---
x99lynx@... wrote:
> What exactly is the objection to a Danubian origin
> for IE languages? I don't
> believe what George brings up are valid objections.
*****GK: You're entitled to your views of course. My
point is that the issue of radical language shifts is
entirely distinct from that of the emergence and
spread of "universal" technologies, and must be
decided largely on other grounds. Sometimes the spread
of new technologies involve language shifts, and
sometimes not. I see no reason to assume that the
parent or grandparent language of the Balkan
populations at the time of the change to an
agricultural lifestyle would have been IE in some
form.******
> George wrote:
> <<As to the Balkanists. I see at least two problems
> here. One is that of
> explaining the diversity of IE languages in a
> situation where the farming
> communities spreading north, northwest and northeast
> are all issuing from the
> same center, and are maintaining territorial contact
> with each other.>>
>
>(Steve) Well, at the beginning, there wouldn't be
much
> diversity. For example,
> Germanic speakers were pretty much in constant
> territorial contact with one
> another and it may have taken less than 1500 years
> from proto-Germanic for
> them to show the diversity in English, Frankish,
> Bavarian and Norse. 5500BC
> allows a lot more time for orthodox linguistic
> diversification than 3500BC.
> The large difference between Hittite and Sanskrit is
> much harder to explain
> if you start in the Ukraine in 3500BC.
*****GK: My problem is that I do not see enough time
under either "starting dates" for the emergence of
families as distinct as, per your mention, Hittite and
Sanskrit, merely on the basis of the operation of
linguistic laws, with no other factors involved. There
is a difference between the differentiation within a
given language family and the emergence of quite
distinct language families. It obviously takes less
time (though a lot perhaps) for e.g. Polish or
Ukrainian to emerge from Common Slavic, or
German=English from Common Germanic than for Celtic
and Slavic to differentiate, UNLESS you assume
something like the operation of different substrates
upon a common language. BTW it's quite all right to
drop the "the" before Ukraine. The country has been
independent for 11 years.******
>
>(Steve) And by the way, from the Danube,
IE/agriculture
> would ALSO be spreading east.
> That's WHY there are cows and sheep, barley and
> wheat at Dereivka. If you
> explain cattle and wheat being on the Dnieper by
> coming over the Caucasus,
> you're going a 1000 miles to get what originated a
> few hundred miles away.
> This is how forced things have to be to create an
> artificial wall between the
> Danube and the Dnieper.
*****GK: We know as well as these things can be known
that e.g. the earliest ceramic forms did not reach the
Dnipro from the south but from the east. But it
doesn't really matter whence these "agricultural"
innovations. My point stands. There is no reason to
assume that they would have involved radical language
shifts in contrast to the borrowing of certain terms.
And BTW the same holds for the rest of Europe as was
earlier discussed in connection with northern Poland.
I happen to believe that the spread of agriculture
from the Balkans northward was carried by a
multiplicity of linguistic groups. This in turn was
the polyethnic context of the later
Indo-Europeanization of the area.******
>
> George wrote:
> <<The other (and in my view insuperable) problem is
> that neither LBK nor
> Trypilia can explain the rise of the Indo-Iranian
> (and perhaps of other) IE
> speeches in the vast areas east of the Dnipro r. The
> assumptions required for
> this are simply not convincing.>>
>
> The ONLY assumption needed is that what first spread
> the language WEST also
> first spread the language EAST. It just took
> longer. It's NOT easy at all
> to see what your objection is here.
******GK: It's the same objection as always. If by the
WHAT you mean an "agricultural lifestyle" then you
have simply made a petitio principii.******
>
>(GK) <<This may perhaps be eased by an assumption
similar
> to that of the
> Gimbutas/Mallory view, viz., the interaction of
> colonists with a variety of
> mesolithic substrate elements.>>
>
> (Steve)George, you definitely misunderstand Mallory.
*****GK: Sorry. I don't wish to insist on my view
being dependent on the exact positions adopted by
Mallory or Gimbutas. And I don't wish to misrepresent
him, or her. What I had in mind actually were his
footnotes about the enormous non-IE lexical baggage in
Greek and Hittite. And indications from elsewhere
about similar if not quite as massive realities in
Germanic. And elsewhere. From now on I'll just speak
of the Pontic-Caspian homeland theory of which there
are variants which do not agree with each other in all
particulars.*****
(Steve) Finally, there is a bit of irony in finding
the
> Danube hard to believe and
> the Dnieper easy to believe, given the distance
> between the two. And
> compared to the immense distances IE would
> eventually cover. What was the
> difference between the Danube and the Dnieper in
> 5000BC?
*****GK: The probability that IE could be daily heard
on the latter in its lower reaches, but not on the
former. I find it easier to explain the whole process
of Indo-Europeanization with a starting point on the
Pontic/Caspian, and the archaeological cultures of
that area, than with a Danubian, Anatolian,or Indian
starting point. I find it much easier to explain a
spread of IE westward and southward and eastward from
the Pontic/Caspian, than e.g. northward and eastward
from the Danube. Perhaps there could be more fruitful
discussion about the latter process, since starting
points are more difficult to refute. The key is in the
links. Where are the easiest ones to assume? In
concrete, specific terms, not in general views like
"the spread of agriculture". I find the advance of
corded ware westward much more plausible as an
indicator of the spread of IE than the "invisible"
march of IE eastward.*****
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