Danubo-Troadic.

Mark O speaks of a Pre-IE language existing in Anatolia in 7000 BCE to my horror.

It's just a kite, but it's a possible kite. Pre-PIE would have staged in NW Anatolia, then entered Europe via the Bosphorus landbridge, and thence north into Central and then North Central Europe as the climate improved. They would have largely been hunter gatherers. You can have them north of former Czechoslovakia, in Germany and Poland as the authors of the Linearbandkeramik/LBK Linear Band Pottery culture.

 

Considering the seeming evidence that Greece and Thrace were virtually depopulated for a considerable period before 3200, you have a linguistic cordon sanitaire, as well as a region for peoples to move south into, as the weather worsened after 3200.

 

There are only three practical ways for mesolithic pedestrians to get themselves to Germany and Poland: via France, up the Danube via Hungary, or from the steppe (either from Russia north of the Pripet, or directly from Ukraine).

 

I am not familiar with the 'usual' Nostraticist dates for a split from Uralic, but I suspect this puts it back further in time, and clearly, further to the south.

 

The term 'Danubo-Troadic' pops into my mind, perhaps as a term for 'pre-PIE', perhaps the ancestor to Tyrrhenian and IE.

 

This is almost Renfrew's thesis, but the the Anatolic group would have gone off to Europe for a spell before returning to Anatolia -- and the pre-PIEs would not seem to have been heavily involved in Anatolian agriculture. The idea that Anatolic and the rest of IE split up ca 7000 is to horrifying to contemplate.

 

Mark.