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

Hallo!

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:
>
> > Hallo!
> >
> > Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > > [...]
> >
> > Actually, the "steppe nomads" scenario is anthropologically naïve.
>
> Maybe so, but that doesn't make the climatological arguments against it any less
> problematic. :p
Which climatological arguments?  Crops that grow in Ukraine also grow
in central Europe and the Balkans.  I don't think the climate
differences
are too great to adapt to - especially if the previous population is
not displaced but assimilated.

> > 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?
That happened rather late.  There is no solid evidence for Indo-European
west of the Rhine before 1000 BC.  The only IE branch that went far
beyond the Rhine before the ascendancy of the Roman Empire seems to
have been Celtic (a possible exception is Lusitanian, which perhaps
was a non-Celtic IE language, but very little is known about that
language); and Proto-Celtic is probably to be identified with
the Hallstatt culture ca. 600 BC in the Alpenvorland.

> > [family tree implied by Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's scenario]
> >
> > 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.
Yes.  Indo-Iranian is clearly closer to the European IE languages than
to Anatolian.  *If* PIE was spoken in Anatolia at all, then I-I went
round the Black and Caspian Seas.  And what regards Armenian, it is
closest to Greek, and must have entered Anatolia from the Balkans.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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