The Neolithic Hypothesis

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Old but not sharp.  I think it's completely logical that West Germanic and
>North Germanic started to diverge a long time ago (surely many centuries
>BC), while at the same time not ceasing to converge...

-- well, if it's old, wouldn't it be sharp?

Jutish and Anglian would have been in physical contact with early Danish --
after all, it's a mightly small peninsula/islands up there.  The archaeology
shows large boats were in use from the Bronze Age on, and most of the
population lived in areas fairly near the coast.  Trade and political
interaction were close and continuous.

And there was plenty of mix-and-match movement during the Migration period;
Frisia was in close contact with Scandinavia, and people from Sweden were
raiding Gaul in the 6th century.  Tales like that of Beowulf were common to
the whole area.

The original migrants to England seems to have included virtually every
Germanic group accessible from the North Sea coast, with the main source area
stretching from what's now Holland up through the tip of Denmark.  Some
groups (the Angles, for instance) apparently moved over _en masse_,
permanently affecting the linguistic makeup of the former homelands.