Re: Another PIE origin theory

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "C. Darwin Goranson"
<cdog_squirrel@...> wrote:

>
> This may all be for the rubbish bin, but since I'm not the best
> judge of this, I'll share the idea.
>
> Thousands of years, maybe 2 thousand or 3, before PIE as we know it
> existed, its ancestor lived in eastern Anatolia. This ancestor may
> also have been the ancestor of Minoan (judging by what can be
> deduced from the grammar of Linear A) and of Etruscan, as well as
> Pelasgian if it is not Indo-European. There is a chance that it was
> also related distantly to Kartvelian, however this might just be due
> to borrowings between the two in a Sprachbunde.
>
> Then, the Semites arrived. They were around long enough that a few
> Semitic words got into this language, but the speakers of the
> language soon went seperate ways. The Minoans and Etruscans went
> east (and the Pelasgians?) while another group went north over the
> Caucasus mountains.
>
> After this, the group that went north met with and joined part of an
> Uralic culture. After this, everything goes as usual with the Kugan
> ideas.
>
> Myself, I can't say I'm completely comfortable with the idea.
> However, I don't want my emotions to have too much of a basis in
> judging it. What do you think?
>
> I prefer to think of PIE as closer to Uralic... just with an
> adstratum from some pseudo-Caucasian tongue. It's just that there
> are some discomforting similarities to some Semitic traditions.

I have nothing to contribute in the way of linguistic evidence, but
just looking at the theory you propose wonder if you could not resolve
your dilemma by proposing that rather than the Pre-PIEs being the ones
carrying the Semtic loanwords north from the Caucasus, it was your
hypothetical Psuedo-Caucasians who did, bringing them to a pre-PIE
population already in place? That way it seems you could have your
cake and eat it too.

Ned Smith