Glen wrote
> Many accept 15000 BCE as the date of Nostratic (including
AfroAsiatic)
> because of the many differences between the language groups
involved. A
> shallow timespan like 12000 BCE doesn't work as well. The latter
date would
> be that of Eurasiatic as defined on my Nostratic linguistic tree.
Glen, with Nostratic (and A-A) at 15000 BCE at that rate there was
only one mesolithic culture that fits the Bill. And that is the
Kebaran culture of Palestine (18,000-10,500), which has close
derivative similarities with the Halfan (24,000 - 17,000 BCE) culture
of Egypt, (which many see as the parent of all later A-A cultures in
Egypt.) 15,000 years ago they were the only mesolithic culture
around. To have Nostratic being both as early as you hypothesise
Glen, and to have fragmented so early AND to have their ancestors be
meslithic, that fragmentation MUST have occurred within the Kebaran
culture of Palestine and Syria.
And this is precsely what the archaeological evidence tells us. The
Zarzian culture developed out of the Kebaran on the Euphrates bend
and
colonised the Zagros mountains and Armenia (12,400-8,700 BCE), and
the
Belbasi culture (13,000-10,000) which you yourself point out has
developed out of the Kebaran, occupied South West Anatolia, and was
to
later influence the mesolithic cultures of the Franchi Cave in Greece
9,800-5,794 BCE and the mesolithic Murzak-Koba culture, the very
first
post glacial mesolithic culture found on the Eurasian steppe
9,100-8,000 BCE. From the Murzak-Koba culture people, the
Grebenki culture (8,500-7,000) culture developed. They were the
parent culture for the two cultures Dneipr-Bug/Dnesitr-Donetz
(7,000-5,500 BCE) which began adopting neolithic features from the
Starcevo peoples (6,500-4,500 BCE) who introduced farming to the
Balkan region, having developed from the Sesklo culture of the
Aegean.
The Srendny-Stog culture, that Mallory and many others
consider to have been PIE, developed out of the neolithicisation of
the two cultures Dneipr-Bug/Dnesitr-Donetz.
Meanwhile the Zarzian culture itself had been incredibly successful
and long lasting. It too had spread and split. Firstly, the Belt
Caves of the Caspian, gave rise to all mesolithic cultures
(M'lefatian
10,500-9,000 BCE, Jeitun 9-5,000, Hissar (proto-Altaic?)6,000-4,000
BCE and 5,500-3,500 Keltiminar) that spread across Khorasan, and into
TransOxania, and thence north eastward to the Altai and Mongolia.
Seconly it split south eastwards to give rise to a whole family of
sites in the Northern Zagros that eventually developed into Kobystan
in the extreme Eastern end of the Caucasas. By 8,700-8,500 BCE
Zarzian developed into the Zawi Chemi Shanadar which played the same
role for Zarzian culture that Natufian played for Kebaran, it bridged
the cultural gap between a mesolithic hunter-gatherer people and the
appearance of the first cultivators at Jarmo. By 8,500 Jarmo had
begun farming and the Zagros cultures spread in the same direcions as
had the previous Zarzian suggesting cultral if not linguistic
affinities. In the Southern region there is an unbroken line of
sites
between this and the development of the historic Elamites. Since
Elamo-Dravidian is usually accepted as a single language group then
they too MUST have developed out of the Zarzian mesolithic.
The final scene to these cultural shifts is what happened in
Palestine
itself. Natufian (10,500-8,500 BCE) developed as a sedentary
mesolithic culture. Glen sees the Natufians as Semitish. But the
Natufians developed in situ. No new cultural elements were
introduced
from outside the area of Palestine and Natufian developed wholly out
of the Kebaran culture (18,000-10,500) that previously was found in
the region. So smooth was the transiton to Natufian that at some
sites it is impossible to tell whether the site is late Kebaran or
Early Natufian. If this is so Glen, then the Kebaran culture must
have been Semitish too, and Semitic languages would have had to
separate from the other Afro-Asiatics in Africa (Halfian) far too
early. By suggesting Natufian to be Semitish, you also have no
cultural bride, confirmed archaeologically, to connect the Nostratic
languages of the Steppes and the AA languages of Africa. Thus the
fact that Natufian culture had a strong influence upon Beldibi
culture
(10,000-8,500) of South West Anatolia, cannot have been Semitish that
was introduced here, but some other extinct language). Late
Natufian,
at Mureyabet on the Euphrates bend was the first to develop
Agriculture from the people of the Mountains to the North (Cayonu).
From then on Pre-Pottery A and B cultures spread south over the old
Natufian sites. Indeed Pre-Pottery A seems in many places to have
been Natufian with a full farming complement added. Most
archaeologists and modern Semitic linguists that I have been reading
acknowledge that Semitic languages were first introduced into
Palestine with the clear cultural break (the first that occurred
since
18,000 BCE), with the increasingly arid climate at end of the
Pre-Pottery B culture with the appearance of Harifian elements in
Palestine. This impoverished culture, shows clear derivation from
the
Isnian in Egypt (9,000-4,500 BCE) which is clearly derived from
Capsian (usually assumed to have been the first Afro-Asiatic culture
in Africa).
Glen, this is the archaeological background to these regions. Your
hypothetical splits from Nostratic need to fit this reality. When do
you propose Altaic reaches the Altai mountain region and points east?
And which archaeologicaly attested cultures are you talking about?
Was it Hissar? Keltiminar? Or your aliens? When do you propose the
split up of Nostratic occurred? Was it the Kebaran-Zarzian
cultures that I suggest? Was it earlier? Or later? And what
real culture and what real locations are you here talking about? Was
it the Middle East in the perods I have been discussing? Or was it
Central Asia in the period before 10,000 BCE (which was almost
totally
empty of Humans save for a few remnant hunter gatherer bands
ultimately derived from the Aurignacian culture of 35,000 BCE)?
Under
what circumstances did the Nostratic spread? Was it the mesolithic
arrivals from Africa, as I suggest, or was it some other culture in
some other way? In what location? And what were the cultural forces
that caused it to spread?
Glen it is true that my linguistics is not as good as yours, or many
of those who are involved on this list. But my archaeology is sound,
and deep. People speak languages and have cultures, and languages
and
artifacts can (and have frequently) move independently from each
other, agreed. But when they do, they generally leave identifiable
traces in the archaeological record. It shows as a destruction layer
of site burnings and reoccupation, or of te appearance of cultural
traits previously found in neighbouring areas. Site burnings can be
from internal revolts of supressed minorities, neighbouring cultural
artificts can be from mimicry, trade and adoption. Sorting out which
of these two alternatives takes a need for other evidence. For
example the wave of brunings that stretched from Troy II to Mersin in
Cilicia has been shown to have travelled from the North West to the
South East, and is usually associated with the arrival of the
Anatolian languages in Anatolia. The wave of destruction again that
seems to have afflicted almost all coastal sites (as well as Boghuz
Khoy and other sites of the Hittites) is usually equated as the work
of the Peoples of the Sea. Intruive elements from outside in both
cases. And thus we ca map the movements of peoples all the way back
to the pper Paleolithic.
My challenge to you Glen. Since you believe Natufian to have been
Semitish, and not a Eurasian language. I challenge you to show how
Uralic and Altaic (and PIE) came to be in the areas in which they
were
spoken in early modern times (i.e. Late Holocene?) Who were the
cultures and peoples that brought them there and why did they split
and develop in the way you propose?
Regards
John