Re: Indo-European family tree (was Re: Celtic and Afro-Asiatic?)

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Hallo!
>
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Rob Haden <magwich78@...>:
> >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > It seems most likely to me that the Steppe-peoples spoke Indo-European
> and
> > > the farming communities from Anatolia spoke something else.
> >
> > The problem with this, of course, is that it's hard to see how the
> steppe-folks
> > got about replacing the languages of the previous inhabitants. Nomadic
> > conquerors don't usually end up inflicting their language on sedentary
> subjects
> > (I suppose Anatolia, ironically, is an exception here).
> >
> > Moreover, central and western Europe isn't very friendly to steppe nomads
> as
> > regards climate and vegetation. While a few steppe invasions have reached
> deep
> > into the area in historical times (think Attila), no steppe people has
> > succeeded establishing itself with any sort of permanency west of Pannonia,
> > which not coincidentally is the westernmost bit of Eurasia that is suited
> to
> > Eurasiatic Steppe horse-based nomadism. The contrast with Iran or China is
> > rather striking. While conditions no doubt were different in prehistoric
> times
> > - no states or empires to fend off the barbarians - the basic climatic
> factors
> > were much the same.
>
> Actually, the "steppe nomads" scenario is anthropologically naïve.
Maybe so, but that doesn't make the climatological arguments against it any less
problematic. :p

> And actually, the people who inhabited the Ukrainian steppe between
> 5000 and 3000 BC weren't *nomads*.  They were sedentary farmers.
> But apparently, with the climate worsening around 4000 BC, and again
> (after an interlude of friendlier climate) around 3200 BC, the number
> of people the land could support decreased, setting forth waves of
> emigration.  And apparently the PIE speakers were more aggressive than
> their western neighbours.  What happened was more like the landtaking
> of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain than the Hunnic invasions.
I can't say that one group of stone-age agriculturalists replacing almost all
others over so vast an area sounds like a terribly likely scenario either.
Also, worsening climate in the Ukraine might easily propell them into into the
Balkans or Poland, but what kept them going to the Atlantic coast?

> Perhaps
> like what the Maygars did in Hungary.  We all know that their language
> established itself firmly in the Pannonian basin.
>
> And the first neolithic farmers of central and eastern Europe didn't
> come from Anatolia, I think.  The cultures aren't particularly
> similar.  They came from areas on the north shore of the Euxine Lake
> that are now submerged beneath the Black Sea.  And thus it is likely
> that the central European neolithic farmers spoke languages related
> to Indo-European without belonging to Indo-European proper.
>
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > I thought it was rather common knowledge that the Hittites came to
> central
> > > Anatolia from the outside (probably to the west).
> >
> > That they were relative newcomers to their historical homeland seems to be
> the
> > consensus among all but Renfrew et consortes. I've never seen any arguments
> > favouring them getting there from the west rather than from Caucasia or
> > somewhere else from the east.
>
> I'd say they came from the west.  If they came from the east, they'd
> have to have made a roundtrip around the Caspian Sea, because they
> probably didn't move through the Caucasus.  The Caucasus is full of
> non-IE languages with no evidence for IE languages passing through.
> I don't know much about Hittite mythology, but I seem to remember
> reading somewhere that it relates that the Hittites came from the
> west.
>
> > For what it's worth, I did see one crackpot page that *proved* that the IE
> > Urheimat was in Palestine. The associated maps had the Hittites entering
> > Anatolia from the south, and the various European branches getting to
> Europe via
> > Anatolia.
> >
> > (It occurs to me that if this sort of scenario were right, one'd expect
> > Indo-Iranian and Tocharian to be more basal - ie. to have split off earlier
> -
> > than Anatolian. I don't think most IEist would say that prediction has been
> > confirmed.)
>
> This is indeed a problem with the Anatolian scenario.
Well, *this* particular problem doesn't apply to the Anatolian scenario, since
that hasn't Tocharian and I-I going east from northern Syria and the rest
continuing north. Similar ones might apply, tho.

> Gamkrelidze
> and Ivanov, for example, propose two counter-clockwise round trips
> around the Caspian Sea, one done by the "Ancient Europeans" (i.e.,
> Italo-Celto-Germano-Balto-Slavic), and the second done by those
> Iranians that showed up in southern Russia.  They also claim that
> the Greeks came from Anatolia, and that the Greek settlements on
> the western shore of Anatolia were *older* than the Greek presence
> in Greek proper.  That's of course utter crap, the same as their
> claim that no agriculture was attested north of the Black Sea
> before 3000 BC.  There was agriculture north of the Black Sea
> as early as 5500 BC.
>
> Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's scenario would imply a tree like the
> following:
>
> - Indo-European
>   - Indo-Iranian-Tocharian (= 1st trip around the Caspian)
>     - Indo-Iranian
>     - Tocharian
>   - non-Indo-Iranian-Tocharian
>     - Ancient European (= 2nd trip around the Caspian)
>       - Italic
>       - Celtic
>       - Germanic
>       - Baltic
>       - Slavic
>     - Greek-Armenian-Anatolian
>       - Greek
>       - Armenian
>       - Anatolian
>
> This, however, seems very unlikely.  Anatolian is clearly the first
> branch to split off, probably followed by Tocharian shortly after
> that.  *The rest* forms a "Core IE" group.  There is no way Anatolian
> is especially close to Greek and Armenian, or Tocharian to Indo-Iranian.
>
> I don't know, though, which migration patterns Renfrew proposes.
From memory, he has the various European branches cross the Straits from
Anatolia to Thrace, and fanning out across Europe from there. He suggests two
possible routes for the I-Ians; either they also crossed the Straits and then
went round the Black and Caspian Seas to Central Asia, and thence on to India
and Iran, or they went east from Anatolia to Iran, and from there to India and
Central Asia. The Anatolians simply stayed put in Anatolia. I don't recall
what, if anything, he says of the Armenians and the Tocharians.

The "round-trip" scenario, with the the I-Ians an offshoot from European IE,
would correctly predict the Anatolians to be basal to all the rest (except
possibly Tocharian and Armenian). The "direct" scenario, with the I-Ians
plodding east from Anatolia, wouldn't allow us to predict which of European IE,
Anatolian, and I-I should be basal to the two others, but I-I should not nest
within European IE. Of course, it does precisely that in many reconstruction of
internal IE relationships.

                                                   Andreas

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