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

Hallo!

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:
>
> [...]
>
> > 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.
>
> As I thought I made clear, the climatological argument is against IE being
> carried west from the Ukraine by steppe *nomads*. This difficulty is not
> alleviated by pointing out further reasons the *nomad* scenario can't be right.
Sorry, but I don't understand what you are aiming at.  As you say,
the climatological argument is against *nomads* carrying IE westward,
and not against *farmers* doing so.  The nomad scenario just doesn't
hold water, I agree fully on that point; so why do you argue that way?

> [...]
>
> > > 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.
>
> That still leaves it unexplained i) what allowed the Celts to replace whatever
> preceded them in most of Gaul and Britain,
What allowed the Anglo-Saxons to replace Celtic and Latin in Britain?

>        and ii) why IE got as far as the
> Rhine in the first place.
Point is, that it *happened*.

> When IE languages have replaced non-IE ones in historical times, eg Etruscan and
> many languages of the Americas, the process has been facilitated by imperial
> control by IE-speakers. Since there presumably weren't any empires around in
> pre-Roman West and Central Europe, some other mechanism is presumably required
> to explain its initial spread.
You don't need an empire to conquer your neighbours (unless those
neighbours are highly organized); bands of warriors can do so.
And the examples of Anglo-Saxon England and Indo-Aryan India show
that such conquests *can* lead to language replacement.

It is more fashionable these day to think of our (linguistic) ancestors
as peaceful farmers than of aggressive warriors, it seems to me, but
what counts in science is not what is *fashionable*, but what
*explains the facts*.

As to the language(s) of the Central European Neolithic farmers,
remnants of it are probably preserved in the "Old European" river
names.  There are certain elements recurring in river names over
large stretches of western and central Europe.  Hans Krahe,
in the middle of the 20th century, considered them to be Indo-European,
coming from an intermediate protolanguage common to Italic, Celtic,
Germanic and Baltic.  There are, however, two problems with this:

1. There is little evidence that the aforementioned branches of
   Indo-European form a valid node in the IE family tree at the
   exclusion of other branches.  This led Wolfgang Schmid to
   assume that Krahe's "Old European" is PIE itself, and the
   PIE homeland is in central Europe.  This, however, is unlikely
   for other reasons, and it doesn't solve the second problem
   (see below).

2. The river names are highly uniform across the entire area,
   and seem not to have undergone the sound changes characteristic
   of the attested IE languages.  This means that they are borrowed
   rather than inherited, and "Old European" cannot be the common
   ancestor of the northwestern IE languages.  Also, not all the
   recurring elements have good IE etymologies, and the /a/-vocalism
   that is highly frequent in them looks suspicious.

These two problems have taken other scholars to doubt that Old European
was IE at all.  Theo Vennemann thinks it is related to Basque, but
his "etymologies" are less convincing than Krahe's.  However, it is
very tempting to assume a connection between Old European and the
central European Neolithic because both cover roughly the same areas.

If you ask me for my opinion on Old European: it is related to IE
but not a member of IE proper, rather a sister language of IE.
IE and Old European form a stock for which I propose the name
"Europic".  Proto-Europic was spoken by neolithic farmers on the
northern shore of the Euxine Lake around 6000 BC.  The Black Sea
Flood, which occured between 5600 and 5500 BC, sent Europic-speaking
refugees all across present-day Ukraine and central Europe, becoming
the founders of central European neolithic cultures such as the
"Linearbandkeramik" (LBK) culture.  The Europic language of Ukraine
evolved into PIE, while the Europic languages of the central European
Neolithic became Old European.  *Later* came the waves of IE expansion,
around 4000 BC and 3200 BC.

> [...]
>
> > 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.
>
> I suppose another possible Renfrewesque scenario would be having Graeco-Armenian
> splitting off from "Indo-Irano-European" before it left Anatolia, and Greek
> representing a secondary migration out of Anatolia. This takes us back to an IE
> language taking over a place already agriculturalized, which Renfrew presumably
> wouldn't like, but it would be consistent with the basal position within "Core
> IE" for Graeco-Armenian assigned to it in many trees.
>
> I should perhaps say I'm not a Renfrewian myself;
So why do you defend his hypothesis?  You seem to like playing
"devil's advocate".

What I have noticed about Renfrew's hypothesis is that it is championed
mainly by non-linguists.  Renfrew himself is an archaeologist; Gray
and Atkinson are mathematicians dabbling in grottochronology, which
has been discarded by linguists for good reasons.  Gamkrelidze and
Ivanov are linguists, but of a pseudo-scientific Soviet tradition.
Some of the "facts" they use to underpin their theory are simply
false.

>       to the extent I have a
> position on the location of the Urheimat at all, I lean towards the northern
> shore of the Black Sea/Euxine Lake.
So do I.  See above.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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