To Michael's post
> > Could they have been related the Colchians due to their geographic
> > position, and maybe have spoke a Hurro-Urartian or Elamo-Dravidian
> > language? Of course we can only speculate.
Milos wrote
> Colchians spoke Kartvelian language group (Georgian = Dinaric
> racial type).
>
> Elamo-Dravidian - one Semitic tribe, but in south of India are
> mixed with Eastern Mediterranean.
>
> Dravidians tipical antigens are haplotipe: HLA-A24B35,
>
> Explanation:
>
> HLA-A24 is Semitic, and HLA-B35 is Eastern Mediterranean racial
> type in Europe.
>
> Antigen HLA-B35 is mostly represented in the Middle East within
> Palestinians (and Pelazgian descendants in Europe), and also in
> India - Dravidians and also with Indians of Middle and South
> America, especially with Aztecs and Mayas and their present
> descendents in Romanised population of Latin America. ...
>
> Antigen HLA-B35 are genetic similar to Dinaric antigen HLA-B5. ...
Regarding the possibility that the Kaska were Karveliian speakers, it
is true that at the time Kaska disappeared we find that a new people -
the Tabal, appear living in the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia to the
south of where Kaska were supposed to live. Tiglath-pileser I, of
Assyria in about 1100 BC refers to them as the Tabali whose original
area of settlement (i.e. Tabal) was adjacent to that of Tegarama.
Josephus recorded the name of Tubal's descendants as the Thobelites,
and says they were in his day known as the Iberes. Their land was
called by the Romans Iberia, and covered what is now the (former
Soviet) state of Georgia whose capital to this day bears the name
Tubal as Tbilisi. Since the Georgians (with the Zan and the Svan
speakers) are today the three Kartvellian speakers - if the Tabal are
the remnants of the Kaska then Milos's thesis may hold.
There is also another (remote) possibility. Were the Kaska the
people called Kholkhoi by the Greeks with a phoneme shift from *s to
*l (i.e. Khaskha to Kholkha?). The Greek people of Colchis certainly
lived in the area in which the Kaska were supposed to have lived.
Herodotus described the Colchians as Ethiopian, with black frizzy
hair. Saint Jerome, writing during the fourth century, called
Colchis the "Second Ethiopia." Two hundred years later, Sophronius,
patriarch of Jerusalem, described an "Ethiopian" presence in the same
region. It is interesting that there is a group of Abkhazi who even
today have negroid features. See the article at
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.
040402.085420
It reports how newspapers reported on a Negro community found on the
Black Sea coast of Abkhazia in 1913, and such reports were repeated
in the post revolutionary period, during World War II and down to the
Brezhnev period. Also the Nart Epic of Abkhazia tells of 100 black-
skinned horsemen who visited the Caucasus and liked it so much some
of them stayed. Whether these were slaves of the Ottomans, or a
reference to the Kholhkoi is unknown.
Since Colchis is in approximately a little to the east of the area
described as the land of the Kaska in Hittite texts, and since Hattic
is sometimes believed to be a member of the NW Caucasian (Abkhazo-
Adyghian) family, and if these "black" Colchians are linked to the
Negroes found speaking an Abkhazian... I wonder.
Not knowing enough of Caucasian languages, I wonder if Ab-khazia
preserves an etymology of Kaska? In this case the Kasgian languages
would be a member of the NW Caucasian family.
Hope this helps
Regards
John