The spread of Germanic (Was Re: Morimarusa)

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

> --- On Thu, 1/14/10, Torsten <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > > GK: My point is that you have not adduced any evidence proving
> > > that the Germanic language spread from a "Przeworsk" area
> > > heartland, either from a linguistic or from any other point of
> > > view.
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/56782
> >
> > GK: Exactly. Message 56782 invites you to demonstrate the
> > Przeworsk area as the "locus a quo" for the spread of Germanic.
>
> Well, read the thread then.
>
> ****GK: There is nothing in the thread proving your points about
> the expansion of Germanic from Przeworsk.****
>
> Germania was colonized from the area of the upper Elbe,
>
> ****GK: This would be the Suevan expansion begun by Ariovistus and
> continued by others? But as has been known for a long time, the
> Elbe Germanic Suevans were not the only Germanics.

In the archaeological sense, yes. I should have been more precise: The area of the present Germany and Scandinavia.

> And they did not expand (at least there is no known archaeoloical
> evidence to that effect) either to the northeast or to the
> southeast (into Oksywie-Wielbark or into Bastarnia), or into
> Scandinavia.****
>
>
> which itself earlier was colonized by an upper caste coming from
> the Przeworsk culture.
>
> ****GK: (1) This is an unproved assumption.

It all is, including the supposed null hypothesis that the present Germanic-speaking area (minus England) was the home of the whole line of ancestors of the Germanic languages.

> (2) Przeworsk itself was earlier Germanized by Yastorf elements
> coming in from the West and Northwest.*****

That's where I'm not so certain. If Celtic was an elite language, who knows what language the masses of Przeworsk spoke before the invasion of the inhumating people.


Torsten