Re: [tied] Anatolia in 7500BC

Glen,

While I don't think it's necessary to locate pre-PIE in Anatolia, and I agree that if there's any hope of showing IE to be related to anything else then Uralic is the most promising candidate (which would mean that IE may have come from the east, not unlike Hungarian), I disagree with the view that there's nothing special about IE. A typical family can be considered large if it comprises twenty languages; IE happens to be one of the very few exceptionally large families with several hundred extant members (like Austronesian, Bantu and Afroasiatic); it was also one of the most widespread ones even before transoceanic colonialism began. Since PIE doesn't appear to have had more than its average share of inherent charm (not with all those *gWH's), it probably had the luck to be located at the right time and place to take advantage of some unique historical opportunity -- like an initial expansion into a vast and sparsely populated region. It need not have been the primary catalyst for grand events throughout the Neolithic, but I bet it got its chance at a certain point.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 9:12 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Anatolia in 7500BC

Steve: >But I'm interested. How does "Uralic and Altaic" tell you that >a "pre-IE" language was not spoken in Anatolia in 7500BC? We know that Uralic (or Uralic-Yukaghir, for that matter) and Altaic are languages placed firmly away from Anatolia. They are positioned to the east of IndoEuropean. We know that Uralic and Altaic are language groups that are most likely closely related to IndoEuropean because of sometimes uncanny similarities in grammatical elements and vocabulary. If we can accept this, we have a problem placing IndoEuropean in Anatolia without creating a farflung scenario to account for its past. In order to get them there, we either need to say that IE, Uralic and Altaic were _all_ located in Anatolia at one time (of which there is no trace of linguistic evidence to support such a hypothesis), or we need to say that IE alone had, for a brief time moved to Anatolia before going back up north where it must have been previously! I am satisfied with Bomhard's view that IE is ultimately from the east. This makes the most linguistic sense. So really. Why must we try so hard to have IE in Anatolia? What is so special about Anatolia that causes us to feverishly attempt to lay it there? Is it because Anatolia is the cradle of European agriculture? Why do we continue to feel the need to place IE in the center of neolithic action. I'm quite content in accepting that IE had a _peripheral_ involvement in the early economy of the Middle-East. This topic reminds me a lot of the olden days when people thought that the Earth was in the center of the universe. Eventually, people finally accepted that, lo and behold, the Earth is just one of many planets, none of which are in the center of the universe. Likewise, IE is not in the center of the linguistic universe, it is only a part of a larger network of languages. We don't need to keep placing IE smack dab in the middle of the action or to make it the catalyst for major events. Repeat after me: "IndoEuropean isn't anything special. IndoEuropean is just a plain-jane language like all others." - love gLeN