Dear Alexander

Thank you for your kind words and many questions

> [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.

It is interesting. But then again the same is observed with the Wavy
line pottery of the Sahara, we find that the nomadic Nilo-Saharans
produced Africa's first pottery 8-7,000 BCE, before they appeared in
the higher cultures of the Near East. It just goes to show I suppose
that technological development does not run in a linear fashion (the
world's oldest pots are in fact found 14,000 BCE with the
hunter-fishers of the Jomon culture of Japan!)

> 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?

Interesting thought. It is certainly not contradicted by the
evidence, except.

The first culture to replace the PPNB sites in the Negev was of
hunter-gatherers, not of nomadic pastoralists. This is shown by the
presence of bones of game animals (gazelles, other antelopes, wild
goats, Barbary sheep etc) at hearths, and a complete absence of any
domesticated varieties. If the PPNA people had moved out then they
would have reverted to Hunter-gatherers, not adapted to nomadic
pastoralists. What we do see archaeologically, however, is a very
rapid cultural transition of these hunter-gatherers with the % of
bones of domestic varieties rapidly increasing with an increase in
settlement density (i.e. population increase) leading to Minhatta
phase settlements in Sinai, TransJordan and eventually the whole
region.

For some time I have been developing a cultural ecology model which
suggests the possible responses of settled populations to worstening
climate.

They are
1. Increase in struggle over limited good resources (fertile land and
water supply)
2. Emigration
3. Increase in infanticide and euthenasia for the elderly
4. Increase in evidence of malnutrition in grave sites
5. Confiscation of resources of neighbours
6. Collapse in social complexity to more egalitarian situations
7. Reversion to pre-existing simpler technologies
8. Reduced settlement density (reduction in population)
9. Active search for new technologies that escape the environmental
limitation

It is interesting that many of these features are found in the Earlier
IE (eg movement from Sredny Stog to Yamnaya) as well as this phase
from 6,400 BCE to 5,800 BCE when climates in this region did worsten.

> [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)?

It is hard to say, until we get palaeogenetic studies of DNA sequences
here, whether we have a population in continuity or a replacement of
populations. Certainly Amuq was a site of Ghassulian culture, and I
understand even the Ubaid spread to the coast in this region. It is
believed that while Ghassulian is a culture that probably developed in
situ (from a fusion of Minhatta and Amuq and even other elements
coming from Hassuna and Halaf cultures), Ubaid culture came from
Southern Iraq, so introducing new elements.

My feeling is that we can separate Eridu and Madji Muhammed phases of
Ubaid from Ubaid propper. These earlier phases show greatest
similarity with the Samaran culture of the Jezira suggesting a
Hurro-Urartuan connection (I propose we consider these to be the
Sumerian proto-Euphratean substrate). Classic Ubaid I believe was a
polyglot culture involving Hurro-Urartian, Sumerian and Semitic
proto-Akkadians. But there is no evedence of linguistic movements in
the culture. In any case, the connection between Amuq and Ghassulian
is interesting as it seems early Amuq was very innovative. The first
evidence of the domestication of olive trees is found here, and passed
on to the fully developed Mediterranean economy of the Gassulian folk
(whoever they were).

> I think you guess that I'm thinking here about
> Nostratic/Non-Nostratic opposition in Near East.

I wonder about opposition here. I tend towards a syncretic mutualism
- a kind of Kulturband Region similar to what we find today in the
Balkans, and which existed in Anatolia during the hegemony of the
Hittites. But hey, at such a depth of time it is hard to say one way
or another (or think of scientific tests that could show us what
actually happened).

> [A]
> Is this classification (based on syntax) supported by phonetic,
> morphological and lexical observations?

I believe so - see my earlier comments about VSO, SOV and SVO splits.

> [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.

Fascinating. This certainly seems significant. I have wondered
though whether the linguistics related to sheep have been a
"wonderword", moving with the first people who domesticated sheep and
passed on to those who adopted sheep from their neighbours. For
instance, the Chadic area as well as the Turkic and Mongolian groups
are well outside the Vavilhov zone of the wild ancestors of sheep. Do
you as a practicing linguist know how one detects the presence of a
wonder word (Mallory I know suggests that the word for "wheel" was
another wander word as it has cognates in Sumerian *gigir as well as
IE *kwelko). This makes me wonder, as you said the early Pontic
cultures had domesticated pigs and cattle and only later adopted
sheep.

> [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.

Do you know if the early Bronze shows the arsenical Bronze production
of the Caucasas type or the tin Bronze of the Balkans type?

> 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

Hah! I can see I am going to have to learn that language! (I have
long intended to do so). Perhaps until then I can put it through
Babelfish and see if it works.

> 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.

Bien, je peux parle francais.

A bientot

Jean Le Paysan
aka John Croft