On Sat, 20 Oct 2001 12:25:22 -0700 (PDT), george knysh
<
gknysh@...> wrote:
>--- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>> >*****GK: The area of Ukraine and Moldavia into
>> which
>> >TRIP spread had been empty of LBK for centuries.
>>
>>MCV: Who were there then in the meantime?
>
>****GK: The last phase of the Bog-Dnister culture,
>which was absorbed by the early TRIP. LBK coexisted
>with the middle phase of the Bog-Dnister culture, "and
>then they were gone". There is no evidence in Ukraine
>of the cultures which immediately succeeded LBK in for
>instance Poland.*******
OK, thanks.
>*****GK: But when talking about the origins of D-D
>Telegin still had in mind principally the southern
>elements of this "broad band" of related
>cultures.*****
Yes, that would make sense. But, as far as archaeologically related
cultures are indicative of shared linguistic traits, it's possible
that all of them spoke a common language. Both had been in contact
with LBK agriculturalists, though only the southern ones would have
had contacts with Balkanic agriculturalists (Trypillja and Bog-Dnistr
[I'm beginning to like writing these names in Ukrainian])
>> MCV:The main point of the "LBK hypothesis" is that
>PIE
>> was spoken in the
>> Balkans by the early agriculturalists there, and
>> that the LBK
>> expansion from Hungary represents the split between
>> non-Anatolian and
>> Anatolian Indo-European.
>
>****GK: How would this differ from the Renfrew
>hypothesis? He holds that IE spread from Anatolia and
>then on and on. LBK holds (I mistakenly(?) thought
>that what moved from Anatolia was not IE speech along
>with the farmers) that IE first developed when
>Europeans began to farm under the influence and
>example of the non-IE Anatolians. But in any case it
>does not really matter to my point.
Whether or not the Balkan Europeans started to farm under the
influence of the Anatolians (and did *not* take over their language)
doesn't really matter to my point either. In my view (and I believe
it's also Piotr's), the spread of LBK marks the important linguistic
division between Anatolian-IE (the stay behinds in the Balkans) and
non-Anatolian-IE (the LBK-folk), between Indo- and -Hittite (to use
Sturtevant's discredited term, if only in name, "Indo-Hittite"). This
means that a part of IE (which was later to migrate back into
Anatolia) was present in the Balkans ca. 5500 BC. It doesn't mean that
_all_ Balkan languages were PIE. Some of them may have been more
distantly related to PIE, others not related at all.
I like to think of my theory as "Renfrew + linguistics".
>If the LBK
>hypothesis is NOT Renfrew, then it holds that language
>does not necessarily accompany the spread of new
>technologies. And that is all that is required to
>jettison the view that there is a necessary spread of
>whatever language was spoken by the LBK group as they
>advanced into other areas. Elementary as one might
>say. What holds for the start of the hypothesis (if it
>is not Renfrew which is plainly wrong) holds for
>subsequent phases.*******
Agreed, new technologies do not automatically imply spread of
languages. But that does not mean that the opposite is true. The
linguistic map of the world has essentially been shaped by the great
technological breakthroughs: the Upper Paleolithic, the Neolithic, the
European technological & industrial Revolution.
>> The IE of the East cannot be demonstrated to derive from LBK.
>> There is not even a probable argument for this.
>>
>> MCV:I disagree. The argument is there, and it's
>> credible.
>
>*****GK: The logic of this escapes me I'm afraid. If
>there was no break between Anatolia and the Balkans,
>and then a break (because you need to introduce IE
>somewhere) then the evidence for this is derived from
>the need rather than the reverse.
I think you're confusing two kinds of "breaks" here. There was a
"break" in the expansion of Neolithic techniques to the Western
Mediterranean (the techniques were adopted by locals, without
invasion/infiltration/etc. from outside). There may or may not have
been a break between Anatolia and the Balkans. But there was no break
between the Balkans and temperate Europe: LBK clearly derives from the
Balkans. There was of course a break in technology (the farming
techniques that worked in the Balkans did not work further north,
which is why the "wave of advance" halted for a millennium or two) and
a physical break between the ones that started to colonize the
European lowlands and those that stayed behind in the Balkans (which
is why we have a clear linguistic division --not a "break"-- between
Anatolian & the rest of PIE). We also may have a division --not a
"break"-- between PIE (Anatolian+non-Anatolian), as it developed in
the Northern Balkans and Hungary (essentially the Körös culture) and
their relatives further south, in Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and
Romania (and, depending on whether there was a break or not), in
Anatolia. You're right that we need to introduce PIE somewhere (and I
introduce it between 6500 and 5500 in Hungary), but that does not mean
that PIE emerges ex nihilo or with a "break". PIE just means "the
language that all known IE languages can be traced back to". The
moment we reach a proto-stage that languages that are *not* IE (such
as Etruscan) can be traced back to, we are not talking about PIE
anymore.
>> I would not
>> consider it proven (and perhaps it never will be),
>> but it requires a
>> lot less assumptions than the argument that derives
>> the IE of the West
>> from Serednyj Stih and other steppe cultures.
>
>*****GK: And here I sympathize with you fully. I too
>am not convinced that the Gimbutas model is correct as
>stated. But I have no alternative at the moment. But
>something that was mentioned in another context (viz.,
>the unusual 30% or so component in Germanic)gives me
>an idea (or the faint stirring of one). Could IE have
>been the result of a very complicated co-operative
>process whereby distinct populations made distinct
>contributions? Clearly all populations have and use a
>language. "Agriculturalists" would have a developed
>agricultural lexicon, "hunters" also etc etc as this
>relates to how they live. Perhaps it is numerous
>contacts and exchanges of this kind that we should be
>attempting to imagine as slowly very slowly leading to
>the emergence of IE rather than "totalist" theories
>starting from some center. But I confess that at the
>moment I have no specifics. If this scenario sounds
>naive that is because there is as yet no content to it
>beyond the bare notion. Perhaps it's too Aristotelian,
>but I have no better starting point at this
>time.******
One of the nice things about the "LBK model" is that it explains the
Germanic substrate (whether 30% or not) easily. When the LBK farmers
advanced into Northern Germany, the "wave of advance" was again
halted, and for a 1000 years or so, the Ertebölle-Ellerbek in modern
Denmark and Southern Sweden held on to their Mesolithic/Sub-Neolithic
way of life (they did adopt things like pottery and some domesticated
animals). They reached high population densities and a comfortable
standard of living (more comfortable than that of their farming
neighbours) by living off fish and shellfish, and did not feel any
need to adopt agriculture, until they were finally absorbed in the TRB
phase (it has half-jokingly been suggested that what won them over to
agriculture was the discovery that cereals could be turned into beer).
In this view, Proto-Germanic can be seen as deriving ultimately from
the merger of LBK/TRB farmers and E-E fishermen. What I am suggesting
is that something not dissimilar also happened along the eastern
fringes of the farming area. I am not dismissing the idea that
"distinct populations made distinct contributions": it is certainly
true up to a point. However, as a linguist, I cannot accept a
"Trubetzkoyan" view of Indo-European as some kind of mix or blend of
languages, a bit of this and a bit of that, a creole or a
Sprachbund... Just one serious look at the linguistic evidence, at
the thousands of interconnected reasons why PIE must certainly have
been a real language, spoken at a particular point in space and time,
is enough to reject any such notion. If that's "totalistic", so be
it.