence north and west,
as Sesklo, Starcevo and also (possibly) LBK (Danubian) cultures
spread. This movement of languages related to I-T would have mopped
up any non-Nostratic remnants left after the movement of Nostratic
proto-Uralic (mesolithic) cultures through the area 3-4,000 years
earlier.

> As for Semitic, the language began to retreat back into Anatolia

and
further

> south (perhaps from expanding Tyrrhenian dialects?), fully extinct

to the

> north by 3500 BCE with only suspicious remnant traces in IE,

Tyrrhenian,

> Kartvelian, Hattic, etc. to suggest of its once more northerly

existence.

You know my explanation here.... Why would a language retreat, except
as a result of a demic demographic expanse of a technically more
technologically developed culture, who would have carried their
language with them. The IE spread, with the horse and spoked wheel,
over the agriculturists of Old Europe seems to be associated with the
secondary products revolution and fits in well. The Semitic spread
from Ghassulian times onwards seems associated with the spread of the
same secondary products revolution. The Neolithic phase seems to
have
been associated with a substrate language (possibly a relative of
Hattic-Hurrian, possibly a language group that had an amalgam of
Hattic-Hurrian and I-T character associated with the obsidian sites
stretching from the Lake Van to Catal Huyuk area of Anatolia. On the
genetic mapping of our foodcrops that is the area from which wheat
was
first domesticated. This is a region too far to the north to have
had
Semitic speakers.

> So the rise of the Black Sea seems kind of unimportant as a whole,

so far as

> I can ascertain. How fast was the rise exactly? Would it honestly

have

> caused such epidemic distress to somewhat unsettled peoples like

the
IE

> speakers anyways?

It just made movements north around the Caucasas, and from the
Bosphorus to the Pontic steppes easier than they are today, as the
coastal plains to the west and the east of the Black Sea would have
been wider.

Certainly the flooding of Azov I see as having a cultural impact upon
PIE. It may have had memories in the later Greek Deucalion mythos,
and in Indo-Aryan Manu and the flood stories.

I have a powerpoint presentation that traces these movements from the
Upper Paleolithic onwards, and an excell spreadsheat showing the
spread of mesolithic cultures out of Africa until the first neolithic
cultures. It ties in with a modified Microsoft word file I have
incorporating the suggestions you made earlier Glen of the
phylogenic tree incorporating genetic, archaelogical and linguistic
evidence. These three could be stored on the Files section of
cybalist if people want. What do the cybalist people think?

Hope this helps

John