GEORGE KNYSH WROTE:
<<There is no necessary correlation between the advent of a new technology
and comprehensive language spread.>>
But food production is not just any new technology. The neolithic revoultion
changed human living quite drastically.
And, on the contrary, there would seems to be a strong correlation between
the spread of major language groups and the coming of food production - the
spread of agriculture (both pastoral herding and dirt farming) -- when it
replaced food gathering in many parts of the world.
For example, Jared Diamond documents in "Guns, Germs and Steel" (1999),in
chapters 16 and 17, the correlation between the spread of "Sino-Tibetan,
Austroneasian and other East Asian language families" and the advent of food
production. "Most [language] expansions appear to be attributable to the
advantages that the speakers of ancestral languages, belonging to
food-producing societies, held over hunter-gatherers." (p. 368) On page 369,
Diamond lists in a table the "Language Expansions in the Old World" in which
ten expansions are listed all attributable to either "food production" or
"nomad pastorialism" (which Diamond correctly notes is just a form of food
production).
When one does the economics of food production (agriculture) versus
hunting/gathering, it's clear that except in exceptional cases, wealth and
surplus food and materials very quickly attach to food-producing communities
and tend to depopulate hunting/gathering communities.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<If there were then the advance of Neolithic cultures from their various
centers of emergence would have always been accompanied with the advance of
the language of that center. And we know this was not the case. Piotr, for
instance,does not
agree that IE crossed over from Anatolia along with Neolithic technologies.>>
Centers - like cities - often arise after the technology diffuses, not
before. Obviously food production did not spread with only one language. But
dumb luck may have positioned some languages to become the carriers of
neolithicization. Some (like Sherratt) think these languages would have been
a neutral tongue that allowed speakers of different languages to communicate
the new way of living. (Learning how to produce food rather than gather it,
along with the making of pottery, specialized tools, animal breeding and
husbandry, requires communication and social restructuring.) The price of
admission into a neolithic society or trade network may have been learning
this 'lingua franca', at first as a second language.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<We have multiple examples throughout the world of populations shifting the
fundamental bases of their economies without changing their languages.>>
As I indicated above, it seems that the spread of the major languages of the
eastern hemisphere can be attributed to the advent of food production.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<Most Uralians kept their languages when they changed over from a
hunting-gathering way of life to agriculturalism or pastoralism.>>
Actually, we have no way of knowing if these particular early speakers spoke
Uralic before agriculture (pastoralism or agrarianism). In fact, Uralic may
have been another language that spread on a smaller scale thru the advent of
food production.
But also we have some indication that in the north, some Finno-Uralic
speakers did not "keep their language."
Here's a quote from bioanthropologist Ken Jacobs, who worked with Alexander
Kosko, from the EuroArch list:
"Here, at least, the genetic data are of some interest, since Latvian &
Lithuanian populations, their languages widely assumed to be among the least
derived of I-E languages, also show the highest level of F-U genetic markers
among I-E speakers.... Given that the Baltic language populations remain
inexorably F-U in their genome, it argues for the separation of the flow of
genes and the various manifestions of culture (material culture, language,
subsistence pattern, etc.)"
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<Why should we make an exceptions for the populations of Old Europe?>>
I don't know what "Old Europe" is -- but the transition from mesolithic
food-gathering to neolithic food-production certainly would seem consistent
with the spread of IE in Europe and perhaps elsewhere.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<The reasons for language shifts are numerous. In some cases a new economy
MIGHT do it. But so might a new religion, sheer numbers, power relationships,
or other factors.>>
Well, we might expect a change in religion to come with neolithicization. We
certainly might expect a steep increase in population (eventually cities) and
certainly a change in "power relationships", expressed by the sudden
appearance of surplus food stocks and therefore accumulateable wealth and
economic control.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<There are no conclusive arguments (to say the least)in favour of the idea
that Europe was Indo-Europeanized by Anatolian, Balkan, or Danubian farmers.>>
It is not conclusive and probably never will be -- since we are dealing with
unrecorded languages. But the connection between the two events is strong
and apparently follows a pattern world-wide.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<As mentioned before (see the cybalist archives), this idea hits a brick
wall in northern Poland and Ukraine (and beyond).>>
I don't know what you are referring to. I've seen nothing in the archive that
is a brick wall.
GEORGE KNYSH ALSO WROTE:
<<The Pontic-Caspian homeland idea, on the other hand, now that the missing
link with the Corded Ware cultures of Central and Northern Europe has been
found, appears increasingly persuasive in terms of traditional dating patterns
{i.e. ca. the VIth millenium BCE as the latest likely time for the
establishment of PIE}, and outspread scenarios.>>
What "missing link" are you talking about? From all I've read, the cattle
and other livestock in Corded Ware settlements all appear to be descended
from Balkan, Danubian and German breeds. The grain appears to be from forms
in the same areas. As far as I can tell, all the elements of Corded Ware
culture were inherited in one way or the other from the west or south.
You've claimed the pottery is from some eastern source, but I've seen nothing
that really supports it. Quite clearly most of steppes culture is derived
from the west and south.
Corded Ware culture looks like a later pastoral variant of the mainstream
European neolithic. And it does not even extend into western Europe. So why
should Corded Ware deserve any special status as a candidate for PIE?
The answer is not in archeaology, of course. Corded Ware's only claim is
based on paleolinguistics. And a heck of a lot of that is, in my opinion,
highly questionable.
<<there can be no doubt that Mallory has focused much more productively on
the specific issue of Indo-European origins>>
As you say, Mallory's status as an archaeologist is not really relevant. Any
more than the famous PIE horse head he mentions so enthusiastically, that
turned out to come from an iron-age scrap heap when it was C-14ed. That has
generally been the scientific quality of his archaeology and a good measure
of his scientific lack of bias.
S. Long