--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> If PIE spread with the earliest Central and North
> European farming populations, it's success was due
> neither to anything in the nature of the language,
> nor to the aggressiveness of its speakers. The
> farmers did not even have to outnumber or absorb the
> local pre-Neolithic peoples -- not _at once_, at any
> rate.
>
> Piotr
*****GK: Of course, I don't agree with Piotr that it
is the farming populations of Central and Northern
Europe which were the initial carriers of IE speech,
and prefer a variation of the Mallory-Gimbutas scheme.
However I do agree with him that the spread of this
speech was not necessarily associated with warlike
activities, at least not in many cases. Human history
being what it is, it seems difficult to opt for
scenarios that are exclusively "peaceful" or
exclusively "aggressive". One approach seems as
ideologically motivated as the other. We'll have to do
the best we can in trying to figure out when
aggression was the order of the day in determining
expansion and when it was not. I hope to post some
thoughts on this in a bit, concerning the period ca.
3500-3000 BC in Eastern Europe, which will fill a
certain void in the Mallory treatment, and provide a
kind of "missing link" as to the possible movement of
IE from east to west and north/northwest. The motor
may well have been largely a combination of climate
and economics. I.e. a switch from intensive
agricultural orientation to a relatively mixed economy
with animal husbandry predominating, and some very
complex intermixtures of populations specializing in
different forms of reproductive technologies. With
"victory" going to the groups best practicing the more
"progressive" such, who just "happened" to be IE
speakers.******
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: P&G
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 11:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Why India?
>
>
> >I can't see how the Indo-Europeans in general could
> be credited with
> exceptional warlikeness ...
>
> Only because they won. My real point is that I find
> it hard to imagine that
> the spread of IE languages is due to anything in the
> nature of the
> languages. Or maybe coping with grammatical gender
> prepares you to conquer
> the world....
>
>
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