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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: What are Scythians?
Message-ID: <Czru2K.8wC@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <rsavageCyt0CM.5L7@netcom.com> <petrichCzo33v.GtE@netcom.com> <Czox76.8Ct@inter.nl.net> <sarimaCzrD2x.CLL@netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 12:15:55 GMT
Lines: 177

In article <sarimaCzrD2x.CLL@netcom.com>,
Stanley Friesen <sarima@netcom.com> wrote:
[I'm actually responding to several articles at once]

I fear we will not agree on this, but here are some remarks:

>I would place the PIE origin in the Sredny Stog culture, some
>600 or more years earlier.  And, as I said above, I place the
>Proto-Anatolian/Proto-Hellenic split rather before the Early
>Helladic III, though maybe not that much before the beginning
>of the Ezero culture.

For the benefit of those who haven't got a copy of Mallory
handy, let me try to make a very rough diagram:

BC	E. Balkans	Ukraine		Caspian		Centr.Asia
	========== 	=======		=======		==========
7000	Bug-Dniestr			Seroglazovo
5000	Tripolye	Dniepr-Donets =	Samara
4500			Sredny Stog ===	Khvalynsk
3500	Ezero			Yamnaya			Afanasievo
2000	Early Bronze		Srubnaya	Andronovo
        ?Daco-Thracian	       ?Cimmerian      ?Indo-Iranian

The early Bug-Dniestr culture was absorbed by Tripolye, a culture
that clearly belongs with the Balkan complex (Starc^evo-Vinc^a),
so it plays no role.   The Seroglazovo culture is very interesting
for other reasons, but it too was absorbed, by the Samara culture,
probably an offshoot of the Dniepr-Donets to the west.  This Dniepr-
Donets/Samara complex then gave way to Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk and
Yamnaya.  If the Sredny Stog folk were Indo-European, there is no
reason to assume the Dniepr-Donets folk weren't.  The problem is
then the origin of the Dniepr-Donets culture, which (according to
Mallory) the archaeologist Dmitry Telegin associates with sub-
Neolithic cultures to the North-West (Narva, Valdai and Comb-Pricked 
Ware), i.e. in the transition area between (Balkan-Danubian) Linear Ware
and Proto-Finnish peoples.

But let's assume that ca. 4500 BC, Indo-European was spoken *only*
in the Sredny Stog/Khvalynsk area.  In the following millennium,
it spread westwards to the Balkans ("first Kurgan wave" => Anatolian)
and eastwards to Central Asia (Afanasievo culture => Tocharians).
This makes sense, as Anatolian and Tocharian are indeed the most
"archaic" groups of IE on linguistic grounds.  I will not put too
much weight on the fact that in the Sturtevant classification 
Tocharian sits in the "Indo" part of Indo-Hittite, and that
Gamkrelidze also puts the split Tocharian/IE after the Anatolian/IE
split.

That leaves the problem of Italo-Celtic and "Balto-Germanic".

>Basically, I see the situation for IE about 3000 BC as being
>as follows:
>
>	Late Yamna ==> Indo-Greek or Proto-Helleno-Thaco-Dacian
>	Ezero and related cultures ==> Proto-Anatolian
>	Afanasievo ==> Pre-Proto-Tocharian
>	Corded Ware ==> Italo-Celto-Germanic (?+ Balto-Slavic too)
>		(Though the Baden culture could be Balto-Slavic).

Actually, I quite agree with this, in general (not sure about
Ezero).  What I disagree with you about is the situation at circa 
5000 BC :-)

That would be, tentatively:

Balkans:	Vinc^a			=> Proto-Anatolian
Ukraine:	Tripolye/Dnepr-Donets	=> Proto-Indo-Greek
N/C.Europe:	LBK			=> Proto-Western-IE
W.Europe:	Impressed Ware		=> <non IE>

with the roots of the Anatolian/rest-of-IE split stretching back 
to approx. 5500 BC.  I think Anatolian can take that...


