PIE pathways.

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

"Mark Odegard <Odegard at means.net>" <Odegard at means.net> wrote:

>The more I think about it, It's not the Dnieper where you'll find
>the earliest IEs, but the Dneister, from Moldova up to
>Transcarpathian Ruthenia and west into to the Plains of Hungary.

Interesting.  What would you say about the timeline?

The Dniestr area is excluded from the PIE homeland by Mallory,
given the fact that the (Sub-)Neolithic cultures that we find
there until 3000 BC (Bug-Dniestr, Cucuteni-Tripolye) are closely
allied to the "Old European" cultures of the Balkans (Vinc^a,
etc.).  It wasn't until the demise of the Tripolye culture, c.
3000 BC, that the region was fully drawn into the
steppe/battle-axe cultural zone (Yama [Yamnaya],
Ezero-Cernavoda).

The area of the Hungarian plains was also initially settled by
agriculturalists from the south (Vardar/Sava).  Ultimately, if we
can believe the archaeological and genetic evidence, they were of
Anatolian origin.  By 5500 BC, Hungary became the nucleus of the
LBK culture, which expanded into Central, Northern and Eastern
Europe (Low Countries to Poland).  So if this area was IE before
3500 BC, it follows that PIE must be descended from the languages
of the earliest Anatolian farmers (as per Renfrew, more or less),
and that the languages of the first temperate farmers of Europe
(LBK) must have been Indo-European.

To illustrate, here is the chart from Champion et al.
"Prehistoric Europe" for the Neolithic/Chalcolithic (7000-3500 BC
calibrated):

   7000 6750 6500 6250 6000 5750 5500 5250 5000 4750 4500 4250
4000 3750 3500
Th Proto/Pre-Sesklo--- Sesklo------------ Dhimini------------ Larisa/Rakhmani
Bu    Karanovo I/II------------ Karanovo III/IV Karanovo V/VI----- Kar. VII--
Yu      Starc^evo-------------- Vinc^a----------------------- Bubanj---------
Ro      Cris,------------------ Vadastra- Boian Gumelnit,a-------- Cernavoda-
Hu      Ko"ro"s---------------- LBK------ Tisza Tiszapolgar-- Bodrogkeresztur
Mo           Bug-Dniestr---------------------- Cucuteni-Tripolye-------------
Uk                                   Dniepr-Donets- Sredny Stog--------------
Po/                             LBK----------- SBK----------- TRB------------
Cz                              LBK----------- Lengyel------- TRB------------
Ge                              LBK----------- Roessen------- TRB------------
NF                              LBK----------- Roessen------- Michelsberg----
SC                              Ertebo/lle-Ellerbek---------- TRB------------
Br                                             Windmill Hill-----------------

(The regions are: Th=Thessaly, Bu=S.Bulgaria, Yu=Yugoslavia,
Ro=Romania, Hu=Hungary, Mo=SW Ukraine/NE Romania (Moldova),
Uk=Ukraine (steppe) [based on Mallory]
Po/Cz=Poland/Czechoslovakia, Ge=Germany/Low Countries,
NF=Northern France, SC=S.Scandinavia, Br=Britain).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam