Glen threw down a gauntlet - why can I not leave it there and walk
away?
> So
> far, the how, when and where don't. So be my guest, John.
For instance I quote for you in full the Conclusion of James
Mellaart's "The Neolithic of the Near East" on topics we have been
discussing what must seem like ad nauseam to the tollerant long
suffering members of this list.
"One final example is perhaps the best documented one: pre-Greek. In
a recent study ..., E.J.Furnee estimates the number of pre-Greek loan
words in Greek to be between five thousand and six thousand. The
sources from which these words found their way into Greek comprise
the Aegean basin and Asia-Minor, and one suspects that the major
contribution was made by the pre-Indo-European language of the
Minoans of Crete. It, as it is now believed, the first Greek
speaking elements entered the Greek mainland in the Early Helladic
III period c2350 BCE (calibrated C14), there would have been a
considerable overlap of Greek and pre-Greek in Crete and the Islands
for nealy a thousand years, which may account for the formidable
amount of loan words the northern 'barbarians' picked up from their
more civilised neighbours. Attempts to isolate a number of
topographical names ending in -assos and -nthos and ascribe these to
the Anatolian Indo-European languages such as Luwian and Hittite
(Laroche and Palmer, followed by myself) have failed to convince most
archaeologists and philologists, as similar names extend into the
Balkans and Italy. They would make much better sense as a
pre-Indo-European substratum, as F.Schachtermeyr was the first to
realise. On this assumption pre-Greek should be earlier than the
arrival of the Greeks in Early Helladic III, beginning c 2350 BCE and
also earlier than the arrival of the Indo-European Anatolians during
the Troy II period (after 2,900 BCE in the calibrated C14 terms) in
Anatolia. It is not known how long the pre-Greek language survived
in Anatolia, but this fact must be kept in mind in cosidering the
transmission of elements of the older language, as in the case of
Minoan. The non-Indo-European character of pre-Greek is well
established morphologically and its distribution has been charted
from Anatolia (west of the Euphrates) to to Greece, the Cyclades,
Crete, Thrace and Macedonia - the diaspora of the Anatolian
Neolithic, and an area of fairly close cultural contacts
right down to the period of the Indo-European invasions or
infiltrations right down to the Early Bronze Age. This may well have
been an area of more or less linguistic unity as suggested by the
evidence of pre-Greek, and the cultural development, at least in the
more southern parts of the area and especially Crete, shows no
cultural breaks that *must* be associated with a change of language
since the Neolithic. The basic population of Neolithic descendents
for the most part (the Epipaleolithic element is probably numerically
insignificant) of Anatolian settlers that brought agricultuure to
Europe. It is perhaps not surprising that the bulk of
pre-Greek words that have survived are concerned with an
Anatolian-Aegean environment, its flora and fauna, 'Neolithic'
foodstuffs, artifacts and only vague references to metals. Another
group of words are pejorative, describing attitudes that were not
appreciated (lecherous, boastful, etc); could they have served to
keep alive a native reaction to the invaders? Theoretically at least
the survival of a Neolithic language over some three to four thousand
years has parallels, and such a possibility cannot be ruled out.
This hypothesis finds further support in the presence of traces of a
similar Caucasian substratum in the Balkans, Italy, Southern France,
areas beyond the Near Eastern Neolithic diaspora, but
early centres of secondary Neolithic cultures, influenced by the
Neolithic of Greece, Macedonia and Thrace. We may assume that in
these areas local Epipaleolithic groups picked up the ideas of
agriculture from their more advanced eastern neighbours
and with it they may well have carried westwards a number of
technical and enviironmental terms. To the east also, some of the
Caucasian languages contain words similar to those of pre-Greek, and
Furnee suggests that the number of pre-Greek words usually explained
as Semitic were borrowed by and not from the Semitic. To an
archaeologist, then, it would cause no surprise to learn that
pre-Greek may have been introduced into southeastern Europe by A
Anatolian Neolithic farmers and the language of Catal Huyuk, Hacilar,
and Can Hasan may have been preserved in Crete well into the Late
Bronze Age, late enough to have been recorded imperfectly, by the
classical Greeks. This is, in my opinion, a phenomenon to which too
little attention has been drawn. Seeing that the earliest farmers of
the Near East were descendents of Upper Paleolithic hunters, as we
know, there may well be a substratum of Upper Paleolithic language
and vocabulary in languages such as Ancient Egyptian, Pre-Sumerian,
Sumerian, Elamite and pre-Greek, which has not yet been detected.
Alternatively, could these languages have been those of the Upper
Paleolithic, with Neolithic terms added as innovations?" pp.281 - 282
Regards
John