The Neolithic Hypothesis

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>edsel at glo.be writes:

>probably during the migrations of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, I presume >>

-- the Burgundians and Vandals also went through Western Europe, the former
permanently; they were East Germanic speakers.

Those _Volkerwanderung_ period peoples were extremely mobile.  The Vandals
started out in what's now Poland, moved down to the Danube, bounced back up
and crossed the _whole_ of Germany, crossed the Rhine in 407, moved all the
way down to Spain, then crossed to North Africa and went all the way to
Tunisia.  There were 80,000-100,000 of them in all, too. (Or more; Gaeseric
had them counted as they left Spain, but that was after one branch of them
was wiped out.)

And they did it all in a single lifetime.  In fact, if you leave out the
stops along the way, they did it in about 10 years.

This should give pause to those who consider large-scale long-distance
migrations "implausible".  The Vandals did it on foot or with ox-carts (minus
a short sea-voyage from southern Spain to North Africa).  The technology
wasn't overwhelmingly different from that available to a similar tribe in
3000 BCE, although the Roman road system would have helped once they'd
crossed the Rhine.