One advantage of that theory is that the IE
languages take a "free ride" on the spread of Neolithic agriculture. Their
expansion in most of Europe requires no additional explanation, since the
idea is that the spread of the Linear Pottery carriers in the sixth
millennium (the very first farmers north of the Balkan region) already set the
stage for the Indo-Europeanisation of the North European Plain (more or less
from the Rhein to the Dniester). The relatively great linguistic differentiation
of the European branches and the arrangement of early areal groupings can also
be explained in a natural way.
The initial distribution of the farming
communities was not particularly dense except along rivers and streams
(though there were villages inhabited by more than a hundred people and within
regional clusters the distance to the nearest settlement was usually less than
one kilometre). The advantage that IE had
at that stage was its wide distribution; it's quite possible that it became a
language of wider communication used by the pre-agricultural population as well,
being the language associated with cultural and technological
innovations (in general, a previously unknown way of life). With
improved techniques of agriculture and stock-breeding, the farming population
increased and the local hunters-gatherers either experimented with innovations
on their own, eventually starting new Neolithic tendencies (as in the case of
the Ertebølle phenomenon), or were gradually assimilated culturally and
linguistically, leaving no trace other than their contribution to the biological
make-up of the farming population, which must have been considerable, as DNA
studies demonstrate.
What requires an explanation is the
transition (in relative rather than absolute terms) from settled farming to
transhumant pastoralism in the eastern part of the IE-speaking area and the
resultant Indo-Europeanisation of the Pontic steppes. This process ought to
have started about 3000 BC at the latest, presumably as some kind
of socio-political and cultural interaction in the border zone between the
eastern Indo-Europeans and the pre-IE peoples of the steppes, with the former
becoming linguistically dominant. The historically most important result of
that encounter was the emergence of the Indo-Iranian group, which eventually
expanded to the east and to the south -- beyond the Volga and into Central
Asia.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 8:52 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Why India?
Sorry if I barge into this discussion with a
beginner's level question. One of the postings attracted my
attention.
Does the spread of IE languages in
Europe follow some kind of pattern that allows us to associate it
with the spread of agriculture? I mean, do we have any evidence that these
two things happened roughly at the same time?
I admit that my knowledge of prehistoric Europe is
vague at best, but weren't there farmers in Europe before the advent of IE
languages?