Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

----- Original Message -----

From: Marc Verhaegen

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 10:58 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

The LP came from the Balkan & Anatolia, isn't it?

 

Not quite. The LP culture was a local Danubian phenomenon, though of course it owed its emergence to southeastern cultural influence. Of course Renfrew makes the IEs start out from the Fertile crescent, but it's his theory, not mine.

 

they were the first farmers AFAIK? If you think they spoke IE, with what branch do they correlate IYO? celtic? germanic? or an extinct branch? (if it was an extinct branch there's no way to know what IE language they spoke?)

 

Yes, the first farmers in Central Europe. As the earliest LP dates to the mid 6th millennium BC you can hardly expect it to correlate with any particular branch. It would have to correlate with PIE itself.

 

IE people loaned agricultural terms from an AA language ("Semitish"?) (perhaps they got a "superior" culture by combining agricult.elements with steppe elements?). More likely, therefore, IMO, the LP farmers did not speak IE, but a Middle East (AA?) language.

 

I don't think many linguists would regard it as likely that AA languages were spoken in Central Europe 7000 years ago. Theo Vennemann thinks there was a lost AA branch in Western and Northern Europe, but, ironically, he associates the IEs with the LP culture.

 

<snips> The CW culture was very likely IE. Which branch? Celto-Italic and/or Germanic?

 

My impression: most likely possibilities: (BB = bell beakers)

1) FB = Germanic, CW+BB = Celto-Italic

2) FB = Celto-Italic, CW = Germanic

3) FB is not IE, CW = Germanic; BB = Celto-Italic

4) CW = Germanic + Balto-Slavic, BB = Celto-Italic

(I tend to prefer 3(4?): geographically most logical).

 

 

Nobody doubts the CW culture was wholly or almost wholly IE (though for most of its existence it was hardly a monolithic culture). I think it included the ancestors of the Germani and the Balto-Slavs. As to the position of Italic and Celtic-speaking cultures (not to mention the Illyrians and still more obscure groups), I'd like to know first where the Bell Beaker cultural package came from. Some people say Holland, others say Spain, and they may all be wrong -- it seems the BB carriers were shepherds and itinerant coppersmiths who travelled a lot and cannot be easily pinpointed by archaeologist; their graves can be found from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula to southeastern Poland. I'd place the Italic/Celtic homeland in Austria, the Czech Republic and southern Germany, more or less -- pretty far from the alleged BB homelands.

Since C-S's 3d component (=IE?) must have been important, it could coincide with your collapse ca.3200 BC or with a new peopling shortly thereafter coming from the East ca.3000 BC (introduction of a new agriculture on less fertile grounds (hills rather than valleys?) + barley, deforestation (=fire? =sheep?)).

 

 

Central European agriculture moved from river valleys to more difficult soils throughout the FB period, 4500-3200 BC. It was the intensive "slash and burn" exploitation of uplands that caused their deforestation and denudation (increased erosion). As forest gave way to forest-steppe, more grassland became available for pasturing animals, which encouraged the development of semi-sedentary cattle and sheep pastoralism.

 

Piotr