[tied] Re: PIE's closest relatives

Glen, Berber also seems to make the most sense Geographically, being
closer to the Atlantic and Western Europe. It seems there was a
common archaeological culture around 4,000-2,000 B.C., and maybe they
were the monument builders from North Africa, the Mediterranean to
northern and western Europe.

-Michael

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> Harald:
> >But is the evidence anything more than the VSO syntactic parallell?
> >VSO is typologically the rarest of the SO word orders but it's not
> >that rare (If I recall correctly it's about 10%) that it alone can

force

> >the conclusion of a substrate influence.
>
> There must be some substrate, afais, because we even have Basque
> words with AfroAsiatic parallels. Again, those pesky

numerals, /sei/ "6"

> and /zazpi/ "7", rear their ugly heads and there are other words as
> well. I believe /arrano/ "eagle" was another of them. I've been

saying

> for a while now that there is a numerological connection, that it

may

> relate to a yin-yang balance with one number representing the male
> principle and the other the female principle. Hell, maybe their

addition

> (6 + 7 = 13) had some significance too but most on this list might

be

> a little triskaidekaphobic to such an untested notion :P
>
> At any rate, if the numerals were adopted, as I believe, because of
> a spread of belief systems from the eastern Mediterranean area, then
> we're looking at the neolithic as a likely time frame. However, I
> can't see it being much earlier than about 7000 BCE when that
> strong mythical influence starts to spread out (at least, as far as
> Gimbutas made it sound).
>
> So we scratch out the Minoans, Semites and Egyptians. Unless
> Proto-Semitic themselves sailed the ocean, I would have to concede
> then that Berber is looking good. However, that would imply to
> me that the Berber brought the eastern med. belief systems to
> northwest africa. Is there any evidence of this in the archaeology?
> Little trinkets maybe with eastern iconography of sorts?
>
>
> = gLeN
>
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