On Fri, 19 Oct 2001 17:58:34 -0700 (PDT), george knysh
<
gknysh@...> wrote:
>The alternative explanation by PG has some very
>attractive features, but unfortunately it also breaks
>down, and even more severely than Gimbutas-Mallory,
>because there is no convincing evidence of eastward
>continuity which would explain the emergence not only
>of the Indo-Aryans,Iranians, and Nuristanis, but also
>that of the proto-Greeks and proto-Armenians, and
>perhaps other groups as well. Let me put it as
>succinctly as possible. The LB Pottery culture which
>PG posits as a starting point only reached the
>westernmost areas of contemporary Ukraine, and petered
>out with no discovered archaeological continuations
>there (if one believes Ukrainian archaeologists and
>why not?). It has no direct links to
>Trypilja-Cucuteni(Tripolye)
This is debatable. Links between Trypilja and LBK are often mentioned
(e.g. by Mallory in EIEC: "In origin, the [Tripolye] culture is seen
as a projection of southeast European agriculturalists to the east and
its closest genetic connections, seen particularly in ceramics, are
with Neolithic cultures of the Balkans (Boian, Hamangia) and the
Linear Ware culture").
>and to the steppe cultures
>of southern and eastern Ukraine. The Funnel Beaker
>culture has also no such links, even though it did
>spread a little further to the east than LB. Only the
>easternmost Globular Amphorae c. exhibits some
>similarities to the steppe cultures, but it arrives on
>the scene a considerable time after Serednyj Stih
>(Sredny Stog), so the shared cultural traits move from
>east to west here and not the other way around.
>Serednyj Stih for its part develops to a large degree
>from the Dnipro-Donetz culture whose own antecedents
>are in the mesolithic cultures of Eastern Europe (and
>partly of the area close to the Baltic coast) and not
>in either LB or FB.
I would prefer the term "Sub-Neolithic" rather than "Mesolithic" for
these Eastern European / Baltic cultures (Narva, Valdai, Comb-Pricked
Ware, etc.) While they are not to be equated with the Linear Ware
(LBK) culture to which they neighboured in the west, they adopted
certain techniques (such as pottery) from their western neighbours.
In fact, it is impossible to tell how far the interactions between the
Neolithic "LBK'ers" and their Mesolithic or Sub-Neolithic neighbours
went: certainly, in the course of having their wave of advance peter
out, some LBK farmers must have moved into these areas, without
succeeding in becoming technologically predominant (perhaps because of
the different terrain and climatological conditions, which prevented
an LBK-style economy to be effective there). A certain demographic
influx from the more densely populated LBK area must have continued to
occur even after the borderline between Neolithic and Sub-Neolithic
had become firmly established. So in terms of genes and pottery, the
LBK area can be seen as the "donor", while the eastern Sub-Neolithic
area is the "recipient". We have no proof that this was also the case
in terms of language, but it cannot be excluded either. When the
Dnepr-Donets culture emerged from this eastern Sub-Neolithic area
southwards to the "steppe" zone, the language they brought with them
may well have been an eastern peripheral dialect of
LinearBandKeramikese ("proto-Satem-IE").