>
> Well, the Ardennes area represents a part of the 3rd stream of the
6th mill.
> BC agrarian Drang nach Westen - the LinearBandKeramik culture which
> originated in the Middle Danube region and spread later from Seine
to
> Dniester.
The Ardennes were the western limits of their expansion, I take it
you mean. That would make it cover Krahe's Old European hydronymics
area I believe.
Here's one way of dealing with the ethnic identity of Krahe's Old
Europeans:
Assume that the ablaut vowel in early PIE was a/รค or a/& (Miguel,
Piotr, Glen and Jens have written some complicated stuff on the
subject, of which I didn't understand half; I hope my simplistic
assumption holds). Then:
Quiet, intermission, PIE vowels i, u, and lots of a/&.
Expansion, naming of European rivers with a lot of /a/'s (as Krahe's
material shows).
Quiet, intermission, PIE vowels are now i, u, o, e and a few a's.
Expansion at the expense of earlier expansions. A lot of /a/-ful
river names are encountered and adopted by the expanding IE-folks.
Presumably Schrijver's "language of bird names", with alternating aC
(C)-/Cu(C)-/(C)i(C)- (or perhaps h2e-/h2-), e.g *ard-/*rud- "copper"
and the "axe" word, belong in that first expansion phase (above,
whichever its absolute number). That would make them a copper-using,
axe-wielding people.
Torsten