Re: [tied] Whence Grimm?

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

>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > >
> > > with Tacitus'
> > > > information
> > > > > we have a
> > > > > migration
> > >
> > > GK: What "migration" would that be?
> > >
> > (TP) It takes some proximity to produce common
> offspring.
>
> *****GK: The arrival of a certain number of
> "Sarmatian" brides to be in Bastarnia (=basically the
> area of contemporary Moldavia) at some point prior to
> 98 AD has nothing to do, per se, with the concept of
> "migration", which involves a fairly substantial
> movement of people and ethna, and which leaves
> verifiable historical, archaeological, toponymic etc.
> traces.

You're winging it again, aren't you? How do you know that what
happened was the arrival of "a certain number of Sarmatian brides"
and not a migration. Don't forget that archaelogical remains of the
Hunnic invasions wich were fairly substantial, I'd say, have only
been found recently?

Jan Derk Boosen: Das Oder-Warthe Gebiet in der Przeworsk-Kultur
während der ausgehenden vorrömischen Eisenzeit und der älteren
Kaiserzeit, footnote 854, p 237:
"... Die handelsgeschichliche Bedeutung des gesamten nördlichen
Beskidenvorlandes geht unter anderem daraus hervor, dass ostgallisch-
rheinisches und elgermanisches Trachtgut bis in den oberen Dnestrraum
gelangte. Pontisches Tongeschirr und solches der Lipica-Kultur
erreichte andererseits die Umgebung Krakaus."

"The trade-historical significance of the area immediately nort od
the Beskidy is apparent among other reasons by the fact that elements
of dress of the culture of Eastern Gaul/the Rhine area and the Elbe-
Gemanic culture reach into the the area of the upper Dniestr.
Conversely, Pontic and Lipica-culture pottery reached the vicinity of
Kraków"


I thought you swore on your great-grandmother's grave that there was
no Pontic stuff whatsoever in East European finds? And pottery at
that? That means that whover went to the vicinity of Kraków from
Pontus brought their womenfolk too.

>The earliest such evidence for the
> infiltration of Sarmatian elements close to or into
> the territory of Bastarnia can be accurately dated as
> of the first half of the 1rst c. AD (there are burials
> on the lower Dnister).

>This correlates to information
> in Strabo about the presence of Yazygians in the
> steppes east of the Tyragetae.

Personally, I'm much tempted to see <Turingi>, the first Germanic
self-designation (cf. Tacitus' remarks on the Tungri (< Turingi?)) in
<Tyrage-tae> (<-tae is the collective suffix). The Thyringian
Chronicle says the Tyragetae were the ancestors of the Thuringians.

>There is no indication
> of any Sarmatian presence further west. Interestingly
> enough, the arrival of Yazygians on the Dnister
> involved the out-migration of the earlier settled
> population (Baran, 1990, p.19). *****
> >
> >
> >(TP) I forgot to mention that the saddle (according
> to
> > what I could find
> > on the net) is considered to be a Sarmatian
> > invention. The Iranian
> > and Indic mismatching cognates of "saddle" that
> > Piotr provided are
> > from Avestan and Sanskrit repectively, so they don't
> > disprove the
> > assumption of a Sarmatian provenance for *saDula.
> > Apart from it being
> > Iranian, we don't know much about Sarmatian.
>

> *****GK: Even my meager linguistic knowledge casts
> doubt on this. The Sarmatians may well have invented
> the saddle. Does this mean that it is their word for
> it that entered the vocabulary of neighbouring (or
> borrowing) peoples? I'm not sure about Germanic, but
> it seems to me that in Slavic the term "sedlo" "sidlo"
> correlates comfortably with various terms designating
> "sitting". (In Ukr. "sydity" (to sit; "sidaj!" = "sit
> down!") "sydzhennja" (something to sit on) etc.

The problem is the /a/ of *saDula. If the term had been loaned from
Slavic, it would have been **seDula, **setula or the like.

>In any
> case, as pointed out earlier, and I think you agree
> with this, a word may "migrate" independently of the
> population whence it originates.*****
>

In general I'd agree with you on that point, but the saddle is a
specialised piece of technology. Recall the Mitanni treatise on the
traing of horses in which is found several Proto-II words related to
that subject. Most that recount that story assume the presence of at
least a number of Proto-II horse-trainers in Mitanni on the basis of
that treatise. To be consistent I'd have to make a similar assumption
wrt saddles.

> > >(GK) And strike three (as usual) is your
> > > complete incapacity to prove that the steppe
> > cultures
> > > of the 1rst c. BC (and of prior centuries),
> > especially
> > > those of the Lower Don basin and Azov seashores
> > had a
> > > Germanic component.
> >
> >(TP) I think what you mean is the reverse: a
> Sarmatian
> > component in the
> > Germanic culture.
>
> *****GK: What Germanic culture are you talking about?

Przeworsk.

> There was none here prior to the arrival of the Goths
> and associates, and on this the agreement of history
> and archaeology is total. There is no verification for
> the Snorri "Asgard" tales of the early 13th
> century.*****
>

You haven't been paying attention to what I've been saying. I assume
that if the Asgard story is true, the inhabitants may have been
speaking a number of languages, most likely including some Iranian
ones, and among the elite, perhaps Greek for ritual and technical
purposes, but not Germanic. They would have arrived in the Germanic
speaking Przeworsk culture, whose language they adopted, creolising
(bastarnising ;-) )it in the process.
I repeat, I assume no Germanic language spoken in Asgard.

Torsten