Hello everybody,
> >I have no respect for ideas that just don't work from the beginning.
>There
> >can never have been contact between Etruscan and Nakh, ever.
> >
> >Ok, PRE-Etruscans, PRE-Nakh.
> >
> >How: by being in the same place
> >Where: Eastern Anatolia
> >When: Prior to 1200 BC
>
> But you aren't getting it! This... just... doesn't... work, Ed! There is
> nothing in way of concrete evidence to support your whimsical views that
the
> Etruscan language could ever be traced back to Eastern Anatolia in the
past
> 10,000 years. People have pointed to similarities between the Etruscans
and
> _West_ Anatolians, linguistically and culturally, from classical times and
> there is archaeological evidence (like the Lemnos Stele) that shows that
> this idea must have truth to it. But I don't recall anyone showing any
> archaeological evidence of an _East_ Anatolian link... that's because
there
> isn't any.
>
> But then... if you are lucky enough to have found this concrete evidence,
> please tell us in your next post.
H. Muehlenstein and W. Brandenstein pointed similarities between Etruscan
and Urartian cultural traditions, especially in metallurgy. This hardly
could be explained by trade connections. We could rather think about common
ancestrial roots or, perhaps, neighbourhood.
Let me add here my own speculation:
3 distinctive Mediterranian civilizations (Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians)
have some common peculiarities which were quite unusual for the cultures of
the previous epoque (the Bronze Age):
- olives as main resource of oil (typical variants before: linin oil, sesame
oil in Mesopotamia, perhaps hempseed oil at early IE)
- wine as main spirituous liquor (typical variants before: beer and mead)
- open sea navigation (coastwise navigation before)
As we well know from written sources all the listed things are not typical
neither for early IE nor for early Semitic traditions.
I don't know about Phoenician language, but both Greek and Romans seem to
have similar borrowed words for all these spheres:
Gr. elaiwa, elaiwon - Lat. oliva, oleum
Gr. woinos - Lat. vinum
Gr. kybernetes - Lat. gubernator
+ important word for "fig" Gr. sykon - Lat. ficus
+ unimportant word for "rose" Gr. rhodon - Lat. rosa
I think, the list can be continued.
What do professional linguists thik about this?
In the field of mythology we have correspondences of some key figures
(neither IE nor Semitic):
Gr. Herakles - Lat. Hercules (< Etr. Hercle) - Phoen. Melquart (an epithet
?)
Gr. Typhon - Etr. Sethlans ? - HURRIAN Tessub - Egyptian Seth
These facts could be explained by substrata (or superstratum in Italia?) of
common origin in Geece (Pelasgians), Italy (Etruscans) and Levant (pre
Semitic population). The most probable site where this common ancestor can
be placed is Cilicia or North Syria, IMHO.
Reasons:
- grape and olive seem have been domesticated somewhere there or near;
- seashore and very old traditions of navigation (Byblos, Ugarit);
- closeness to Mesopotamia, where potter's wheel has been invented (and
brought rather early by those, who destroyed Troy-I, in Aegean basin);
- the events of Typhonia took place right there;
(- are the words Tyre and Tyrrhenian perfect strangers? Agenor's children
come to mind ...)
Well, if the suppositions are right the place should be somewhere close to
_East_ Anatolia. However this says nothing about their language until we
find etymology of the key terms somewhere. Main candidates are NE Caucasian,
NW Caucasian and Kartvelian languages.
As to Nakhs, most probably their ancestors are associated with the Maikop
culture of the Early Bronze Age (since about 3000 BC) in North-West Caucasus
and then Koban culture of the Late Bronze Age. Maikop culture people
obviously migrated from South. So _theoretically_ they could be an early
branch of the people we are looking for.
BTW, traditionally the Troy-II culture is compared with the Maicop culture.
And there are "Aegean" motives (especially very typical spirals) in
materials of the Caucasian Late Bronze Age cultures...
Alexander Stolbov
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