Glen wrote
> Let me clarify some more. I don't believe that the Semitish
language
was at
> all present in the Balkans by 3000 BCE. Between 6000 to 5000 BCE
the
> language found itself in the Balkans after a quick spread from the
south. In
> the next two thousand years, other languages native to the Balkans
> (IndoTyrrhenian dialects) and Anatolia (Hattic) would reclaim their
> linguistic dominance and succesfully wipe it out with only IE and
Kartvelian
> evidence of its existence, evidence which nonetheless remains very
clear in
> regards to its presence and quite unarguable.
It is interesting that you find it unarguable Glen, but then its easy
to claim the oposition's arguments are unarguable - I'm doing the
same to you after all ;-)
In the time that Semitish swam against the tide of influences coming
out of Anatolia into the middle east, between 6000-5000 BCE you say,
and the Hattic and Indo-Tyrrhenian peoples stood by idly and allowed
the foreigners to take all their best agricultural land across the
Mediterranean coastline, even though these foreigners were culturally
and organisationally inferior to themselves at that period... what do
you propose was really happening?
Glen, why do you persist in seeing this group as Semitish, when on
archaeological grounds they just cannot have been in the places you
put them in the times you claim? Isn't it possible that a language,
related to Nostratic, found in the Middle East BEFORE Afro-Asiatics
left Africa, was the source of BOTH the features you find in the
later
Semitic languages AND in Kartvellian and PIE? This pre-Semitic
substrate language would have taught the Afro-Asiatics arriving in
Southern Palestine for the first time about 5,800 BCE the names of
domesticated animals, (Sheep, Goats, Grains) and a calendar based on
the number seven... just as they did for Kartvellian and PIE when
these people became agricultural....
So when Glen says
> Back to the tell-all numerals, the origin of Semitic-looking IE
*sweks &
> *septm or the even stronger influence on Kartvelian (examine
Georgian ekvsi
> "6", s^vidi "7", rva "8" [cf Arabic arba "4"]) can't be effectively
> explained with the vague "Aegean" influence arguement. John will
inevitably
> be assimilated to Semitish.
It is highly likely that a pre-Semitic agricultural culture in which
ownership of herds is of concern would have more interest numbers
than
would Afro-Asiatic hunter gatherers, entering the Middle East
circa 5,800-6,000 BCE over the Sinai would. After all, the Nyungar
language of Australian Aborigines had numbers one, two, three,
plenty.
The addition of more numbers to their repertoire came from culture
contact.
"Inevitable" Glen??? Hmm.... I wonder
Regards
John