Dear John,
I'm very thankful to you for very interesting and important links and the
scheme you gave in another posting. I need time to think about all this
properly.
We have already several threads, it would be difficult to respond all of
them at once. So I will reply as soon as I'm ready to prepare my arguments
or questions to this or that thread.
[John]
> I first came upon the Minhatta phase in "The Neolithic of the Near
> East" by James Mellaart (1975). He makes the point that Minhatta
> pottery seems to have arrived from across the Jordan having travelled
> north from Moab and Edom. It appears to make the initial incursion of
> nomadic pastoralists in the Levant, and the pottery seems to have
> developed from earlier crudely made forms found for carrying water and
> storing seeds amongst the hunter gatherers of the Sinai, Edom and
> Negev, who replaced the PPNB farmers with the worstening climates
> 6,200-5,800 BCE. Unfortunately because the culture was not as
> "progressive" as the PPNB, these hunter-gatherer and nomadic
> pastoralist groups have received little attention archaeologically. I
> can locate no web-based resources for you.
[Alexander]
Look, a strange situation. The leaders of the world economy of that period -
farmers of PPNA and than of PPNB, who lived in permanent villages and whose
way of life really needed pottery, - they didn't have vessels of clay (only
a few of stone). But primitive Minhatta people, who is said to be nomadic
hunter-gatherers, for whom to keep fragile clay pottery must be a great
headache (I guess, wicker baskets were more convenient), - they had
first-class pottery.
Can't this situation be interpreted as following?
People of PPNA were substituted in Palestine with PPNB people of another
origin, who had some advantages. It's a fact.
Now a speculation. PPNA people didn't disappeared in this region. They just
adopted to life under conditions of semi-desert and passed to (semi)-nomadic
pastoralism and sporadic agriculture which left very weak traces. The
situation is analogous to what happened with Indo-Europeans in the steppe -
the same tendency of transition from "normal" farming to livestock-breading
and nomadism. BTW, did you pay attention that social life described in the
Bible (chapters about patriarchs) would fit very well to what we'd expect to
see in early Indo-Europeans - strong patriarchat (only in these 2
societies! - traces of matriarchat are well seen in all other much more
sophisticated folks), the wealth=livestock etc. So, perhaps they were not
"primitive", but "specifically developed", and when climate became worse for
"normal" PPNB farmers, they substituted the PPNB people in old Palestinian
sites again?
[J]
> In Byblos and along the Levantine coast the PPNB culture survived with
> a new ceramic tradition (derived from the painted pottery of Anatolia)
> known as Amuq ware.
[A]
Amuq is famous due to the fact that the very first tin bronze subjects were
made in this place (later the bronze technology spread from this region to
Caucasus, Aegean region and later to Mesopotamia and more later to Egypt and
so on). The very first bronze is dated 3000 BC.
What is your opinion - was there an unbroken connection between PPNB, people
of Amuq ware and people of Amuq bronze?
In other words, can we say that the bronze developers were of the same
origin as PPNB (and alternative to PPNA)?
I think you guess that I'm thinking here about Nostratic/Non-Nostratic
opposition in Near East.
[J]
> Blomard states that the Afro-Asiatic group had split at least three
> ways by 8,000 BCE, between VSO, SVO and SOV groups.
[A]
Is this classification (based on syntax) supported by phonetic,
morphological
and lexical observations?
[J]
> I tend to support a
> very early split, given the fact that there are no common cognates for
> neolithic sheep or goats found in the AA "family".
[A]
I'm quoting V.Illich-Svitych, 1971 (Opyt sravneniya nostraticheskich
yazykov):
Root # 173. *kOr'i - 'lamb, sheep'
Semito-Hamitic: *kr 'lamb, young ram'
Semitic: *kr - Ugaritic kr; Hebrew kar 'lamb'; Akkadian kerru (Mari karru)
'ram';
Berber: *kr(r) - Tuareg ekrer 'ram'; Shelkha ikru 'young ram' (Sus 'kid',
cf. Nefusi akrar 'goat'); Kabilian ikerri 'ram';
West-Chadic - Angas kir 'ram on fattening'
Numerous parallels from Dravidian (*kori/kuri 'sheep') and Altaic
(*kur'i/kor'i 'lamb' - in Turkic and Mongolic groups) follow, although the
author points non-typical correspondence in vocals (having *o or *u in
Altaic and Dravidian one should expect *w in Semito-Hamitic) and writes
about the possibility of borrowing this root from a family into a family
(but not inside a linguistic family between groups!).
Indo-European *ker- 'horn' with a development into Greek krios (<*kriFos)
'ram' is also mentioned.
[J]
>I know almost nothing of Cernavoda culture. Do
> you know of any web-based resource descriptions?
[A]
First of all, please note, that there are 2 cultures - Cernavoda-1
(Eneolithic) and Cernavoda-3 (Early Bronze), both of the steppe origin. I
guess they represent different waves of the steppe population.
Besides, there was the Hamangia Neolithic culture at Cernavoda.
There is a very good article specially devoted to interethnic relations on
the territory of Moldova and around in Neolithic - Early Bronze. However, in
Russian.
http://stratum.ant.md/02_99/articles/derg/derg_99_2p.htm
There is something in French:
http://mistral.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/harsova/fr/dobro4.htm
The sceptre shown is an argument for the steppe origin of this culture.
Alexander