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

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> 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.
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.

> > > 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.
That still leaves it unexplained i) what allowed the Celts to replace whatever
preceded them in most of Gaul and Britain, and ii) why IE got as far as the
Rhine in the first place.

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.

> > > [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.
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; 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.


                                                               Andreas

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