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

On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 19:02:31 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier
<joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

>I doubt it.  I'd rather guess that their language was Dravidian.
>It is pretty clear that most of the area now covered by Indo-Aryan
>languages was formerly Dravidian-speaking, as there are pockets of
>Dravidian languages almost all over it, and certain features of
>Indo_Aryan (such as the retroflex consonants) can be aptly explained
>by assuming a Dravidian substratum.  It is apparently also evident
>from Indo-Aryan mythology that the Indo-Aryans arrived in India
>not before 2000 BC.  The degree of relationship between Indo-Aryan
>and Iranian cooroborates this.  Their arrival seems to be
>contemporaneous with the *downfall* of the Indus Culture.
It seems to me that Dravidian-speaking peoples were mostly to the north and
west of where they are today, and that they migrated south, displacing the
(more) aboriginal Munda languages of southern India.  If that indeed was
the case, then the people of the Indus civilization likely did speak a
(proto-)Dravidian language.

- Rob