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From: sarima@netcom.com (Stanley Friesen)
Subject: Re: What are Scythians?
Message-ID: <sarimaCzrB1K.917@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <rsavageCyt0CM.5L7@netcom.com> <3aen6l$g6b@pilot.njin.net> <sarimaCzJ9tp.n4C@netcom.com> <hubey.785359521@pegasus.montclair.edu>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 05:24:55 GMT
Lines: 156

In article <hubey.785359521@pegasus.montclair.edu>,
H. M. Hubey <hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu> wrote:
>sarima@netcom.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
>OK, so now Caucasian refers to some of the North Caucasus languages.

Actually - all of them.  That is the group traditionally
called the North Caucasian Family is now the entire Caucasian
Family.

>But I don't understand the remark about *traces"; are there any
>traces of any language like Circassian or Chechen or Lesghian
>outside of the Caucasus?

Yes - the Hurrian-Urartian languages to start with.  These are
close to one branch of Caucasian.  This is now fairly well
established.

Then there are the glosses of Hattic in the Hattusas archives
which seem to show a language belonging to the another major branch
of (North) Caucasian.

The paper also suggests that some of the other early, poorly known,
languages attested on the periphery of the Sumerian trade zone
around 3500 BC may have been Caucasian as well.
>
>OK. But then they must have either gone through Greece or 
>sidestepped *Greece* for it doesn't seem to be recognizably or
>acceptedly an IE language until the "coming of the Greeks"
>circa 2000 BC.

They may or may not have gotten to Greece proper, but either way,
they were ousted from their non-Anatolian lands by the arrival
of the Greeks and their kin from the Late Yamna culture.
>
>The "Aryans" seem to have gone as far as India around the same
>time, so it's hard to understand why it took them so long to
>travel a few hundred miles south and/or how they got so far
>east in such a short time and manage to overwhelm the Harappans.

First, the Proto-Anatolians seem to have been city dwellers from
very early on, as shown by the cities of the Ezero Culture in
the Balkans.  City dwellers tend not to move as fast or as far
as nomads.

Second, the Harappan culture seems to have died on its own,
probably due to the loss of the trade routes to Akkadia and
Egypt with the fall of civilization there around 2000 BC.
[It is true that the reduced remnants of the Harappan
civilization lasted for some time after that, but at a
much lower tech level, as witnessed by the less well built
houses of the later period, and without the lareg-scale
political unity of the older times].

The arrival of the Aryans is not until some time around the
middle of the second millenium - about the time Hattusas
was becoming a major political power.
>
>There are further questions: Unless the IE folks liked living in
>harsh lands, there's no explanation of why they conquered/settled
>Anatolia, Iran, India, Central Asia while gingerly avoiding 
>the "Land Between the Rivers". ...

Eh, the presence of several highly developed, technological
civilizations in the area wouldn't discourage them?  Besides,
there is evidence of some IE influence, at least, on the Mitanni
people and the Kassites, so they do seem to have made some
inroads into the area.

Another factor in the Mesopotamian region is the close proximity
of the Semitic homelands in Arabia - providing a ready source
of "barbarians" to overrun the area more quickly than the more
remote IE peoples could.

>>Prior to the time that the Cimmerians entered history, this
>>area was well outside of the zone of civilization.  None of
>>the oldest major trade routes went through that way - although
>>there is evidence that the Pontic Steppes traded with the
>>Balkans for bronze (a rather short trade route on the periphery
>>of civilization).
>
>If civilization means Middle East yes there are no known such
>records. But it is likely/possible that Greece was a Phonecian
>colony at one time [one of the archaelogy magazines few years
>ago had an article like this]. And the Phonecians were great 
>sailors like the Iberians, they probably would have gotten as
>far as the Crimea.

That is later in time!  The Phoenicians didn't start their
major colonizations until the latter part of the 2nd millenium
BC or the early part of the 1st millenium BC.  (In fact as
far as I can tell, the Phoenicians didn't even *exist* in
the fourth millenium - though it is hard to tell).

Remember, the major early IE spread occured in the late fourth
and early 3rd millenium.  The incursion into India was rather late,
and can be considered the last gasp of the original diaspora.

The next major phase was the Celtic expansions of the early
first millenium BC.

We are currently near the end of the third major phase of IE
expansion.

>  Even then it still doesn't explain why
>the area north of the Black Sea is *isolated*. A few hundred
>miles south takes them to Greece. People were making it
>accross the Alps thousands of years ago. What was stopping
>these folks from going slightly south? And how did they
>get there if it was so difficult?
>

Sigh - there is the little issue of there already being people
there.  Invasions are usually driven by some sort of desperation,
some level of privation.  Or else there needs to be a major
difference in technology level. Under normal conditions borders
tend to be relatively stable for long periods.

And they *were* trading with the Balkan region, at least,
since copper from the Balkans shows up in Yamnaya graves.

The problem is that this was Neolithic/Early Copper Age
local trade - village to village, not the organized long
range trade routes of the big civilizations in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and India.  And, unfortunatly for us, the Sumerian
and Akkadian trade routes just did *not* reach much past
eastern Anatolia.  And the peripheral sea trade only hit
the coastal areas of Greece and Italy, and didn't really
penetrate indland.

The result is that the only people of that time that were
writing, the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Harrapans, simply
never came into contact with the very earliest IE peoples.

It was only with the expansion of the Hittites into Anatolia,
and the Greeks into Greece, that IE peoples entered history.
And it was the extension of trade routes deep into the northland
by their heirs that the Pontine steppes were brought into contact
with literate civilization - long years after the break up of the
PIE unity.

>There are no natural barriers in those posited lands
>that would stop any of them from reaching the sea. If they
>could make it accross the Bosphorus they could have gone a few
>hundred miles south.

Remember - it is *not* certain that PIE lacked a word for "sea".
That is the main point.  The other bit was just to show that
the other possiblity was quite possible.  Certainly the
Sredny Stog culture does not seem to have not reached to the sea.
And if I am right, that is the original PIE speaking culture.
-- 
NAMES: sarima@netcom.com swf@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com

May the peace of God be with you.

