[J]
> The shift two and
> fro between sedentary mixed agriculturists --> transhumance
> pastoralists --> fully nomadic pastoralists and all the way back
> again is one that happened repeatedly for the Semites, I feel.   
>
> [A]
> My feelings are a little different. IMO the ways from sedentary way
of life to pastoral nomadism and in the opposite directions are long
and painful processes. I don't think that it can happen repeatedly
(pendulum-like) in the history of a tribe.

[J]
Alexander - how long is long in your "long and painful process"?  Two
hundred years?  Three generations?  Generally - looking at the speed
with which people like the Martu (Amorites) later assimilated to the
Lower Mesopotamian culture - three to four generations seems about
right.

[A]

I guess 3-4 generation is a good estimation for the situation when a tribe has to adopt an already existing well elaborated way of sedentary life. (Unfortunately, I don't have dependable data here and have to rely on the intuition)

However it leaves deep traces in the folk mentality. For example, the Jews remember their transition to sedentary agriculture in smallest details.

Another great philosophic system - Zoroastrism - also just a side effect of passing to sedentary life :-)

 

[A]
> Yes, however the distance from the Chalcolithic to the Early Iron
> Age is not very short too. 
> I just don't know - what is the longest space of time which _must_
> be survived by substrate toponymes for sure? Do such estimations
> exist?
[J]
I am sure they do but I have not seen any.  Given that an Indo-Aryan
substrata can be detected in the Ukraine that would seem to be about
3,000 - 3,500 years. 

 

[A]

Do you mean O.Trubachev's book "Indoarica v Severnom Prichernomorie"?

Yes, the distance between pre-Cimmerian times and today is about 3-3.5 millennia. But Trubachev relies mainly on ancient and partly medieval toponyms and personal names. Only very few of them survived till our days. If only they were available for investigations I think nobody could prove their Indo-Aryan origin. So I think that in this example the time of the _reliable surviving_ should be shortened till the Greek or Roman times, i.e. about 1.000 years.

On the other hand the Ukrainian steppes were a very inconvenient place for preserving archaic toponyms - so often nation changed there, and as a rule with a great violence, when the old population disappeared very quickly.

 

Best regards,

 

Alexander