In The Living Goddess, pp. 176-77, Marija Gimbutas
writes:
--start quote--
There still existed a farming culture along the Danube Valley
west and east of present-day Belgrade throughout the first half of the second
millenium B.C., an "island" of Old European culture almost devoid of
Indo-European elements. This remarkable respository of Old European traditions
extended from the Tisza and Mutres (Maros) basin in the west, along the Danubian
valley, and across the provinces of Banat and Oltenia. (The names of the culture
groups used in the archaeological literature are Periam, Pecica, Verbicioara,
Vattina/Girla-Mare, Cirna.) Their permanant agriculture settlements formed tells
as in the Neolithic, and there are no Kurgan (round barrow) graves in this area.
The burial cemeteries of the early second millennium B.C. and cremation
cemeteries of the mid-second millennium BC yielded elegant and delicate
vases, thin-walled, well-baked and burnished, incised and white-encrusted with
Old European symbols .... The figurines continue the Old European tradition,
representing the goddess of death and regeneration.
--end quote--
I had to look up Banat and Oltenia. Banat is essentially
everything east of the Tisza and north of the Danube, up to the mountains in the
south and east. Oltenia is still murky; it seems to be in Romania. The mentioned
archaeological 'culture groups' are unknown to me.
The time period is 2000-1500 BCE. Gimbutas says this
part of Europe was not 'kurganized', i.e., it had not been Indo-Europeanized.
This has implications for the language-replacement required by
Gimbutas' Kurgan theory, and where the linguistic Indo-Europeanization
first took root.
Elsewhere in the book, she points to the Globular Amphora
culture as the first seriously kurganized region in Europe. This, of course, is
north of Hungary, encompassing Poland and adjacent regions east and west. This
is also proposed as a Balto-Slavic homeland, as well as the point from
where Germanic headed north.
In prehistoric Western Europe, we seem to have only the Celts.
In North Central Europe, the Germans expand south rather late, practically in
historic times, perhaps an opportunistic response to the huge blow
delivered to the Gauls by the Romans in the person of Julius Caesar.
The impression I'm getting is that the Indo-Europeanization of
Central and Western Europe, outside of Greece, is a rather late phenomenon, one
instigated by very warlike Celts, Germans and in historic times, Latins. This is
the old-fashioned conquest model combined with migrations. The idea is that the
non-IE language[s] of this part of the world were still alive and kicking until
quite late. The model of IEs spreading verb paradigms via the sword makes a
great deal of sense, if you push the time for this down to the mid-to-late 2nd
millennium. If we accept a late date for the entry of Greek into Greece (1600s
or so), then even Southern Europe follows this pattern. The pattern, then, is
post-2000 chariot-riding IEs overrunning Europe as well as just about everyplace
else.
Comments?
Mark.