Alexander about Semitic substrate in Europe:
>Since the beginning of the 6th mill. BC tribes from Asia had been moving in
>North Africa (they brought there sheep, goats, wheat, barley). They seem to
>represent all the Afro-Asiatic branches but the Semitic one (this does not
>contradict facts however contradicts some theories). The Berberic branch
>was
>the westernmost of them. This is the ethnic massif #1 which can be
>recognized as an Afro-Asiatic one with a high probability.
Hmm, and we're sure that such a migration happened by land, are we? What
about those million-and-one thalassocracies voyaging the Mediterranean in
historical pre-Roman times?
In fact, that's the whole reason why the Etruscans ended up in Italy in the
first place since it doesn't seem logical to presume that they just decided
to pick a completely alien land like West Italy to start anew after the
unrest in Anatolia. They must have known about the area beforehand...
So I start to wonder how far back Tyrrhenian voyages to Italy go, let
alone France and Spain. We know at least that Marseille used to be called
Masallia, a Phocaean port by 600 BCE. That in itself hints at even earlier
contacts.
And what about the Minoans? They seemed advanced and obsessed about
trade enough to spread that far even before the Phocaeans. I don't agree
with Cyrus Gordon (unrelated I swear!) that Minoans were Semitic. I think
that the language was related remotely to Etruscan and other Tyrrhenian
tongues as I already stated (and a response to /fesnere/ and *ipinam will
arrive shortly). However, like Etruscan (and perhaps more so), there seem
to be a large number of undeniably Semitic words in the Linear A texts:
*kuro "total" (HT13, HT27, HT39)
*Assaram "Asherah" (KN Za 10, IO Za 9, PR Za 1)
*kunisu "wheat" (HT10)
*karopa "vase" (HT31)
*kHapa "pot" (HT31)
*supu "pot" (HT31)
From this, one would presume that the Minoan language was deeply
affected by languages across the sea like Egyptian and West Semitic
ones. So... why couldn't Minoans get to Europe?
= gLeN
_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca