Veneti (Was Re: Belgs)

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

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> --- On Wed, 10/15/08, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
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> From: tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> Subject: [tied] Veneti (Was Re: Belgs)
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 6:19 AM
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> > > The problem is that not only the Wenet- name, but several river
> > > names are identical too (in the Wenet- areas around Sambia and on
> > > the Adria). That only happens if the language of those who lived
> > > on the rivers, at least those who sailed of the rivers, were the
> > > same.
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> > GK: Independently of Shchukin's "amber road" theory.Qu.: (1)
> > What is the correlation between the "vent" et sim. roots (A) and
> > these identical river names (B)? Is it possible that (A)
> > represents a process different from {B)?
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> (A) The names are similar.
> (B) The names are similar.
> Everything is possible, of course, but to my knowledge the sets of
> Old European names of Krahe are supposedly all similar and just that
> within the group; no criterion has been found to distinguish them
> geographically or other-group- wise.
> I've ordered the book from the library, BTW.
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> ****GK: Footnote. The tribal name "Viatichi" could be a Venetic
> name ["viat" from the earlier "vent"]

It is, AFAIK.

> In the Kyivan primary
> chronicle they are named after a "brother" originating in Poland
> ["ot lyakhov"] But here too the archaeology is tenuous, except on
> the vague Shchukin "Neronian" grounds.****

But are those Lechs 'proper' Slavs? Or they some precursor?

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> > It is taken as given in toponymic research that hydronyms are the
> > oldest.
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> > A scenario in which the Veneti were primarily sea- and river-bound
> > (sea peoples?) would explain why they managed to name so many
> > rivers (and Danish islands too, BTW, -ant- and -is- are Venetic
> > toponymic suffixes, -ind-/-und- are Danish island suffixes, and
> > -inthos and -issos are 'Anatolian' toponymic suffixes in Greece).
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> Torsten
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> ****GK: The primary Veneti who infiltrated other peoples (and then
> adopted their languages? Celtic, Italic, "Illyrian", etc., while
> occasionally changing these host peoples'"ethnic designation":
> hence the Veneti of France ,Italy, Poland) must have existed at a
> very early time. I don't remember if "vent" appears in old
> references (Egyptian or others) to "sea-peoples"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Veneti#Historical_references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
http://tinyurl.com/3wknsb

> Would you say that they emerged at a time when PIE was still
> largely undifferentiated, as "Old European"? Or..?****

People say that, I don't. Most of those 'people' think like
land-people (French, German, Russian), not sea-people (English, Dutch)
which means areas must be colored solid on their maps, this because
everyone in their view is basically a farmer, if he isn't somebody,
and thus sedentary. Check the description of the Armorican Veneti in DBG.
In other words: I think the large distribution of a relatively
geographically undifferentiated language has to do with their
'profession'. They also provide a convenient vector for Semitic words
to enter the IE languages of N Europe (as loans SEm. > Venetic > N
Europe, or directly).

And I think what happened in the first half of the first mill. CE is
that Jastorf from the west, Balts and Slavs from the east encroached
on the Veneti draw-boat river system (*dran,W- rivers) until they
strangled it, causing the Veneti to fall into poverty and brigandage,
like Holland became insignificant after Louis XIV took Strasbourg,
later all of Alsace, thus controlling trade on the Rhine, strangling
that old Venetic route (but only after the Dutch William III invaded
England, securing the victory of Protestantism and the ideology of trade).


Torsten