Mark Odegard wrote of Glen's jorror that Mark O speaks of a Pre-IE
language existing in Anatolia in 7000 BCE to my horror.
Mark replied
> 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).
Although Glen persists in having languages move in the opposite
directions to demic and cultural movements, the only time possible for
your "Danubo-Troadic" would be long before 7,000 BCE. In fact there
is clear evidence of a movement from Anatolia to the Aegean 9,800
-5,794 BCE at Franchthi Cave, connecting to the Danubian Gorge
Culture and thence 9,1-8,000 BCE with the mesolithic Murzak-Koba
culture of the Steppes.
This is very early and I would suspect that one would be better
calling the Languages Late Nostratic, or Eurasiatic, even Steppe
rather than PIE here Mark.
> 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.
In fact, based on the archaeology, the split from Tyrrhenian and PIE
is even earlier, right at the end of the Ice Age, circa 9,000 BCE.
Anatolic cannot have split until nearly 6,000 years later.
Regards
John