Re: [tied] Whence Grimm?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > > GK: The argument seems to run thus (there are
> > > many sources for it; I have relied on the more
> > recent
> > > Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian literature):
> > >
> > > The source of Germanicism in the east is the area
> > of
> > > the Jastorf culture which existed in North Germany
> > and
> > > Southern Scandinavia from the mid-first millennium
> > BC.
> >
> > (T)Correction: From Thuringia to Jutland and Fyn.
> Not
> > Sjælland. Not the
> > Scandinavian peninsula.
>
> *****GK: Shchukin and Kokowski consider Denmark to be
> "southern Scandinavia".*****
> >

Shchukin and Kokowski should buy a map. For your information, in case
you don't have one either, the country of Denmark today is made up of
the peninsula of Jutland, the islands of Fyn, Sjælland and the "South
Sea Islands" Lolland and Falster plus numerous lesser islands. Up to
1658 the now southern Swedish provinces of Halland, Scania and
Blekinge were part of Denmark too. All available maps of the Jastorf
culture area show it to include within the present borders of Denmark
only the areas west of the Great Belt strait, ie Jutland and Fyn.
Calling that area "Denmark" or even "Southern Scandinavia" is sheer
ignorance.

> >
> > >(GK) Many Jastorf groups migrated eastward
> beginning
> > ca.
> > > 300 BC, sometimes in conjunction with La Tene
> > groups
> > > (Celtic) sometimes independently. They mixed with
> > > "local culture" groups there, and after a period
> > of
> > > co-existence contributed to the emergence of new
> > > cultures most of which in the progress of time
> > became
> > > preponderantly Germanic as to language.
> >
> > (T) Evidence? Not that I'm absolutely opposed to
> that;
>
> *****GK: I don't see how you could be even
> "relatively" opposed to the view that in their later
> phases Przeworsk, Oksywie, and Poeneshti-Lukashovka
> were preponderantly Germanic as to language. We are
> talking about proto-Vandals, proto-Goths, and
> Bastarnians in the age of Caesar.*****
>

In the sense that they are temporally contiguous with those later
cultures, I take it?

> > Besides, with the merging of two "Germanic" cultures
> > we would expect
> > a number of words in Germanic that appeared similar,
> > but were not
> > identical.
>
>> That is not the case, apart from some of
> > the supposed
> > Nordwestblock words.
> >
> *****GK: The "merging" of cultures is not always
> accompanied by the retention of such words.******

If the two languages were mutually incomprehensible, yes, that is
somtimes the case. If they were two dialects of the same language, in
this case Germanic, as per your hypothesis, hardly ever.

> >
> > >(GK) It is believed that the earliest
> > > attested name of a Germanic group in the east is
> > that
> > > of the SCIRI (Skiroi of the Olbian inscriptions).
> > This
> > > name was earlier analyzed on Cybalist. The date
> > for it
> > > is "sometime prior to 230 BC".
> >
> > (T) Now that was a bad tactical move. Once you
> mention
> > the Skiri, you'll
> > bring up the Bastarnae, who, according to the
> > contemporary sources,
> > were Skiri mixed with Sarmatians.
>
> *****GK: I think you're getting confused here. There
> are no "contemporary sources" which state that the
> Bastarnians are "Skiri mixed with Sarmatians". Perhaps
> you are thinking of Tacitus, who does point out that
> the Bastarnians are "Germans" who have mixed with
> Sarmatians, but Tacitus was hardly a contemporary of
> the early Bastarnians.

Yes, I was.

>My view (subject to correction)
> is that the Bastarnians, originally, were Skiri
> "mixed" with Galatae (and probably others, but the G.
> and S. were dominant).

You seems oblivious to the consequences of your only argument against
Tacitus, his not being a contemporary of the early Bastarnians, on
your own theory.

>It is interesting that both
> Skiri and Galatae (as groups functioning together)
> disappear from the sources with the first note about
> the Bastarnians (early 2nd c. BC). Perhaps the Celtic
> element was primary in the first generations (sources
> note that Bastarnians at that period were "Gallic" in
> speech)

Which?

>but by Caesar's time it was the Germanic
> component which asserted itself as linguistically
> primary. Possibly the unknown source of Pliny's
> catalogus gentium east of the Vistula (Sarmatians,
> Venedae, Sciri, "Hirri")

Sciri and Hirri may be related if the /s-/ is an s-mobile.

>saw the latter two as
> components of the Bastarnae (if "Hirri" could be
> construed as pertaining to the Germanicized Celts,
> still the "lords" of the complex). The Bastarnians
> apparently disappear north of the Danube in the late
> 3rd c. AD But perhaps it is only that Germanicized
> Celtic component which was moved into Roman territory.
> Those who remained resumed the appellation "Skiri",
> and were an important people in the pre-Attilanic
> Hunnic complex. And their story ends with Odovacar
> (Odoacer).

Odoacer did count himself as being one of the Sciri, but if the names
of the two peoples mean what they seem to mean in Germanic (the
unmixed ones (cf. Swedish skär "pink", Spanish <sangre azul> from the
veins showing through light-colored skin) and the "bastards") he
might have meant only that he was of "unmixed parentage".

>Much of this is speculative of course, but
> it is one way of explaining the "missing" Skiri
> between 200 BC and the early 5th c. AD (except for the
> mention in Pliny).****
>

For my explanation, see above.


Torsten