Re: Ice age, plate tectonics and PIE

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel J. Milton"
> <dmilt1896@...>
> > wrote:
> > > The one seriously proposed shoreline change that might have
> had
> > > a significant effect on Indo-European origins is the one
> proposed
> > in
> > > Pitman et al.'s "Noah's Flood" book, where the Mediterranean
> broke
> > > through the straits and flooded a supposed sub-sealevel
> freshwater
> > > predecessor of the Black Sea (I believe someone brought this up
> on
> > > Cybalist a while ago). However, there was a paper by a Turkish
> > > group in the journal Geology last year (I can check the ref. if
> > > anyone wants it) that demolished the theory. Essentially, they
> > > demonstrated (to my satisfaction at least) that through the

time

> > > when Pitman would have a mighty cataract pouring northward,
> > > sediments in the Sea of Marmara were quietly prograding
> southward.
> >
> > That's strange, since that's the Old Greek version too (by I
> forgot
> > whom). How about this scenario:
> >
> > 1) The Black Sea is a melt water lake with a level above that of
> the
> > oceans, in the vicinity of several inland glaciers, connected to
> the
> > Oceans by a river flowing south and west in what is now the
> Bosporus
> > and Dardanelles.
> >
> > 2) Catastrophic collapse of glaciers overfills Black Sea, causing
> it
> > to spill huge volumes of water though the river to the Ocean.
> >
> > 3) This erodes the bottom of the river to below sea level.
> >
> > 4) After the catastrophic outflow, sea water passes though the
> > expanded channel (= present Bosporus, Dardanelles).
> >
> > Viola!
> >
> > Torsten

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...>
wrote:

> For a good summary of the current status of the Black Sea question,
> see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/bseaflod.htm
> and follow the link to gsajournals. That gives the illustrations to
> the article I mentioned (in GSA Today, not Geology as I
> misremembered). Figure 2 in particular, although it may take a
> while to figure out, is very informative. It suggests what is
> essentially Torsten's scenario below, although only fairly
> uniformitarian processes rather than catastrophic glacial collapse
> need be involved.
> That figure also gives a worldwide sealevel curve that indicates
> ~40m rise in the last 8 ka. I was simply wrong when I said

Holocene

> rise was only matter of single meters.
> Dan

Ah! now I feel better about any Sundaland scenario.

Anyway, catastrophy or not, as I gather from the text, after about
two thousand years, salination of the Black Sea is complete and, I
surmise, present anoxic conditions ensue. Now this means that
fishing, if any, as a stable dietary source collapses. Famine and
emigration, at the right time for IE languages to disperse. Now this
scenario hinges on PIE speakers getting a large percentage of diet
from fishing. What is the linguistic evidence for PIE fishing?

Torsten