Stubborn-headed John clings to dead theories:
>Thus Sumerian concepts of astronomy at an early date drove out any
>indigenous concepts of star names or constellations. Of course, this
>Sumerian science was spread by the Akkadians, ensuring that the
>Akkadian Ishtar (Venus) spread to become the word for *xster-. We
>are here dealing with a wanderword that did not need to spread with
>the first farming, but which spread rapidly from 3,500 BCE.
If John doesn't get it, at least others will. This loan MUST have been
adopted BEFORE 3500 BCE for two very important and undeniable reasons.
First, IE as a small, homogeneous speech area certainly no longer existed by
3500 BCE. Second, the IE reflex makes it clear that this is not an Akkadian
loan (since Akkadian has lost laryngeals, not without altering vowels in the
process). At the very least, the IE loan might derive from West Semitic,
which would indeed have preserved the initial ayin in Common Semitic
*`aTtar-.
However, to repeat, by necessity we're dealing with a loanword adopted
_DURING OR BEFORE_ 4000 BCE. The only important event around this time
period that could or would carry this Middle-Eastern loanword to the IE
speaking population so early is in fact the adoption of agriculture in
Europe by 6000 BCE. Might I remind everyone about the Cavalli-Sforza genetic
data which prove at least one thing - it was the denser populations of
Anatolian agriculturalists coming into Europe who supplanted the genes of
the thinly populated mesolithic peoples (including the IE-speaking area).
And the very fundamentals of IE mythology have such strong similarities to
the Middle East that they speak even more volumes as to what truely
happened.
Again, the IE community could not have existed by 3500 except as a group of
widely spread dialects. Surely the twins, *Manus and *Yemos, the sea god
*Nepo:t and the sky god *Dye:us could not have been adopted by the IEs so
late since their names have survived throughout a wide range of IE languages
with regular reflexes, proving a common source. And yet they are tied so
strongly to what exists in the Middle East (the later biblical Cain & Abel
versus *Manus and *Yemos, or the relationship between *Dye:us and *Nepo:t
versus El and Baal). For obvious reasons, it's terribly unlikely that the
IEs, as united as they were, could have weilded enough power to influence
the technologically superior Middle East!
It could only have been c.6000 BCE that Semitoid loans like IE *xster-,
*septm, *teuros, *weinos, *gheidos, *sweks and, hell, even Etruscan /s'ar/,
/s'a/, /(za-)thrum/ & /vinac/ were adopted. I would argue that the similar
loans in Kartvelian date to this same time because it would appear that
later native sound changes have operated on them already by the time of the
reconstructed proto-Kartvelian stage (eg: Kartvelian *wekws'- <
**s'wekws'-).
Sorry, John. Your arguement is tired and irrational. I really wish you would
see reason but we're more likely to see Richard Simmons become Playgirl
Centerfold of 2001 before that happens. :P
- gLeN
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