--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> --- tgpedersen@... wrote:
> > >
> > > ******GK: What is (probably?)true are the Turkic
> > items
> > > independently assessed, and some historical
> > > statements. What is CERTAINLY false is the
> > application
> > > of these items to Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans.
> > (Torsten) Because?
>
> *****GK: Because Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans,
> judging by the anthropometric studies of their
> gravesites do not exhibit any "Altaic" traits (except,
> to a very small degree, in "contact zones"
> considerably further to the East.).
>******
According to Albrectsen, skulls from inhumation graves of Early Roman
Iron Age here are almost uniformly doligocephalic (the few that can
be reconstructed), which contrasts with the almost even mix of
brachycephalic and doligocephalic found in neolithic graves
(cremation was universal in the intervening period). That doesn't
indicate a Turkic invasion either.
>
> ******GK: One thing I didn't get, for
> instance, is whether you considered Odin and his band
> of merry men and gals to have been Germanic in speech
> while yet at Asgard.******
> >
Strabo calls (as I recall it) the Bastarnae a kind of Germani, which
may mean that at his time they spoke similar, but related tongues.
Other classical writers say similar things. If the name of the people
and the description of them are anything to go by, and the number of
transportation terms in Greek derived from *bast-, they were a
trading people and may have spoken a trade language, a creole, that
was comparatively easy to learn (cf. English vs. German!), and the
preferred one at the "protected markets" on the European watershed
(Tanew river in south east Poland, etc). Bastarnian was probably one
of the many languages of the twelve peoples "Odin" ruled. (This would
mean that Bastarnian once was a sister language of Proto-Germanic).
After he and his performing troupe started business in Germania he
used that language to communicate with the natives (some of which
might have known it too), until that became the language of the land,
as Snorri relates. He might have relocated tribes (as Ariovist with
the Charudes?). You have to see it in practical terms: what would you
do yourself in that situation?
> *****GK: ???? This doesn't explain why Snorri didn't
> know the river. One "solution" was that old
> geographers confused the two (Don and Volga) as
> one.****
What was the question then (obvously I didn't get it)? Should Snorri
have mentioned the Volga?
Torsten