Ed:

>Any chance of you tying up this map with your 6000BC Black Sea
>map, Glen? I am interested in how your locations for Kartvelian
>and Hurro-Urartian/Nakh-Daghestanian and their extents move.

Aaaargh. What a big question! Here we go...

Kartvelian is a Nostratic language, far removed from ND and HU.
I place it initially in Central Anatolia until 5000 BCE, when
it is pushed east into the Caucasus. The reason why I say
"pushed" is because I also have Hattic and Semitish entering
North Anatolia at the same time. In fact, I blaim the Lake Euxine
event which must have temporarily screwed up the local economy
and forced people to move or starve to death. I'd be interested
to know the correlating archaeological finds of this time and
region.

The general picture I have is that the IndoTyrrhenian language
enters Europe from Central Asia by 7000 BCE. By 5500 BCE, the
initially mesolithic Tyrrhenian speakers start moving down to the
Balkans rather quickly for some reason, pushing the Vinca (or
Proto-Hattic, related to NWC) into N.Anatolia. Due to this push
however, the Semitish (placed in the Balkans) are pushed by the
Vinca. This causes a giant linguistic chain reaction down the
southern Black Sea coast. In the end, we end up with Vinca (Hattic)
in W.Anatolia, Semitish (Kaskian) in C.Anatolia, and Kartvelian
in E.Anatolia/Caucasus. I would say that Semitish pushed Kartvelian
into the Caucasus by about 5000 BCE (hmm, that explains the
"Semitic" loanwords in that language). The Euxine chain reaction
looks like this:

Tyrrhenian -> Vinca (Hattic) -> Semitish (Kaskian) -> Kartvelian

Btw, the Semitish-Kaskian connection I make is just an untested
thought for now until I can find the time to fully research into it
but damn if it doesn't sound good on paper :)

So, you want me to relate this to the Central Asian map? Well...
Like I alluded earlier, I have the IndoTyrrhenians moving
westward between 8500 and 7000 BCE to just north of their eventual
location. The Tyrrhenians remain in this northern position until
5500 BCE while the IEs trickle down slowly towards the Black Sea
and a little westward, where they start trading with Semitish
speaking people to the south (hence *sweks and *septm) by about
6500-6000 BCE.

Now, when the IndoTyrrhenians first trekked their way into Europe,
they would have pushed through a pre-existing group of people (also
originally from C.Asia) who would have spoken a SinoDene language
I call "Abadha", ancestral to Abkhaz-Adyghe and Vinca.

As the IE encroached southward, it would have cleaved Abadha
completely in two starting around 7000 BCE. Abkhaz-Adyghe eventually
was trapped in the Caucasus and Vinca moved southwestward towards
the Balkans, moving into territory just west of Semitish who were on
the west coast of the Black Sea. I believe that this caused an
interesting linguistic complex and loanwords were eventually
exchanged back and forth primarily between Semitish, Vinca and
Tyrrhenian during the Neolithic. One thing I note in particular
is a possible connection between the "lion" and "bull", both
linguistically and mythologically.

Oh yes, and the Caucasic family splits c.9000 BCE. The NEC stretch
across the Caucasus by 8000 BCE while HU expands westward across
Anatolia.

>I notice that you said recently you regarded HU/ND as being more
>long-standing in the Caucasus than any other family. Presumably,
>in order to allow you to relate this to Basque, HU/ND is going to
>have to be more widely spread at some point, no?

As I understand it, ND and HU are closely related. I figure that
they go back to a protolanguage spoken c.9000 BCE in Eastern Turkey.
I've called it "Caucasic" for lack of a better name. Now, yes, I
do consider Caucasic related to the Vasconic family but as to
exactly when this proto-VascoCaucasic would have been spoken I can
only make faint guesses (15,000 BCE?).

In turn, I think that the VascoCaucasic superfamily is remotely
related to SinoDene, BuruYen and Nostratic... but that's another
long story :)


- love gLeN




_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com