RE : [tied] Germanic (Was Re: North of the Somme)

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

>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
> > <fournet.arnaud@>
> > wrote:
> Germanic displays a very
> > strong eastern (and not
> > > northern) tropism. Somewhere in the middle of
> > Kazakhstan seems the
> > > right place ?!?
> >
> > Some Germanic verb morphology (preterite/ppp) looks
> > Iranian, I've
> > claimed before. So more likely the area of the
> > Skiri/Bastarnae in
> > Southern Poland.
> >
> >
> > Torsten
>
> ****GK: We're perilously close to Kooksville here. The
> notion that "Southern Poland" is the birthplace of
> Germanic has at least the name of the "Skiri" and
> "Bastarnae" going for it. (Next question: where did
> they come from? They are mentioned in the Protogenes
> Decree of Olbia [ca. 200 BC] as "allies" of the
> Galatians. A case can be made form the contention that
> Galatae+Skiri= Bastarnae (the root "bast-" seems to
> refer to "binding" in a few languages, including
> Germanic, which is applicable to members of an
> alliance (one of those pre-nation state "political"
> realities).]

*bast- does appear in the Germanic (and Romance, bâtir etc) languages,
but is *not* derivable from PIE *bhe(n)dh- "bind" within Germanic, in
fact it doesn't have an etymology within Germanic. However, it is
derivable in Iranian from that root; Ossetic bætt&n "tie", past stem
(for preterite and ppp) bast "tied", also "package". If the question
hadn't been so decisive for the whole debate of Germanic origins, it
would be uncontroversial, given the evidence, to assumer that the
Germanic root is a loan from Iranian.

> The written record is quite sparse. The
> Skiri and Galatae (=Bastarnae) are clearly recent
> arrivals in the southeast Europe area as of 200 BC.

I disagree. Peoples may appear seemingly out of nowhere given the
right ingredients are present, a small number of men with a project
and a set of languages to make a creole out of. A large number of
people are now involved in running the state of Papua New Guinea in
the language called Tok Pisin; would you also ask where the Tok Pisin
people arrived from?
With names like Skiri and Bastarnae, you'd expect there to be a mixing
of something, and some 'limpieza de sangre' sociology. Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastarnae
esp. Tacitus.
What do you think of the article's identification of them with the
Zarubintsy culture?

> The archaeological evidence indicates that the
> population of the key Bastarnian territory in Moldavia
> was originally Daco-Thracian as to culture. New
> elements from the Baltic Pomorian culture and from the
> Jastorf culture appear in the 3rd and 2nd c. BC (which
> is when Galatae, Skiri, and Bastarnae enter the
> historical sources). The Galatae may have been
> dominant in earlier times (Polybius thinks the
> Bastarnae were Galatian), but the known names of
> Bastarnian chiefs have Germanic rather than Celtic
> affinities.

Please cite their names. All I could find were three hapax names from
Gibbons' The Decline etc.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13998

> Sarmatian contact is even later.

How do we know that?

> So logic
> would indicate that Germanic was not created in this
> area, but arrived from Pomorian and Jastorf locales.

Which would have the same language, you mean?

> Anyway that's my (and not only my) methodology. When
> something seems extremely probable you support it
> rather than to opt for an alternative which is
> INFINITELY less probable.

You should also take care to characterize your opponent's view with
capital letters.

> Torsten has a different
> approach: if there is something that he likes and that
> is not COMPLETELY impossible (even if the probability
> is of the rate of .000001%) he will defend it to the
> death.

No fatwa? You seem to have mellowed over time. I would like to point
out that .000001% is much larger than the reciprocal of infinity.


Torsten