Torsten wrote:
> How come the Balts don't originate on the coast? Wasn't the whole
> Kurgan thing a pincer movement, with Corded Ware in the North found
> first in the Baltic countries and Holland?
The pre-history of East Balts can be enough sure traced back till the Iron
Age.
It was the Dniepr-Dvina culture which was recognized as a (East) Baltic one
practically by everybody. Besides, there are some more cultures which are
attributed also as Baltic (Milograd c., Strichkeramik c., Yuchnovo c.) with
different degree of reliability, but all of them occupy the territory of the
Dnieper basin. Later the descendants of the Dniepr-Dvina c. in the form of
the c. of East Lithuanian kurgans and the Early Latgalian c. started to move
westward and finally reached the Baltic coast.
The situation with West Balts is not so transparent but still it is clear
that they also came to the Baltic shore recently and from the East.
There is the 3rd Baltic branch (Golyad') who remained on the Oka banks until
they were assimilated by Eastern Slavs.
The area of the Baltic hydronymy also covers the basin of the Middle and
Upper Dnieper.
Thus, from the beginning of the Iron Age till the Early Medieval times Balts
were not coastal dwellers.
The Bronze Age situation is not so clear and allows to give different
interpretation. Particularly, it would be possible to claim that Proto-Balts
(and Proto-Slavs) like Proto-Germans were a part of the Corded Ware
movement, and they moved first westward but then returned back (eastward) to
the Middle Dnieper and Upper Volga to form there the Fatyanovo c. (also a
Corded Ware c.). However I can't believe in it because of one consideration.
1. It is well known that Indo-Iranians represent the eastern part of IE
massif.
2. Balto-Slavs are the closest genetically to Indo-Iranians, as they share a
number of innovations in the most degree.
3. The Corded ware cultures left the main IE massif (the Yamnay c.) very
early (not later than 3000 BC), much earlier than the rest of the Yamnay c.
gave life to a big number of daughter cultures of the Middle and Late Bronze
Age (2700 - 1200 BC). People of any of these cultures must be closer
genetically to Indo-Iranians than any variant of Corded ware cultures,
because they parted with Indo-Iranians later.
Thus the Corded Ware - Balts hypothesis must insist that all the numerous
steppe cultures of the Middle and Late Bronze Age left no survived languages
(but Indo-Iranians themselves + theoretically Tocharians) , and in the same
time a number of IE branches (Celts, Italics, Greeks, Thracians etc.) left
the IE massif earlier than 3000 BC when only a small number of cultures
which can be attested as potentially IE was known. I find this unbelievable.
Alexander