Re: [tied] Re: IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, 23 July, 2000 12:48 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE, AA, Nostratic and Ringo

> > 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.
>

This doesn't hold true for the Hellenistic Greeks or Ptolemaic Egypt which
consistently referred to the Phoenicians as Kaftu. Nor for that matter the
Emperor Nero, who, on being presented with some ancient Minoan tablets,
called for Semitic scholars to translate them.

>>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.
>

I assume you're referring to the LMIB/LMII destruction of the provincial
palaces. Latest thinking on this, in view of the updating to the Thera
explosion to 1628BCE, places this at around 1520BCE, too early for the
Greeks, and ascribes it to internal developments within Crete, possibly (my
view) in connection with the elimination of the last of the Hyksos elements.
LMII shows connections with the preceding LMIB and following LMIII, and is
no longer seen to have the clearly Mycenean features that Carl Blegen saw.
The Rekhmire tomb paintings place the Greek take-over at around 1470BCE,
with a further substantial but not complete destruction of Knossos at around
1420BCE (LMIIIA2), which could indicate a new intrusion, this time by the
Asiatic Achaians.

> > 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.
>
Keith Branigan, The Foundations of Palatial Crete (1970), S. Hood, The
Minoans - Crete in the Bronze Age, 1971, Saul Weinberg, The Stone Age in the
Aegean, CAH 3rd Ed.

> > 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.
>
No, I was referring here to pre-Dynastic Egypt, stone bowls and a mace head
found in pre-Minoan levels in Crete - these are not fantasies. All in all,
five sources of influence have been discerned in neolithic Crete: Mainland
Greece, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, Egypt and Libya.

> > 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.
>

That the Catal Huyuk people spoke Asianic languages, and their still being
around as a linguistic unit some 3000 years after the disappearance of that
culture, is supposition on your part.
I have never argued against the essential continuity of Cretan culture. But
this doesn't rule out influences from outside. The big difference between
Crete and Ireland, is that Crete is in the middle of what was in late
neolithic/early bronze age a highly active and dynamic area. Ireland, with
all due respect to the Irish, is the end of the road to the Blessed Isles.

>> 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.
>
I'm sorry, John, perhaps I misunderstood. You seemed to clearly state that
Greek and pre-Greek were in contact in the islands and on Crete for close on
1000 years, and elsewhere that these "northern barbarians" learned a
language of civilisation from their neighbours. But for the period prior to
1700BCE, this simply is not true.
If you're now saying that Greek was in contact with pre-Greek on the
mainland, and that this language was the same or closely related to that of
the islands and Crete, this is pure supposition. Not only that there was a
linguistic unity between these regions, but also that the Greeks were in
contact with the supposed neolithic language(s) of the mainland. There had
been some 700 (I would say closer to 1000) years of Bronze Age culture
(EHII/EHIII) and the possible intrusion of at least two originally
proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian peoples (the Tyrrhenians/Pelasgians and the
Anatolians) between the sparse neolithic population and the Greeks.
I personally have no problem with late (Mycenean and later) borrowings into
Greek.

> > 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.
>
If we are talking pre-Greek substratum only, then it must have taken place
in Greece, and Crete is wholly irrelevant (and unnecessary) to this scheme.

> > 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
> .
The earlier the better. This just makes the gap between the loans to Semitic
and Greek wider and more difficult to bridge.

> > 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.

And has now grown to 4000 years or more.

> > 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.

Farmers are not necessarily civilised (apologies to any farmers out there).
Seriously, agriculture does not equal civilisation.
Agriculture provides the basis on which civilisation can be established and
developed.
It is not necessarily true that the inventors develop the invention's
potential.
So, until we find lost Anatolian cities, with town planning, drainage,
public amenities, markets, industries, temples and the like, we can only
credit the Anatolians with the discovery of agriculture, not civilisation.

>
> 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.
>
This sounds like my third option.
The reinforcement idea doesn't work for me. If the Greeks, as Indo-Europeans
were exposed to this vocabulary ca. 4500BCE, 2000 years later this
vocabulary would be Greek, with cognates in the other IE languages. So why
would the Greeks learn what would now be to them the foreign vocabulary of
the neolithic people of Greece?
In effect, your espousal of pre-Greek as a Asianic substratum, militates
against the idea of early borrowing by PIE from Asianic.
If, one the other hand, you stand by the early borrowing into PIE of Asianic
agricultural terms, then the Greeks brought those terms with them, as Greek
words, but with possible similarities to Caucasic words, and we no longer
need to propose improbable theories of 5000-year neolithic linguistic
continuity.

>
> Dennis, Egypt at the times we are talking of (Catal Huyuk and
> Halafian, was a backwater.
>
I was referring to post-3000BCE, when Catal Huyuk was no longer even a
memory.

>
> 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.
>
I didn't say that Greece was invaded or ruled directly by Egypt.
There were no ties, military, cultural or economic with the
Hittites. The only references to Greeks in Hittite documents are to
Ahhiyawa, who, for the Hittites, were based in western Anatolia, and which
reveal constant hostilities and the deliberate exclusion of Ahhiyawa ships
from Hittite controlled ports. There is no Mycenean pottery in central
Anatolia, and likewise only one possibly Hittite artifact found in Mycenae.
Classical Greek texts likewise reveal no reference to the Hittites, who,
until the 19th century, were only known through Biblical sources.
And merceneries do not equal military ties.
Your dismissal of faience plaques is too glib. These are of no great value,
but of great ritual importance, and are normally placed at the foundations
of a temple. Thus these are not trade goods, or casual souvenirs, but
indications of close ties between the sender and recipient.
Of course, with the overwhelming wealth and population of Egypt, the trade,
especially in durable items like pottery would be to Egypt. Greece's main
imports from Egypt would have been grain, ivory, gold, cloth - materials
that were either consumed, worn out, or re-worked.
As for culture, I refer to Herodotos - all religious practices and the name
of practically all the gods came from Egypt. Even if he is exaggerating, and
one wonders why he would want to, there still must be a large kernel of
truth for his writings to have ever gained acceptance with his
contemporaries.

> 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.
>
Of course, you're right. I was referring to the adstratum vocabulary, which
is post 1700BCE.


So, in conclusion, "pre-Greek" does not lend any support, either to your
hypothesis of early Asianic influence on PIE, or later Asianic influence on
Greek. In fact, it seems to eliminate one or the other. If the pre-Greek
substratum is Asianic, then there is no need for early borrowings into PIE.
If there was early borrowing into PIE from Asianic, then there is no need
for the Asianic pre-Greek substratum.
It does not lend any support to the Semitish hypothesis either, but that was
never claimed.

But what we're talking about here is linguistic influence and contact, not
archaeological or cultural, although they may be seen as concomitants. Glen
has produced examples to support his hypothesis of early borrowing from
Semitish to Indo-Tyrrhenian, as have I for Semitic and Egyptian influence on
the Greek language (at a much later date). So, as a proponent of Asianic,
could you please produce some linguistic evidence, actual examples that we
could all evaluate?

Cheers
Dennis