Re: The spread of Germanic

--- On Sun, 1/17/10, Torsten <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> Here's the deal: there wasn't any 'local aristocracy' in Przeworsk
> to influence.
>
> GK: There are top dogs in the simplest villages. There are
> leaders in the most primitive warbands.

How come they left no specific trace then?

****GK: How do we know they didn't? Perhaps our interpretation of old gravesites is prejudiced. Henryk Lowmianski once argued (in his work on Polish origins) that in some ancient cultures (where the aristocracy had not yet become gradated) the very fact of being buried constituted proof of "distinguished status" (with richness of inventory a rather late development), whereas the hoi polloi didn't rate that and their remains were diposed of in other ways... Perhaps we should think about this.*****

> > > The Bastarnians had chieftains with Germanic names in the early
> > > 2nd c. BCE,
> >
> > http://tinyurl. com/yl7kc6j
> > I have proposed to explain the Bastarnian names Clonix
>
> GK: No such thing. Cf. Piotr's correction.
>
> > and Clondicus on the basis of a Grimm-shifted root that would
> > exist in Germanic otherwise only as a loan from a substrate
> > language of people connected with amber-mining. On the basis of
> > that Bastarnian seems to have been para-Germanic. We reached that
> > conclusion years ago. What do you think you achieve with a
> > behavior like that?
> > http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/64761
>
>
> > My "behaviour" consists in restating my view that these names
> > were Germanic, and that the Germanic linguistic identity existed
> > long before the time of Caesar.
>
>
> Exactly. That's your idea of proof. George has said so and by that
> speech act, if necessary, repeating it, it becomes truth.
>
> GK: With the importasnt proviso that "George" stands for a lot
> of historians, archaeologists, and linguists, whereas Torsten
> stands for himself+ Snorri Sturluson (:=))).

A lot of historians, archaeologists, and linguists have called those three names Germanic?

****GK: Some pretty distinguished ones: Muellenhoff, Hubert among others. I understand that Jakob Grimm also discussed the name "Clondicus" in his History of the German language (at p. 459), cited by an annotator of Livy****

Torsten