Re: IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

Dear Dennis

Thank you for your long and detailed reply to my post of 12th July.

Re:

> The only real hope lies in Crete.
>
> Minoan Crete and the Eteocretans
> So, what language did the Minoans speak? From Antiquity down to Sir

Arthur

> Evans, the accepted wisdom was that it was Semitic.

It is interesting that this theory does not seem to hold in the
modern
literaure. Partly it was assumed that farming was a Semitic
invention, and there was a lack of understanding of the Asianic
substratum beneath the Anatolian IE until then. Hittite studies only
took off at about the same time that Evans was working.

> The main argument against this is based on the dictum "no break in

culture -

> no intrusion of new people". While it may be true that a break in

the

> culture indicates a new people with a new language, the opposite is

not

> necessarily true. The take-over of Crete by the Mycenean Greeks is

a
case in

> point. The only evidence we have for this event is Linear B and

Egyptian

> tomb paintings.

Not so. all palaces on the island were burned, and there was a
singular rule established from Knossos. There is a clear break in
the
cultures of the time.

> There is however evidence of influence from Palestine in the

immediate

> pre-Minoan phase in the south-east of Crete - Agios Onouphrios ware,
> collective burials in caves or tholoi, the stacking of skulls, and

the

> introduction of bronze working have been seen as evidence of a

migration

> from Palestine.

Can you give further references of this Dennis. It's the first I
have
seen.

I understood that the latest explanations seem to show that Cretian
Bronze working techniques owed more to the Balkan technologies (Vinca
et al) than to Palestinian ones.

> Others have seen parallels between pre-Minoan Cretan
> cultures and the (slightly earlier) Ghassulian culture of Palestine.
> Other influences have been discerned emanating from Libya and
> pre-Dynastic Egypt, as well as from the Cyclades and the European

mainland.

The influences from Egypt were Evan's fantasy of refugees from Menes
conquering hordes fleeing the delta and settling in Crete. Modern
evidence is running against any such trend (indeed Manetho's Menes is
even being doubted as any one person). The southerners seem to have
been especially lenient in their treatment of Delta people.
Nithotep,
the wife of Narmer and the mother of Aha was a northern princess.
Merytnieth was also a Queen who ruled as Pharaoh with strong northern
connections. On the basis of her grave she was the greatest of all
1st Dynasty rulers.

> So, given Crete's position as the traditional meeting place between

Europe,

> Africa and the Middle East (Strabo doesn't locate Crete in the

Aegean, but

> between Greece and Africa), the survival over 4000 years of the

language and

> culture of Catal Huyuk doesn't seem very likely.

Dennis, it appears that there is not much influence from Africa in
Crete. Sabine, I need your help if you are still in this list on
this
point. As for contact between the Middle East and Europe, prior to
the arrival of the Anatolian IE peoples, most of this contact would
have been from peoples who spoke Asianic languages like those of
Catal
Huyuk in any case. And Crete, being an Island was spared the Late
Helladic II, III catastrophe you spoke of in any case. Cretian
continuity, like Gaelic in Ireland, is shown culturally by the
archaeology.

> Greek Contact with Minoan Crete
> John wrote (with the entry of the Greeks into the Greek mainland

ca2350BCE)

> "...there would have been a considerable overlap of Greek and

pre-Greek in

> Crete and the Islands for nearly a thousand years..."
> The Greek language did not arrive in Crete until ca.1450BCE with the
> Mycenean take-over. All the cultural flow prior to that date was

from Crete

> to the mainland. But this in turn only dates back to the

establishment of

> the Mycenean palaces, ca.1600BCE. Prior that, during the

poverty-stricken

> Middle Helladic and EHIII phases there was no contact between

Greece
and

> Crete. So, where and under what circumstances did this "overlap"

take place?

Dennis, don't set up a straw dog to knock him down. If the language
spoken throughout the Cyclades and on the Greek Mainland was a sister
or close afine with Cretian they would have been in close contact for
a long period.

> Given this, it would be more correct to speak of the Cretan

influence on

> Greece as adstratum rather than substratum.

No, we are here talking of the pre-Greek neolithic languages, as my
quote from Mellaart clearly shows.

> I've saved the best till last : John wrote (his emphasis) :
> "To the east also, some of the Caucasian languages contain words

similar to

> those of pre-Greek, and Furnee
> suggests that *THE NUMBER OF PRE-GREEK WORDS USUALLY EXPLAINED AS

SEMITIC

> WERE BORROWED BY AND NOT FROM THE SEMITIC*"
>
> I'm assuming from this statement that Caucasian is to be seen as

the
source

> of these words, so several questions present themselves. But first,

some

> ground rules :
> 1. the earliest texts in Semitic (Akkadian, Eblaite) date to

ca.2500BCE.

