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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: What are Scythians?
Message-ID: <Czox76.8Ct@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <rsavageCyt0CM.5L7@netcom.com> <hubey.785359521@pegasus.montclair.edu> <CzLKIF.D7@inter.nl.net> <petrichCzo33v.GtE@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 22:30:41 GMT
Lines: 124

In article <petrichCzo33v.GtE@netcom.com>,
Loren Petrich <petrich@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <CzLKIF.D7@inter.nl.net>,
>Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@inter.NL.net> wrote:
>
>>By the same token, the nomadic scenario (Gimbutas, Mallory..)
>>cannot explain Italic, Celtic, Germanic [and Balto-Slavic ?] in 
>>Southern, Western and Northern Europe.  Nor can it explain the
>>archaic nature of Hittite/Anatolian vs. the rest of Indo-European.
>
>	I know it seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors, but the 
>Gimbutas-Mallory hypothesis envisions the Central European descendants of 
>Kurgan settlers becoming less nomadic, but nevertheless spreading westward 
>and northward and southward.
>
>>I believe that Renfrew (and Bosch-Gimpera, Colin McEvedy...) are
>>correct in thinking that the initial agriculturization of Europe
>>("Neolithic wave of advance") was done by speakers of Indo-European.
>>An offshoot settled the steppe lands of the Ukraine, where a nomadic 
>>way of life was developed after the domestication of the horse.  The
>>movements of this (Indo-Greek, or "Kurgan") branch of Indo-European 
>>consitute the second phase of IE expansion.
>
>	Not as bad a Renfrew's original hypothesis, but not without its
>problems, like how the Central Europeans acquired horses. 

I think Mallory mentions the fact that (wild) horses might be native
to Central-Northern Europe as well.  This could explain the different
words used for the horse: *marko- for the local variety, *ekwo- for
the (domesticated) steppe horse.  In any case, the use of the horse
is something that is easily adopted (the Plains Indians needed only
a century or so to become better horsemen than the Europeans).

>Horse rituals
>are important in several early IE cultures, and they would most likely be
>transmitted by some horse-riding aristocracy. Also, there might be some
>linguistic evidence of an Indo-Greek "takeover" in the European IE
>languages, in the form of some words that resemble the Indo-Greek-Armenian
>branch more than the rest of IE; but that does not seem to have happened.

There was no such takeover outside of the Balkans.  Some words may have 
spread from the Steppe/Balkans zone to the West, e.g. *rotho- "wheel",
with its strange aspirated t (which cannot be easily derived from a
laryngeal).   

>	I wonder if this debate will only be settled if someone succeeds
>in deciphering the Minoan Linear A language(s), because if it turns out to
>be related to (say) Northeast Caucasian, that would suggest that the
>language(s) of Neolithic Europe was/were not Indo-European (according to
>Vitaly Shevoroshkin's _Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages_, there are a number
>of North-Caucasian-related borrowings in various European langauges). 
>

On the other hand, if Linear A turns out to be Semitic, that won't
settle anything at all...  The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis, if true,
only makes it more unlikely that the Indo-European homeland was
the Caspian steppe (as Gimbutas claims), because that would put
the Indo-Europeans right where they shouldn't be if Caucasian
and Sino-Tibetan were related...  

>	Another difficulty with the Neolithic == IE hypothesis lies in 
>Basque, which is not IE. If it had been brought to the Pyrenees by the 
>Neolithic farmers, then their language could not have been IE. However, 
>it could have been a relic of the _Paleolithic_ population of Europe. A 
>difficulty with that is that the Neolithic expansion appears to have been 
>a population expanding and sweeping up the previously existing population 
>as it spread. This would suggest that it carried its language(s) with it, 
>and the non-IE character of Basque would indicate a non-IE character.

The wave of advance only applies to central Europe, where there is 
clear evidence for expansion of Neolithic techniques and presumably
populations from the early Balkan cultures (Starc^evo/Ko"ro"s) to
the "Danubian" complex (Linear Ware or LBK).  In the Western Mediterranean,
Neolithic techniques were introduced by maritime and littoral contact
(Impressed Ware cultures), with a much higher probability of local
people being able to pick up the techniques and building up a high
population density before being swept up by the wave of advance.
The Iberians and Basques are not Indo-European, and there were 
presumably other non-Indo-European peoples in Italy (Novilara stele?), 
France (pre-Celtic Ligurian?) and Britain (Pictish?).

The Etruscans are a bit of a mystery, as befits them.  There is a clear
connection with Greece (the Lemnos stele), but it's hard to say from
so little evidence how great the relationship between Lemnian and Etruscan 
is.  There is also some reason to assume that Etruscan and Indo-European
are connected (especially Etruscan and Anatolian with their similar
genitive constructions in -s and -l).  If the IE homeland is indeed
the Balkans, as I believe, this is easily explained.  Lemnian-Etruscan
(Tyrrhenian) would simply be the (related) language of their neighbours 
to the south  (We're talking 10,000 BC at least).
There's nothing exotic about the -nth- and -ss- toponymics: these are
very common suffixes in both Etruscan and Indo-European/Anatolian.

>	As to the Kurgans and Indo-Greek, the Indo-Greek expansion can be
>linked to the Late Yamna wave, which spread out from the
>north-of-Black-Sea steppes starting around 2500 BCE. There was a
>_previous_ Kurgan expansion into central Europe around 3500 BCE that 
>overrun the local population. This earlier wave could have become more 
>settled as the grasslands ran out, and the Yamna Kurgans could have made 
>them migrate westward, thus giving rise to the central and 
>western-European IE-speaking populations -- and also Hittite from a 
>wayward southward branch.

As Mallory admits in his "In Search of the Indo-Europeans", there
is not a shred of evidence for this westward expansion.  In the Northern
European area there is great continuity in the sequence LBK (Linear Ware,
Early Neolithic) => TRB (Funnel-Beaker, Middle Neolithic) => 
Corded Ware (Late Neolithic/Eneolithic).  Sure, the Corded Ware culture
has also points of similarity with contemporaneous cultures in the
Steppe and Balkan areas (more emphasis on secondary products like meat
and milk, use of the horse, single rather than collective burial),
but that doesn't make them the descendants of steppe nomads.  
As a matter of fact, no nomadic people in the historical record have ever 
succeeded in establishing themselves much beyond the Hungarian steppe.

>	If late Yamna == Indo-Greek, then the Scythians were simply 
>stay-at-homes. 

The Cimmerians, rather.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
