Me (Glen):
>The likeliest possibility is that they spoke ancient NWC- and NEC->related
>tongues.
John:
>There is that possibility, but I don't know why you say they cannot
>have anything to do with IE. If the evidence is correct, it would
>seem that this culture was in all probability associated with a
>Nostratic tongue, either IE, or Proto-Uralo-Altaic.
That's a completely unverifiable assumption. As Mark has pointed out as well
as Mallory and many other educated authors, an Anatolian origin for IE is
looneytoons because of linguistic problems and others. I mean, if it were
so, we should expect early loanwords between IE and Anatolian languages, but
we don't. Just Semitic. You can continue to ignore Uralic-Yukaghir if you
like but it's your loss. If you accept the connection, there's simply no way
in hell that Uralic could come directly from Anatolia through the Balkans,
nor the Caucasus.
Think through this. If Uralic is connected to Yukaghir (way in the east)
then the center of the two is still further east than Uralic is said to have
been. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's pretty impossible for
Uralic to have come from the west and almost certain that it came from the
east.
So if Uralic is from the east, we already know that the connection between
IE and Uralic is considered more likely than with any other language group,
even if it is still unproven. Therefore, if Uralic-Yukaghir was further
east, so too should IndoEuropean (or rather, IndoTyrrhenian) have been. We
also know of the connection with Altaic, which again, is historically and
pre-historically far to the east. When in connection with Eskimo-Aleut (way,
WAY to the east) and Gilyak (east, imagine that), your hypothesis fights
against the known ancient positions of all these languages which can only
have centred somewhere around the eastern steppe area, far far away from
Anatolia.
And Mallory, of course, gives a warning about connecting archaeology too
closely with linguistics. I wish you had books where you come from so you
could read this source.
Me (Glen):
>The cultural influence was first running from south->north as you >describe
>but then started running north->south (a direction AGAINST >your IE spread)
>after 7000 BCE.
John:
>I don't see why you see a north-> south movement 7000 BCE. This does
>not appear in the archaeology at all.
That's right, but... as you can see above, I distinctly said "_AFTER_ 7000
BCE".
>No I don't ignore Uralic-Yukaghir. Nor Chichki-Camchatkan, nor
>Eskimo Aleut.
It's "Chuckchi-Kamchatkan". (...shaking head...) And you ARE aware how
eastern these languages are, yes?
>Gilyak I don't take into account.... true - but all evidence I
>have seen suggests that Gilyak is an isolate, unrelated to any
>neighbouring linguistic group. They may be a Dene Caucasian Upper
>Paleolithic survival as far as I know. I haven't seen any tree that
>incorporaes them in any place.
Bomhard does but unfortunately doesn't include terms into his cognate
listings. I assume this is because of the difficulty in finding resources on
this language which is as elusive as Nama.
The pronouns at least are evidently in common with Nostratic languages, not
other DeneCaucasian groups. I'm going by memory but I think it was mentioned
in the Enc.Britt. about Gilyak /b-val/ "my mountain" and /c-fal/ "your
mountain" which clearly shows a Steppe pronominal pattern (*m-, *t-) which
would seem to suggest particularly close connections with Altaic (*b-, *s-).
What's more interesting is that Altaic implies a *t > *c > *s sound shift
and Gilyak would appear to demonstrate the intermediary phoneme. The pronoun
set is definitely in contrast to SinoDene languages (*n@/s@, *ng@). The only
realistic solution is that Gilyak is part of the Steppe subgroup of
Nostratic and perhaps closely related to Altaic. I can see no other possible
source.
> > You ignore the pattern of spread of agriculture
> > which cannot serve to explain the eventual position of
> > Uralic (way to the east??).
>
>Agreed. Agriculture cannot explain Uralic spread *BUT THE MESOLITHIC
>ARCHAEOLOGY I HAVE DESCRIBED CAN!* And I haven't ignored it (look at
>what I say about Murzak-Koba and Grebenki cultures moving north into
>the Urals and then into the Siberian taiga.
Um, how is there a direct link between the mesolithic of the Urals and that
of Anatolia occuring this early?? Certainly a link can be made with the
Northern Pontic and Anatolia at this stage of the game but the NPontic is
far from the Urals.
Me:
>You ignore the reversal of cultural influence of the Caucasus link.
>You even ignore Dravidian in all of this since it would have
> had to have travelled with Altaic despite Al;thaving nothing
> more in common between Altaic and Dravidian as opposed to the rest >
>of Steppe and Dravidian.
John:
>Not at all. Elamo-Dravidian developed from the mesolithic southern
>and south eastern Zarzian, prior to the development of Northern
>Zarzian into proto-Eurasian.
Yes, it came from the west but again you ignore all linguistics to arrive at
your conclusions... ABOUT LINGUISTICS. Why can't you see the irony here? You
don't know what proto-Eurasian is.
>Yes, but you then have them moving into the area of the neolithic
>Balkans over the top of the supposed Semites living there - a
>movement that archaologically did not occur until the IE kuban waves
> >carried horse mounted warriors into the region. There is no
> >Archaeological evidence of any pontic-balkan movements prior to that!
Neolithic Balkans at 6000 BCE? Excuse me. Elaborate. Is agriculture a
neolithic thing?
The positions on my map of the languages aren't meant to be
super-exact-exact. I can move the IE a little to the east if you like but
the overall relative positions would remain the same, regardless. As well, I
recall the Bug-Dniester culture (is that the name?) that was heavily
influenced by the cultures to the west so it may be kind of hard to tell
where IE lies and where Semitic lies anyway.
IE isn't moving over top of the Semitic by the way. Semitic is encroaching
on the area. What may have happened subsequently, I surmise, is that as
Hattic was taking over the previous Semitic areas of western Anatolia.
Tyrrhenian may have began spreading out and overtaking Semitic areas in the
Balkans (which would explain what seems to be a larger amount of Semitic
loans like Etruscan /s'ar/ "ten" in place of IT *t:ekem -> Etruscan
*/tachn/). There is certainly no spread of IE into the Balkans yet at this
time, I agree.
>Replace Semitic with the neolithic substratum who taught the Semites
>to the south all that they knew about argiculture (and much else
>besides) and it could make sense.
Replace a known language with a made-up substrate language? I don't think
so. That's bluntly cracked. Prove the existence of this language first
through linguistic means and I will reconsider.
- gLeN
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