Gerry Reinhart-Waller:

>APMap... and Jordan. The Caspian Sea is the world's ... women.

Yes, indeed. I always suspected that the Caspian Sea is the
"world's women" :) Just jokin'. But seriously, how does this relate
to the water levels of the Caspian at around 8500 BCE? This site
only speaks briefly about the origins of agriculture in Asia but
I don't see anything about lake levels at this important
prehistoric time. It's very hard for me to find this info downtown.
I'll have to see what my univ. library has (located off in the
bush far away from city-center).

However, thank you. It does give me an extra thought... no doubt,
a scary thought for many of you, but here goes:

I am convinced that Steppe (Bomhard's Eurasiatic) was not only
situated in Central Asia at around 9000 BCE but that it was
situated smack dab in a previously SinoDene territory. The SinoDene
would have spread out a bit earlier than Steppe at approximately
10,000 BCE such that the fracturing Steppe languages eventually
were surrounded by the divergeant SinoDene dialects by 8500 BCE
(NWC to the west, SinoTibetan to the S/SE, and NaDene to the far
NE).

So, in terms of dialectal placement within the larger Steppe
linguistic area, a southwestern IndoTyrrhenian area would have been
neighbouring NWC (thanx to Bomhard for his great ideas on NWC-IE
areal influence), the southeastern AltaicGilyak would be
neighbouring SinoTibetan and the northeastern EskimoAleut would be
neighbouring NaDene. UralicYukaghir was to the northwest, possibly
neigbouring a completely different language altogether (but that's
another long and confusing story involving vigesimal counting :P).

Anyways, what I find fascinating about SinoDene is that there is
clearly some sort of underlying numeral system from 1 to 10 that had been
developed before the fracture of this language and we have
agreed on this on the list previously. While I personally
do not think that it is impossible for hunter-gatherers to have
had an established numeral system of some kind, I can't shake the sneaky
feeling that the SinoDene inhabitants were a little more advanced than the
Steppe people and that the SinoDene were a source
of much cultural, technological and linguistic influence for them.

Perhaps, just maybe, is it possible that the SinoDene had been
originally linked (definitely not the source, but linked) to this
early agricultural economy in Asia, thus explaining the use of
established numeral systems in both Steppe and SinoDene? I've
found some possible words coming from SinoDene into Proto-Steppe
("mouse", "arrow") or from Hattic-NWC to IndoTyrrhenian ("five")
but, so far no Steppe impact on SinoDene. I'm beginning to feel
that the SinoDene peoples were benefitting from South Asian
prosperity and spreading the rewards to the north...

However, I know nothing about Asian archaeology and this is just
an impression I've received from the linguistic data. Anyone
can feel free to steer me right if I've strayed off the mark.

- gLeN

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