Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

If one accepts a Central European homeland, an important question arises: what is the origin of Greek and the Pontic branches (Indo-Iranian, Thracian, Getic, Armenian)? Max Baldia seems to believe that the Funnel Beaker people (I'll be using the transparent abbreviation "FB" rather than "TRB") can be fully identified with the IEs; but if so, we must assume that their Pontic contemporaries (most importantly the Pit Grave and Tripolye cultures) were non-IE, and that the IEisation of the north Pontic area took place not earlier than the CW (Corded Ware/Battle Axe) period. It’s true that artifacts with CW characteristics are found as far east as the Aral Sea, but what the archaeological record suggests is the existence of well-functioning trade routes rather than ‘demic expansion’ as Cavalli-Sforza would put it. If the Indo-Iranians are not CW migrants from Central Europe, who the heck are they?

The most interesting alternative is that IE-speakers were the dominant element in *both* the FB and the steppe cultures. In other words, the pastoralist ‘Kurgan’ people and the sedentary ‘Old Europeans’ were linguistically related. The detailed scenario would be like this:

5500-5300 BC. Groups of PIE-speaking LP (Linear Pottery) farmers migrate from the Middle Danube Valley into Central Europe and establish a network of settlements along the loess belt of the N European Plain (from the Rhein to the Vistula). The linguistic ancestors of the Anatolians stay behind. Perhaps they form the eastern branch of the Danubian LP, or merge

5300-4500 BC. LP settlers slowly colonise new cultivable areas, expanding both NW and E. They reach the Netherlands at the western end; in the east they penetrate Ukraine along the Dniester Valley and arrive on the Black Sea. By 4500 BC there are already considerable cultural and dialectal differences between the two ends of the LP belt. The eastward expansion of farming peters out as it reaches the steppe, but adaptation to a seminomadic way of life with emphasis on pastoralism enables some of the eastern IEs to venture into the steppe lands. They assimilate trans-Caucasian cultural influences that have already reached the Lower Dnieper (Srednij Stog), and produce the Pit Grave cultures.

The easternmost avant-garde reaches the Volga-Ural region and then enters Central Asia, producing a chain of closely related cultures in Kazakhstan and the Upper Yenisey Valley. They can be tentatively identified with the archaic linguistic lineage leading on to Proto-Tocharian. The more sedentary cultures emerging close to the Dniester estuary (Tripolye, possibly also Cucuteni and allied) gravitate towards Moldova and the Romanian coast. Ancestors of the Balto-Slavs occupy the forest zone on the Middle Dnieper (Dnieper-Donetz?), absorbing the local Mesolithic cultures. They live in some kind of cultural and economic symbiosis with the pastoralists of the steppe and remain linguistically close to them. At a later date the Satem palatalisation spreads in that area but doesn’t reach the eastern (Proto-Tocharian) and southwestern (Proto-Greek/Phrygian) fringes of east Indoeuropia. Still later, the Proto-Balto-Slavs and the Proto-Indo-Iranians remain close enough to share the Ruki innovation to the exclusion of the minor Satemic groups of the NW Pontic area (ancestors of the Thracians, Armenians, Albanians etc.).

4500-3200 BC. The Mesolithic populations of S Scandinavia, Denmark and N Germany have already borrowed some elements of their Neolithic neighbours’ culture (e.g. pottery). More advanced farming methods allow the western IEs to expand to non-loess soils. Eventually their colonisation reaches the North Sea/Baltic region and the relatively dense non-IE substrate is assimilated linguistically (its traces can be seen in Germanic). The FB (Funnel Beaker) culture, combining Danubian (Lengyel) elements, megalithic and northern pre-Neolithic traditions (Ertebølle, etc.) with local LP transformations (Michelsberg), expands all over the Plain, attracting also the Proto-Balto-Slavic farmers in the east into its sphere of influence (shared Northern vocabulary). Wheeled vehicles appear during that period, and the domestication of the horse in the steppe cultures stimulates further brilliant inventions in vehicular transport. These innovations and the associated vocabulary spread like bushfire among the IEs. The eastern IE cultures of the Srednij Stog/Pit Grave tradition undergo their own transformations (evolving into the Catacomb, Poltavka and Andronovo cultures) and occasionally attempt to penetrate Pannonia and the W Pontic coastal area.

The long career of the FB culture terminates in a sudden socioeconomic collapse ca. 3200 (caused chiefly by the anthropogenic deforestation and denudation of the settled areas, aggravated by the Sub-Boreal climatic reversal). The population decreases and shifts economically towards cattle and sheep pastoralism (as already pioneered by the Globular Amphora culture well before the crisis). Incursions of steppe element are possible at that time especially in the eastern part of the Plain.

3200-2000 BC. As a new equilibrium emerges, the CW (Corded Ware/Battle Axe) cultures establish themselves all over North and Central Europe, developing distinctive regional variants and expanding where possible. Bell Beaker influence in the west and various local transformations, accelerated by the advent of Bronze Age technologies, give rise to distinct groups that will in due time diversify linguistically into the Celts, Italo-Veneti, Illyrians, Germani, and Balto-Slavs (plus a number of minor branches that became extinct in prehistoric or early historical times). By 2000 BC the Proto-Iranian nomads establish their dominance in the steppe, forcing many other groups to move and causing a series of great circum-Pontic migrations involving also their distant Proto-Anatolian cousins and the latter’s Proto-Tyrrhenian neighbours. As new IE groups move into the Carpathian region and the Balkan lands, Anatolians refugees enter Asia Minor (presumably in two waves at least). Some Proto-Indic tribes cross the Caucasus into the Iranian Plateau ... But the rest is documented history.

Piotr