From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2836
Date: 2000-07-11
From: John CroftPerhaps in Elf (*Albho) we have a common IE designation for foreigner (or even "aboriginal"?). Beguiling indeed!
Not just any foreigner, but 'foreigner bearing the magical substance' -- 'metal-bringing foreigner', at least at the early PIE level. Later, the word might be used to describe a mythical being that may or may not have intermediately been applied to aboriginals, especially (in the west) to 'earth-dwellers'.I've also thought that the Elves might be the Bell-Beaker-folk (2600 on down, to about 1900). This folk was definitely the carrier of 'high culture'. If you follow this 'kite', and posit 'elite dominance', all sorts of different scenarios are possible, particularly that of language-replacement -- and the heretical notion that the Corded Ware culture was NOT IE-speaking. This of course does not relate well to the Indic cognate, but it too is a beguiling idea. One speculation I toss out is the idea that certain 'kurgan-culture IEs' and the smiths had formed a stable, intermarried alliance. The horseback-riding 'wolves' would be bodyguards/nepots/avunculi to the clever Elves and their precious trade-goods.The advent of the Bell-Beakers is probably the 'shallowest' date one can posit for the breakup of post-Anatolic common IE.Mark.