IE-Semitic connections

Mark Odegard <Odegard@means.net> Odegard at means.net
Mon Feb 1 20:38:03 UTC 1999


Glen Gordon

> >Well, we have a problem then because there was definitely some kind of
> >contact (whether direct or indirect) between IE and Semitic. Both IE
> >*s(w)eks "six" and *septm "seven" show painfully clear evidence of that,
> >and yet I can't find any language group from which IE could have
> >borrowed these words except for North Semitic itself.

Theo Vennemann

> >You say Akkadian may have came from the southwest but are the Akkadians
> >the only offspring of North Semitic? Do we really know where other
> >branches of North Semitic might have gone?

> Those and related problems do not exist if the earliest Semitic-IE contacts
> are assumed to have occurred in Europe.

Well. If mcv is correct, the solution is obvious. Pre-PIE is to be
found in Western Anatolia, Greece, the Aegean and parts perhaps a
bit south. Considering that sea level was something like 50 feet
lower ca. 5500 BE than today, what would be the most revealing
neolithic sites would seem to be inundated (below the present deltas
of the Nile, the Orontes, the Vardar, etc). This permits *direct*
contact between A-A/proto-Semitic speakers.

For whatever reason (perhaps the final pulse of sea level rising
sometime before 3000 BCE), the Anatolians became restricted to
Anatolia, and by 2000, pre-Greek was/had infiltrated Greece, while
the main body of IE-speakers was found up and beyond the
Vardar-Morava corridor.
--
Mark Odegard   mailto:odegard at means.net



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