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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: finno-ugric, kurgans, Ayla, etc.
Message-ID: <E3oAs8.5s5@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 04:50:32 GMT
Lines: 67


A friend of mine recently wrote [from e-mail]:

I don't think anybody meant to imply that speaking IO [she meant IE] dooms
you to anything in particular (well, I guess grammatical cases are a kind
of doom -- but with a few thousand years you can eliminate most of them.)
What I found significant was the breadth this identification lends to the
word "Kurgan".  Before I read that passage in Gimbutas, I was thinking of
Kurgans as being along the lines of Scythians or Polovtsy or Pechenegs --
just another tribe that whizzes in out of nowhere, wreaks havoc, and then
sinks out of sight. 

	Well, IO speakers have not exactly sunk out of sight, while those
Basques and Ural-Altaic types are pretty thin on the European ground. I
 know the distribution of language families much better than I know the
distribution of pottery styles across Europe, so discribing the Kurgan
invaders in linguistic terms made the whole picture much more vivid for
me.

...Which reminds me...I used to sing with a Portland choir called "Slavic
Voices" -- we performed mainly Bulgarian and Yugoslav material, but on
occasion we would throw in a Hungarian song or two.  On such occasions our
leader would always explain to the audience that Hungarian was not a
Slavic language, but we didn't think that anybody would come to hear a
group called "Finno-Ugric Voices".  Which led to the following ditty, to
the tune of "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy"

	I'm a Finno-Ugric groupie,
	Finno-Ugric, do or die.
	Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian,
	There's nothing quite like them, says I.
	I have a Finno-Ugric yearning
	To learn the Finno-Ugric way.
	Finno-Ugric is a subgroup        [I was brought up to believe 
	Of Ural-Altaic                    this, too! -LBR]
	So have a nice Finno-Ugric day.

	Anyway, by what I have seen of Gimbutas' discussion of Kurgans
she attributes their aggressiveness at least partly to their domestication
of the horse and concentration on pastoralism rather than agriculture. If
you're on horseback, you can raid your neighbors for both cattle and
horses and then remove yourself far enough off that they can't retaliate
until they find themselves some more horses.  Agriculturalists do not have
this geographic flexibility.

	All of which makes me wonder about cultural changes among Native
American tribes brought about by the introduction of the horse.  The whole
area is rather murky, I believe, with significant argument about the only
fact I thought I knew;  which was that the horse was introduced to North
America by Europeans.

	I've enjoyed Jean Auel's books too, although only in English. I
haven't heard of anything since Plains of Passage.  Perhaps Ms. Auel
realized that the series was slipping downhill and opted to stop before
hitting, ahem, rock bottom.   But I'm sure that Ayla could invent
agriculture in just a few more chapters -- probably before her next baby
arrives.  After that it's just a quick jump to the wheel and then --
Velcro!  

[Most of which has some sort of bearing on some things linguistic, 
howsoever tangential...]

--
Liland Brajant ROS'    			Ae, ka manu iluna oka hale,
P O Box 30091      			"O" ku'u leo "E moe maika'i," 
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono			Kani ku'u leo, ku'u hoapu,
Tel. (206) 633-2434  			Ae, ka manu iluna oka hale.
