Re: Pre-IE languages in Europe

Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> There have been attempts to show that Etruscan is of IE origin, usually by
> those scholars who attempt to show that nothing non-IE existed in Europe
> before the FennoUgric migrations into Finland & Hungary.  Their motives, it
> seems to me, are more to do with outmoded (and IMHO now discredited) racial
> theories than to do with linguistics.  I just cannot see how what we do
> know of Etruscan can possibly be of IE origin.
Weren't the IndoEuropean groups basically people with horses?
And the Sea People (1300 BC??) a very different group?
With horses it is possible to spread (nomadically?) quickly,
but regular commerce by sea is much faster and perhaps
qualitatively different. What I'm really speculating is
that language families spread by sea-faring (Malayo-
Polynesian) tend more to overlapping Sprachbunds than
to splitting-off of family trees; though IE certainly
exchanged influences with neighboring languages also.
So, Etruscan might originally have been a far-flung colony
of any culture within 5000 miles ... and then blended with
the local tribes. Could be UFOs too, I suppose; why not?