> Whatever borrowings Semitic had made (and no-one doubts that there

were

> borrowings), they seem to have been fully incorporated into the

Semitic

> lexicon by this date. Also, there are no references that I know of

to this

> enormously influential Caucasian civilisation in the early Semitic

texts.

> So, the borrowings must have been earlier than the earliest texts,

let's say

> 3000-2800BCE.

No Dennis, much earlier. Halafian culture is usually assumed to be
Caucasic Proto-Hurro-Urartuan in origin and they were 5,500 BCE if
not
earlier. Halafian had a huge influence upon Ghassulian, usually
acknowledged as the Semitic successor to the Munhata phase in
Palestine in which Semites are archaeologically attested
.

> 2. the earliest Greek texts date to perhaps 14th century BCE, and

the

> earliest evidence of a Greek-speaking civilisation, the Mycenean

palaces,

> dates to around 1600BCE, so the borrowings would not be much

earlier.

> This gap of some 1500 years is important.
> So the questions are, in increasing order of implausibility :
> 1. Did Semitic borrow the words ca.3000BCE, fully incorporate them,

and then

> pass them on to Greek around 1600BCE?
> If so, then my argument stands, that Greek borrowed heavily from

Semitic.

> The ultimate origin of the Semitic words is irrelevant.
> 2. Did this Caucasian civilisation loan the words to Semitic and

Greek at

>the same time?
> If so, the Greeks, who were not yet settled in Greece, must have

brought the

> vocabulary with them, and locked it away in a safe place for more

than 1000

> years until it was required.
> 3. Did the Caucasian civilisation loan the words independently to

Semitic

> and then Greek?
> If so, then where is the evidence for such a long-lasting advanced

and

> influential civilisation in the Caucasus/Anatolia?

Anatolia led the world as far as civilisation was concerned from
about
8,000 BCE until the construction of the fortress at Mersin 4,300 BCE.
It was the site of the earliest Chalcolithic cultures, and farming
began in this region, spreading south to Palestine and carrying
domesticated ovicaprids and einkorn wheat with them (wild sheep and
wild einkorn wheat were not found in the Semitic lands and were
introduced to Palestine via Mureyabet on the Euphrates, 8,500 BCE.
The pig was also domesticaed first in Anatolia.

But Dennis, you leave out the fifth and most plausible option. The
option that Mellaart spoke of in his quote. The Anatolian people who
settled Greece in the Neolithic spoke a language very similar to the
Anatolian people who discovered agriculture and taught their
agricultural vocabulary to the proto-Semitics. The Greeks, like all
Indo-Europeans, were exposed to this vocabulary when farming spread
from the Balkans into the Ukraine. It was reinforced for the Greeks
when they arrived into the Aegean.

> It really seems here that the "Out-of-Anatolia" theorists are

clutching at

> straws, but it is gratifying to note that even they have to admit

to
the

> Semitic appearance of much of the non-IE vocabulary of Greek.
> Actually, option no.3 has a valid candidate. There is a

long-lasting, highly

> advanced and extremely influential civilisation which may well have

loaned

> words into Greek both independently and via Semitic. I'm thinking

of
course

> of Egypt.

Dennis, Egypt at the times we are talking of (Catal Huyuk and
Halafian, was a backwater.

> Greek civilisation was founded and formed and was an insignificant

part of

> the high Bronze Age civilisation of the Mediterranean, dominated

militarily,

> economically and culturally by the powerful 18th Dynasty of Egypt,

and

> commercially by the great trading cities of the Levantine coast.

News to me that Greece was invaded and ruled by 18th Dynasty Egypt!
Apart from faience and a few scarabs, there is not much evidence of
Egyptian economic or cultural domination during the late Bronze Age
in
the Aegean. Greek mercenaries were employed by the Hittites at
Kadesh
against Egypt, not for it. There was closer military, cultural and
economic ties with the Hittites (Egyptian tomb paintings not
withstanding), as Hittite records show.

Dennis, the 18th Dynasty is too late for Semitic (or Egyptian!) loan
words to have influenced PIE at 4,500 BCE. This is the period at
which neolithic and early chalcolithic cultures, carrying the
secondary products revolution so amply demonstrated first at Catal
Huyuk and later in the the Halafian and Ghassulian cultures, into the
Balkans and thence to the Ukraine.

Hope this helps

John