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

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.
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.  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.  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.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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