--- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <
mcv@...> wrote:
> Yes, but Mallory is talking about the *genesis* of
> the
> Cucuteni-Tripolye culture itself, which shows
> connections with Balkan
> cultures such as Boian, *but also with Linear Ware*.
*****GK: Which proves nothing about language of
course. Just as the spread of agriculture (and
cultural forms associated with it) from Anatolia
cannot be equated with the expansion of IE speech. If
one postulates "linguistic breaks" at the LBK stage,
then why not at subsequent stages? This BTW works even
better when one looks at the possible "influence" of
LBK (tenuous though it is) on local groups of the
north and east.******
>
>
> Another thing is that in the B-period,
> Tripolye/Trypillja advances
> into areas of modern Moldavia and Ukraine which were
> indeed previously
> occupied by LBK-folk. This puts LBK squarely in the
> area that was
> later to become the home of cultures like Serednyj
> Stih.
*****GK: The area of Ukraine and Moldavia into which
TRIP spread had been empty of LBK for centuries. And
neither LBK nor TRIP were in the area of Serednyj Stih
which emerges from the Dnipro-Donetz and Surs'k
cultures basically (east of the Dnipro). There's no
geographical linkage here.*****
>
>MCV: I was talking about the Comb-pricked Ware and
other
> cultures of
> Poland, the Baltic lands, Byelorus and Russia, not
> the D-D.
*****GK: Serednyj Stih grows out of Dnipro-Donetz and
Surs'k, not from the above named cultures. And it is
SS which leads to Yamna and Catacomb and eastern
IE.*****
>
> The point is that archaeology, unfortunately, tells
> us nothing about
> language, which makes these archaeological
> discussions only marginally
> relevant. I assign much greater weight to
> linguistic factors: e.g.
> it's nice to have archaeological confirmation that
> the
> Proto-Austronesians originated in Taiwan, but the
> fact that it so
> happened is proven already by linguistic arguments
> alone. In the case
> of PIE, we are not so lucky.
>
> Since in the case of the Eastern European/Baltic
> forest area cultures
> we are talking about poorly known cultures, and at
> most a couple of
> hundred people, it's hard to prove how big the
> influence of LBK was,
> and easy to imagine how little it would have taken
> for LBK'ese (i.e.
> PIE) to become the prestige language in the area.
*****GK: Whatever the situation in the proto-Baltic
and proto-Ugrofinnic areas of Eastern Europe, it
remains that if any language had what it takes to
become a "prestige language" in the area later
associated with IE groups such as the proto-Greeks,
proto-Armenians and proto-Indo-Aryans/Iranians/
Nuristanis it would have been not LBK but that of the
Trypilians (preceded by the Bog/Dnister culture which
was also of "Danubian" descent and the first
agriculturally oriented culture in Ukraine --it was
here before LBK arrived in West Ukraine). We don't
even know if it was akin to that of LBK. We don't know
that it was IE, Tyrrhenian, or whatever. And we know
for a fact that the steppe populations synchronous
with the Trypilians maintained their own absolutely
preponderant cultural forms even while importing small
quantities of items from Trypilia (very normal
commerce). We also know that in the later stages of
Trypilia (before it disappears) it is the cultural
forms of the steppes (Yamna) which began to influence
its carriers, and in ways far more substantial than
Trypilia ever had the steppes in the previous epoch.
So one might argue that it is the late Trypilians who
began to assimilate to the "prestige language" of the
easterners and not the reverse.*******
>
> >******GK: The most recent research (published by
> >Telegin in "Arkheologia"(1999) indicates that the
> >Dnipro-Donetz culture emerged overwhelmingly from
> >previous local "mesolithic" (to use his
> terminology)
> >groups. I.e. from groups already "in place".******
>
>MCV: Telegin previously held that D-D originated in
the
> northern forest
> area, as you claimed yourself one or two messages
> ago ("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")
*****GK: I got this last point ("and partly from
etc..") not from Telegin but from a post on this
forum. When Telegin talked about "the mesolithic
cultures of Eastern Europe" he even then had in mind
primarily those which occupied more southern areas. He
wrote about this extensively in the 1970's and 1980's.
His most recent research merely dotted the i's and
crossed the t's.******
> If D-D
> originated locally instead, that does not make a big
> difference. The
> same acculturation that I assume took place between
> LBK and
> Mesolithic/Sub-Neolithic populations along the
> Polish frontier, will
> also have taken place along LBK's
> Moldavian-Ukrainian borders.
*****GK: In the first place there is no evidence that
LBK contacted directly with ancestors of Surs'ka and
Dnipro-Donetz. That would have been done by
Bog-Dnister and then Trypilia. And in the second, and
probably more important, place, just as the spread of
agriculture from Anatolia into Europe did not mean
that the local populations which adopted the new
technology also adopted the language of its carriers
(after all is that not the main point of the LBK
hypothesis? That Danubian pre-agriculturals turned to
agriculture but became PIE and not whatever the
earlier farmers from the south were?)=== And note the
corollary that in the case of Eastern Europe it's not
even a case of turning to agriculture but just
borrowing some elements of an agricultural way of life
(ceramics for instance). So the incentive would be
even less present. AS a matter of fact I am more
inclined to think that if any LBK's or similar
individuals entered the world of the northeast it is
they who assimilated and not the reverse.The IE of the
East cannot be demonstrated to derive from LBK. There
is not even a probable argument for this. There is an
assumption which holds independently of all evidence.
This looks more like ideological than scientific
thinking. I'm not certain about the origins of IE. But
I'm as certain as one can be about these things that
LBK had nothing whatever to do with the IE- nization
of Eastern Europe if you're looking at the spread of
"totalistic" scenarios thereof.*****
>
>
>
>
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