[tied] Re: PIE's closest relatives

Alexander Stolbov wrote

> 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.

6,000 BCE is a little late for the splitting of Afro-Asiatic. Given
the absence of any common agricultural vocabularly (the word for
goats seems to one of the few that is common (Berber, Egyptian and
Semitic, but not Hausa or Cushitic), but this has all of the
character of a wunderword).

The spread of neolithic cultures therefore is likely to have occurred
AFTER the Afro-Asiatic dispersal. The Proto-Afro-Asiatic is more
likely to hbe identified with the trans-Saharan Capsian cultures,
that spread from North Africa in the period 10,000 to 8,000 BCE.

So when Alexander says

> This is the ethnic massif #1 which can be
> recognized as an Afro-Asiatic one with a high probability.

They are certianly Afro-Asiatic languages, but very unlikely to have
been the first Afro-Asiatic.

> Almost simultaneously (6th mill. BC) the shores of the Central and
> West Mediterranean (including the Maghrib coast) were settled by
> people of cultures with Cardial and related pottery. They moved
> from the East (first attested on the Eastern Adriatic coast) to the
> West. I don't know reasons which would suggest their Nostratic (or,
> particularly, Afro-Asiatic) origin. Just a guess - they occupied
> the Garonne valley as well and thus theoretically could represent
> the ancestors of the Basques.

Cardial cultures have pottery decorated with the impressions from the
wavy edges of Cardium shells (so-called Cardial Impressed Wares) and
the smooth arched edges of Pectunculus shells (Glycimeris
glycimeris), usually arranged in single and double rows covering most
of the exterior surface of the vessel. They show closest connections
to the Sesklo (and even related Starcevo) cultures of the Aegean and
Balkans. Given their cultural horizon of 6,000 BCE, this is the time
that Semitic was just coming into the Middle East, they are unlikely
to have been Semitic. Some, like Stephen Oppenheimer, have suggested
that they were Caucasian language speakers.

> In the 5th mill.BC the movement of tribes of the megalithic culture
> began. It started somewhere in the West Mediterranean (the Iberian
> peninsula and perhaps North Africa?) and spread eastwards (till
> Italy, Sicily and Malta) and northwards where this culture covered
> a part of France (excluding Aquitania - the Basque domain), the
> western part of Britain, Denmark and the northern part of Central
> Europe. No doubts they were the best navigators of the epoque.

The latest evidence suggests that megalithic collective tombs had in
fact two points of origin. The oldest megalths, far from being found
in the Mediterranean are in fact found in Britanny. There they
diseminated both up the Irish Sea and acorss to North Western Spain
(Gallicia). A second point of origin lies with the Palmella culture
of Portugal, where passage graves were first built. Rather than the
spread of a "people" what we see with the spread of the megalithic
cultures is more probably the spread of an ancient religion, one that
stressed collective burial and a form of ancestor worship.

> These were people whos descendants (the Funnel Beaker culture)
> became the substrate for the Corded Ware tribes (traditionally
> associated with Indo-Europeans, especially with the Germanic
> branch) on the territory of Poland, Germany and South Scandinavia.
>
> Who could be the ancestors of this "Atlantic substrate" population?
> Either people of the ethnic massif #1, or people of the ethnic
> massif #2. The latter seems to be more probable from the
> geographical point of view.

Given the "ethnic" nature of this it is most likely that these
people - the "First Western" Neolithic culture was developed by
indigenous people coming in contact with Cardial fisermen-farmers, in
the Bay of Lyons. As a result they are unlikely to be developed from
either of your two ethnic massifs, Alexander, but more probably to be
developed from the Upper Paleolithic peoples in the region. This is
exactly what the latest studies of the Human Genome Diversity Project
are sgowing, for both MtDNA and Y Haplotype studies.

> However the first variant also can not be excluded (at least I
> don't know reasons for this now). In this case the Afro-Asiatic
> (but definitely not Semitic, perhaps Para-Berberic ?) substrate for
> Germanic and perhaps some Celtic languages could be well explained.

Alexander, I see an extremely Proto-Afro-Asiatic substrate developing
perhaps out of the Upper Paleolithic and Epi-Paleolithic Ibero-
Maurasian culture that stretched from Southern France to Tunisia.

Hope this helps

Regards

John