--- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> I hasten to add that I very much appreciate all the transportation
> items you have added. This seems to corroborate the idea I have of
> the Bastarnae as a people making a living from transporting stuff
> across the Continental Divide near the Carpathians, speaking the
> first Germanic creole as a trade language (partially originally
> Piotr's idea).
I suspect that a lot of these prehistoric and semi-historic divisions
reflect first of all economic rather than ethnic or linguistic
matters. However, Germanic originated, its "spread" into south
eastern Europe may have just as likely a matter of business as it was
anything else. Livy I believe complains that the young men of the
Bastarnae hang around with nothing to do, making it easy to use them
as mercenaries and cause all kinds of trouble (for the Romans in the
BC Balkans - the Macedonians invited the Bastarnae in to attack a
difficult neighhbor and supposedly eventually Rome.) Where there are
no kings, who has the resources to hire mercenaries? Merchants.
Conversely, mercenaries can make merchants kings. It could be a
pretty good paying job, generation after generation.
You can recruit young men with nothing to do from anywhere, but as an
army they should speak the same language, even if bi-lingually. The
Bastarnae may have helped make that "language of the mercenary trade"
Germanic as a matter of tradition in that region and time. And later
elsewhere in Euro