Linguistics, Archaeology and the Pot

Folks

Despite Glen's attempts to find an appearance of "Semitish" people in
the first farmers (Yarmukan) of Palestine, archaeologically the
situation just does not add up. Farming appears in Palestine to have
been a northern invention. Emmer wheat is found on the rain fed
slopes of the Zagros to the Taurus mountains, and it is clear that
the
first aceramic (non-pottery using) farmers of the Yarmukan tradition,
although they showed clear evidence of being derived from the
indigenous Nostratic Natufian, drew important elements of their
technology from Anatolia. Their obsidian, essential for a neolithic
culture, came from Anatolian volcanoes, carried south by specialist
merchants probably speaking a Khattic tongue. There is even some
evidence of obsidian coming from Nemrud Dag (Mt Ararat) which was the
centre of the Hurrian language. If these people had been Semitic
they would have recieved their Obsidian from a West Arabian source.
This did not happen. The linguistic and cultural influence would
have
been

Khattic -----> Yarmukan
Hurrian -----> culture

Proto-Afro-Asiatic languages at this period would have been contined
to Africa. There is clear evidence for this. Pottery began in
Africa, across the Sahara, long before it appeared in Palestine.
From
Outeidat in the West to Wadi Wassa in the Sudan, the early post
glacial "wet period" saw Lake Chad expand to its largest size and a
series of other lakes irrigated the Sahara. The desert shrank to two
small areas of the interior. This period, from 7,000-8,000BCE saw no
Afro-Asiatic language outside this region. The Chadic group of
Afro-Asiatic may have had some origin at this period.

Pottery gave people a huge advantage in the storage and transport of
perishable food items. It is hardly surprising that the Afro-Asiatic
potters flourished over such a large area.

The 7th millennium climatic crisis saw a drying up of many of the
Saharan lakes. By 6,000 BCE even the Yarmukan culture at Jericho was
feeling the pinch. For a short time farming near Jericho seams to
have halted, and cultures reverted to simpler hunter-gatherers.
During the seventh millennium (6,000-7,000 BCE) Pottery seems to have
spread from the Sahara into the lower Nile valley, from Lowasera in
the Sudan to Kiseiba on Lake Rudolph. This possibly saw the spread
of
Afro-Asiatic languages into this region, ancestors of the modern
Omotic group.

It was the period of 5,600 BCE that saw the appearance of the first
pottery cultures in Palestine, cultures which seem to have drawn
their
technological impetus from the potters of Egypt and North Africa.
Independent pottery traditions, starting in the eigth millennium in
Western Anatolia (Khattic speakers) and the Southern Zagros (possible
Hurrians) spread, so that the middle east was dominated by three
rival
traditions, all of which made increasingly fine pottery. The
climatic
recovery which followed saw the spread of these new "ceramic"
neolithic cultures from these three sources. The Ghassulian pottery
of Palestine (Afro-Asiatic speakers - probably proto-Semitics), the
Hassuna and later Halafian pottery of the area from the Zagros to the
Syrian Mediterranean coast (Hurrian speakers), and the painted
pottery styles of Anatolia, from whence the European painted pottery
traditions were derived (Khattic speakers). Thus there was no
Semitic
languages spoken before 5,300 BCE anywhere north of Southern Lebanon.
To have Semitish carrying farming into the Balkans, therefore, just
does not compute. It requires some magical sleight of hand, that
just
cannot stand up archaeologically.

To find the linguistic elements that are common to proto-Semitic and
proto-IE, therefore, you need a different mechanism.

The potters who carried their Afro-Asiatic language and their pottery
traditions with them into the Middle East, learned farming from the
people who were already in the area. Their word for goat, for
instance, probably came from the area where wild pre-domesticated
goats had once run wild, the same rain fed area from the Zagros to
the
Tauros Mountains and down into the Anti-Lebanon. It is hard to see
how Semites, coming from Africa, where there was no wild goats, would
have spread their word for goat to the people of southern Anatolia
and
hence to Europe, over the top of people who had been the actual ones
to domesticate this animal. It is a little like the word for Camel
coming from a language in which camels were never found!

It was only during the Ubaid period (after 5,300 BCE) that Semite
languages spread, first into Syria, and then as proto-Akkadian down
the Euphrates River to Southern Lebanon. There they were met by
newly
arrived Sumerians, who were busy imposing their own language and
cultural institutions over the neolithic sub-strata. Akkadian made
its final emergence just prior to the Proto-Dynastic period, probably
during the Jemdet Nasr phase.

This construction seems to fit into the proto-linguistic analysis
presented for the Afro-Asiatic and Semitic languages in Enclyopedia
Britanica. Or are they also wrong, Glen?

Glen, not only does this reconstruction of mine better accord with
archaeology than your wonderfully coloured maps, it explains the
distribution of cultures and languages in subsequent historic stages.
Somehow you have to get your "Semitish" folk of southern Anatolia and
the Balkans "swamped" and to disappear, leaving no evidence in place
names, long before the historic period begins. It is strange that a
culture having the cultural advantages of farming, and of pottery,
should have gone in such a manner, when all the evidence of
archaeology would suggest that the demographic advantages of farming
would have been such as to cause that cultural group (and their
language) to prevail - at least into historic times.

In conclusion there were 3 pottery traditions from 5,600 BCE one that
dominated Anatolia (Khattic), one that dominated the Zagros(Hurrian),
Syrian and Mesopotamian region, and a third found in
Palestine(Semitic). Only the third one had an Afro-Asiatic culture
and language. Before that there was, during the preceeding aceramic
neolithic Yarmukan period, no Afro-Asiatic languages spoken in the
Middle East at all. They were all confined to Africa.

Hope this helps

John