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@...>:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > 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?
Because I was of the impression that Gimbutas et consortes thought that IE was
carried west by nomads. If not, I suppose I attacked a strawman.

> > [...]
> >
> > > > 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?
Being the language of the new rulers, I suppose. That Latin was the language of
the elite, but Celtic (presumably) that of most of the population may have
helped by leaving the former without a demographic basis after the old elite
was replaced and the later without prestige.

I wouldn't think that the Celtic immigrants to Britain had even the primitive
state systems of the Anglo-Saxons, but I suppose the imposition of a
prestigious warrior aristocracy (which the Celts by all accounts had) could
have the same effect.

But this happening *consistently* over most of Europe seems to be a tad much to
explain by the IEans simply being more aggressive. One'd be inclined to think
it would require some more concrete advantage; some more efficient social
organization, perhaps.

> >        and ii) why IE got as far as the
> > Rhine in the first place.
>
> Point is, that it *happened*.
Obviously it did, but one would nonetheless like to be able to say with some
confidence *why* 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.
What I feel needs some special explanation is that the IEans succeeded in
inflicting language replacement over almost all of Europe; the Anglo-Saxons,
after all, was close enough to the *only* Migrations Age Germanic people who
succeeded in replacing the previous languages in the area they occupied.

[snip]

> > [...]
> >
> > > 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".
I suppose I do. But mostly I'm just throwing out ideas to see what people think
of them.

                                             Andreas

> 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 [glottochronology], 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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