From: george knysh
Message: 13334
Date: 2002-04-18
>******GK: Let's not get TOO anachronistic here.
> The power of early IE may have been in carrying
> concepts that were not
> available in the myriad of local languages that may
> have dotted the
> mesolithic landscape (in the manner of a New Guinean
> scenario). And because
> these concepts were not merely lexical, it might
> have been a lot easier to
> learn the new language than invent a whole body of
> analogous terminology in a
> local tongue or just borrow a lot of words.
>
> This idea is particularly relevant when one
> considers one thing that happend
> when food production (versus food gathering) was
> introduced into Europe. And
> that was the creation of markets.
>
> There is very little evidence of trade in mesolithic
> Europe. There is really
> no evidence of surpluses or food storage.
>
> But once the neolithic arrives, we begin to see the
> long distance movement of
> materials and products, and the arrival of clear
> indications of storage
> (e.g., LBK vats and grain-storing pottery.) Even
> remaining mesolithic
> settlement locations shift towards neolithic areas.
> Cattle bones appear in
> mesolithic areas apparently before cattle are being
> raised there. Trade is
> everywhere. Which means that communication was
> occuring on a regular basis
> between a wide range of a continent and a half of
> isolated groups of former
> hunter/gatherers who had little economic need to
> understand each other in the
> previous 5000 odd years of mesolithic life.
>
> The coming of food production -- dirt farming and
> animal breeding -- was a
> gigantic change in the way humans lived and how they
> lived with one another.
> Not until modern times would language carry so much
> new and revolutionary
> information. And not until modern times would there
> be such a strong need
> for a common language.
>
> Steve