>[Note, I do not think the spread of IE into northern Europe
>necessarily requires massive population movements, or perhaps
>even without conquests, as a prestige language can easily replace
>another, less prestigous one, even without massive population
>movements - perhaps a language associated with wealth from
>trade, and with political power, through chiefly marriages,
>could become the predominant language of a trade zone].
>

This may well have happened in the tell-based (more or less
urbanized) cultures of the Balkan area.  I think it's much less
likely in the North/Central European context.  I just don't
see how the language of the early Neolithic settlers of 
"temperate Europe" could have just disappeared without leaving
a trace.  This was a relatively densely populated, but very
decentralized and very large area, which would make it very 
resistant to conquest or acculturization.

It's much more likely that a small sub-Neolithic population like
the Dniepr-Donets or Sredny Stog (whatever their original language:
Indo-European, Uralic or Caucasian) would have adopted the prestige
language of their rich and powerful Tripolye neighbours.  (There
can be no question about trade contacts and other influences
of Tripolye on the steppe cultures: Triploye earthenware and other 
goods abound in the steppe finds).

>Personally, I strongly suspect that the C'atal-Hu"yu"k culture
>was an early Caucasian culture - perhaps even the homeland of
>one of the two main branches of Caucasian proper.  Certainly,
>except for Hittite and its relatives, all of the languages of
>Anatolia in the earliest times are Caucasian.
>
>Note, this means that Renfrew may well have been *partly* right,
>in that his spread of agriculture *did* spread a language family
>across Europe - it was just that it was the Macro-Caucasian Family,
>not the Indo-European one.  In this, admittedly speculative, model,
>Basque is a long-surviving relic of this early spread of agriculture.

The Basque-Caucasian relation is completely unfounded.
I have yet to see any solid (or even shaky) evidence for it.   
The origins of Basque may never be fully traced, but the most likely
hypothesis is that they are autochtonous to their part of the world.

>>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... 
>
>That doesn't follow.  The linkage zone could go through the
>Zagros region.  Certainly one of the minor Dene-Caucasian
>groups, Burushaski, as well as the Tibetan branch of Sino-Tibetan,
>are adjacent to these highlands.

Again, I don't think Burushaski can be incorporated into
Macro-Caucasian just like that.  The main agricultural
"wave of advance" in this part of the world seems to have
been the one that took Elamite languages to India
(Elamo-Dravidian).  The spread of agriculture from Mesopotamia
and the Northern Zagros to the north could have given rise
to the (local) Seroglazovo culture mentioned above.

Now this is highly speculative, but if there's any truth to
the Caucasian / Sino-Tibetan connection (and I still think the
numerals are pretty similar), the Seroglazovo culture seems like
just the right thing at the right moment.  That leads me to believe
that the Caucasians entered the Caucasus from the north and then
pushed further south from there (Hattians, Kaskans and Hurrians).

That would leave Kartvelian as the "native" language of the 
Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia.  Some striking parallels
between Indo-European and Kartvelian (e.g. Georgian
mkerdi "breast", IE kard- "heart", Kartvelian ablaut, etc.)
would be explicable if Kartvelian and Indo-European (and 
Etruscan) were neighbouring languages in the Mesolithic 
(Anatolia-Greece-Balkans).  One could add Uralic to the north
of this.  This is all speculation, of course.

>>There's nothing exotic about the -nth- and -ss- toponymics: these are
>>very common suffixes in both Etruscan and Indo-European/Anatolian.
>
>In Indo-European they are restricted to southern Europe!  They
>simply cannot be reconstructed for PIE.  Furthermore, -nth-
>and -ss- seem to have an aproximately complementary distribution,
>suggesting that they are cognate endings in two related languages
>(an early Hurrian-Urartian and a Hattic language??).
>
>Certainly it is odd that the endings occur in Italic, Greek, Phrygian,
>Illyrian and Anatolian, but in no other IE languages.
>

I was merely referring to the -nt- (-nth- in Germanic, Armenian and
"Pelasgian") suffix that makes present participles (and agentive/animate 
nouns in Hittite), and the genitive/adjectival -s.  Parnassas is a pure 
Anatolian word: parn- "house" + -ass- (adj.).  


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