--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Torsten:
> >What's logically necessary is boats. The Kurgan culture when it
first
> >appears is concentrated in a number of places along the rivers of
the
> >Pontic, especially the Don river.
>
> Well, of course they hung around water because they needed to
> drink something!
Well, let them drink coffe.
>That doesn't mean that they travelled far and wide
> in boats, just because they knew of *xapo- and owned *naxu-.
That's not what I suggested. I suggested someone came to those parts
and started something among the local population. You have to account
for the fact that the IE civilisation was totally foreign to the then
prevailing IE civilisation (I've been reading Gimbutas again).
If a civilisation lives on a river, it travels that river. Period. Or
we would see several independent civilisations.
>IE was
> affected by Semitic, but NOT vice versa. So this suggests that there
> was indeed an intermediary, one that brought cultural and
> technological innovation into Europe and hence into the hands of IE
> speakers.
I see. Swedish has English loanwords, English has no (very few)
Swedish loanwords, therefore there was indeed an intermediary, one
that brought cultural and technological innovation into Sweden. Erh?
> The archaeological record shows that this direction of influence
moved
> AWAY from Asia Minor into Europe, especially during the neolithic.
This
> fact alone negates the idea that IE speakers came to the Semitic
> since this is against the observed cultural flow. Yet it can't be
Semitic
> directly because Semitic appears to have started in the Palestine
environs,
> not Europe!
And they had no boats?
> If we presume that Semitic spread far northward, this northward
dialect
> area was certainly wiped out by other languages by 3000 BCE when
> other very non-Semitic languages are recorded. Yet this is the only
way
> to account for the adoption of Semitic words. This automatically
> suggests the existence of a a para-Semitic language, "Semitish",
since
> it would need to spread outside the core area in Palestine or Syria,
> commonly attributed to Proto-Semitic as we know it.
>
Swoosh, sez Occam.
> If a Semitic-like language hadn't spread northward only to be
eradicated,
> then the only other feasible option is to propose a non-IE, non-
Semitic
> language. Unless we carelessly assume more than we have to, we
require
> the involvement of an existing language group in this area like
Tyrrhenian.
> While Tyrrhenian appears to me to be an intermediary at a later
date, we
> don't see a form like *septm in these languages. We see that
Etruscan
> /sempH/ is attested but lacks /t/, suggesting a _feminine_ form
> *sab`u-, clearly unlike the IE or Kartvelian reflex but much like
what is
> found in Basque /zazpi/.
The Basque form is curiosly close those of the Coptic dialect, I
read. I'll go check.
> This _is_ Occam's Razor at work, I'm afraid. Semitish is an
inevitable
> conclusion.
>
Well, come to think of it, I need a language like that to carry my
supposed Sundalandic roots to Semitic and IE, so what am I arguing
against? I think we mainly disagree on your unspoken premise that
languages, in order to influence each other, must be spoken in
geographically contiguous areas. You should not let the
word 'Wanderwörter' delude you into thinking that words have feet and
need land to transport themselves. Some sail.
When I suggested the Cumbre Vieja, Greater Canaria, solution to the
problem of the Kurgan, Corded Ware etc culture arising at the north
and south coasts of Europe separately, it was of course half tongue
in cheek. But just to check, I remembered that if someone maintaied a
route around Africa in the 4th millenium BCE, they'd need stations to
stay the winter, like the Phoenicians did in Herodotus' account. So I
remembered the Bantu expansion: here's another instance of what one
might call the von Däniken question: why at the same time all over
the place and why so suddenly was there a sudden flourishing of
civilisations? (Not that I agree with his answer, but I think the
question is a valid one).
So I checked some Proto-Bantu roots´, and lo and behold; here's what
I found for on particular 'root-family':
-bád- "shine" Proto-Bantu
-bád- "speckle" id.
-bádà "spot; speckle" id.
-bàdÉ "two" id.
-bádok- "burst open" id.
-bàdok- "burst open" id.
-bàdù "rib; side of body" id.
-bèd- "come to the boil" id.
-bíád- "bear a child" id.
-bód- "hit and kill" id.
-bótÒ "seed" id.
-bùd- "be plentiful or numerous" id.
-pàc- "to separate" id.
-pácà "twin" id.
-pádá "baldness" id.
-pànd- "to split" tr. id.
-pándà "fork in road or tree" id.
-pÈn- "flash, as lightning" id.
-pótÉ "boil, carbuncle" id.
-pÓn- "fall from a height" id.
Compare this to
*báliw "exchange" Proto-Austronesian
*baRéq "swell(ing);
abscess, boil" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*bê+láq "split" Proto-Austronesian
*bêRas "husked rice" Proto-HesperonesianFormosan
*bêRáy "give" Proto-Austronesian
*bêRék "pig" Proto-Austronesian
*beRsay "canoe paddle, oar" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*biras "scar" Proto-Hesperonesian
*birás "sibling-in-law" Proto-Hesperonesian
*biRaq "taro, giant arum,
Alocasia sp." Proto-Austronesian
*biRaS "roe, fish eggs" Proto-Austronesian
*búlaN, *bulay "albino" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*buláR "cataract of the eye"Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*buléR "cataract of the eye"Proto-Hesperonesian
*bulún, "leaf" Proto-Hesperonesian
*buR "scatter" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*kam+buR "scatter (seed)" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*qa(m)+bud2 "scatter" Proto-Hesperonesian
*sa(m)+beR "scatter seed" Proto-Hesperonesian
*sa(m)+buR "scatter seed" Proto-Hesperonesian
*burak "white" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*panaq "bow and arrow,
to shoot an arrow" Proto-Austronesian
*pánaw "walk, go, depart" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*panaw "skin disease leaving
white patches" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*pan+tek "spotted, dappled" Proto-Hesperonesian
*para[qh]u "boat" Proto-MalayoPolynesian
*piRah "roe, fish eggs" Proto-Hesperonesian
*piRsah "abscess, boil" Proto-Hesperonesian
*hi-paR "sister-in-law" Proto-Hesperonesian
and compare them with the AfroAsiatic and IndoEuropean roots in
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Opr.html
There is a strong symbolism in Egypt, in the Danish bronze age and
still today in the Philippines to associate one side of the river
with life and the other with death; in Austronesian culture the sides
of a river are connected with moieties. One can therefore argue that
there is an inner semantic connection in the so seemingly
disorganised "cluster" above; part of it has to with the very idea
of "a seed" and its connection to life and death: a seed is something
that has come "from the other side" (where it will also eventually
return), but so are cataract (white spot in the eye) and all sorts of
blemishes; even bubbles in something bubbling: a seed, from which
comes other seeds. And it all comes from the other side.
Now if this holds water, the language or civilisation or whatever,
which was the vessel for the transport of this word brought with it:
1) The idea of a separate "other" spiritual world, in the image of a
crossing of the river; that the idea of a life after death.
2) The idea (or should I say tecgnical terminology?) of what a seed
or grain is, and can do, in short, the very idea that agriculture is
possible.
3) An idea that diseases are like life, or like seeds.
Now whatever 'Semitish' is, if it carried *septm, I think it carried
these basic theories too. And because of them, wherever this culture
package went, it caused an explosion. Which answers von Däniken's
question, nicely, without aliens (at least of the extraterrestrial
kind)
Torsten