My first question is what software package
you used to overlay the Black Sea map to show the pre-5500 BCE shoreline.
My second comment is that you also need to
add the fact that world-wide sea-level was 50 feet lower at this time.
Samothrace, for example, was a peninsula.
The natural migratory/invasion approaches
to the Balkans before 5500 BCE are likely to have been mildly-to-radically
different than what a modern map suggests. Not just the Bosphorus land bridge,
but also the ability to walk along the shelf of the now-inundated Med
coast.
There are also some interesting questions
to ask about the Hellespont and (then) Gulf of Marmora at this time. Presently,
there is a strong surface current flowing from the Black to the Med, with a yet
stronger deeper current beneath flowing into the Black from the Med. This
waterway may have been rather sluggish, brackish, with a less intense current,
and likely, more protected from storms and the vaguries of the winds. In other
words, considerably more navigable that at present, and navigable with a
considerably less sophisticated
boat. The opening of the Bosphorus
may have not merely sundered the land bridge, but may have, for a time, very
substantially restricted cross-Hellespont navigation, bringing into being a
long-term barrier to easy cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, one that exists even
today. Once the Bosphorus was open, it was easier to travel from Bulgaria to NW
Turkey than the other way round -- the evidence from the Ezero culture (3200 BCE
and down) says this part of Turkey got its major cultural (and probably,
linguistic) load in just this way.
The issue of how agriculture entered the
Balkans MUST be reassessed in light of the Black Sea event. It is clear
agriculture was practiced at the old lakeshore, especially in the annual
exposure of new lake-bottom muck as the Euxine Lake slowly drew down.
Agriculture probably went via Hungary into the Danube basin first. It took 2
years for the Black Sea to fill, and in most places, the rise was never more
than inches in a day: there would have been agriculture-practicing refugees.
I think you have Semitic too far north too
early. I think you may have spray-painted "Indo-Tyrrhenian dialects" too far
west too.
As regards Uralic-Yukaghir (as well as
Altaic), these langauges spread (and survived) in less-desirable, almost
unpopulated areas. It was not until the invention of wheeled-vehicles and
horse-riding that you see anything more than hunter-gatherers on the Steppe,
further east in Mongolia, North China and places east of that. You would have
had EXTREMELY small groups, of the size where radical linguistic innovation can
spread very quickly (with larger groups, linguistic conservatism is stronger).
Until rather late times when populations greatly increased consequent to the
arrival of horse riding, carts, and other technological innovations, I
wonder if extreme linguistic innovation was the norm across the Steppe and
Northern Asia. As a suggestion, this suggests Altaic, Uralic, and Indo-European
each underwent a period of extreme innovation, and only later, with the
conservativism of later increased populations, did innovation slow down to what
is experienced in historical times.
Mark.
Okay, hopefully this will get people thinking and talking. I have new
pages up on my site:
http://glen-gordon.tripod.com/language.html
One
page is about language origins and has the long-range linguistic tree
that I suggested earlier. Another link has been made to a map of the Black Sea
area around 6000 BCE with the position of the languages as I calls 'em.
Note, I'm suggesting that NEC may be the old "cultural link"
to the north shores of the Black and IE would be the motive for the
"reversal" of this direction of influence at this period of time.
But
I'm not sure now at what time Semitic was in contact with Kartvelian
(perhaps later) so the southern Black shores may have been covered with
another language. Anyone know anything about
Kaskian?