Pre-Greek languages

Gordon Whittaker gwhitta at gwdg.de
Wed Oct 20 11:37:20 UTC 1999


In the ongoing debate between Stanley Friesen and Larry Trask concerning
early  Indo-European  movements and whether or not the Caucasus was a
transit region, the point was raised by Stanley Friesen that "cultures with
written history predate the probable appearance of the Hittites ... None of
these written sources give *any* indication of any likely pre-Anatolian
people anywhere near Mesopotamia" and that "the Sumerians, Old Bablyonians
and Assy(r)ians make NO mention of any possible pre-Anatolian peoples".

This is somewhat misleading. While it is perfectly true that there are no
obvious references to any Indo-European group predating the written record
of Anatolian, there is a considerable amount of evidence in the Mesopotamian
writing system and in the vocabularies of Sumerian and Akkadian for just
such a group, and this evidence argues strongly for the presence of speakers
of an Indo-European language in the Mesopotamian area itself at a time-depth
of roughly 3100 B.C. It has long been debated in Assyriology whether a
number of polysyllabic terms in Sumerian might derive from a so-called
substrate of unknown origin. Up till recently there had been no attempt in
print to identify this language (or languages) or to marshal evidence from
the writing system bearing on this question. The whole matter is commonly
referred to as the Sumerian Problem.

In the first issue of the Goettinger Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft
(1998), based on a series of lectures given since 1978, I discussed
unmotivated phonetic values in the Sumerian script and their association
with the pictographic antecedents (Uruk IV) of the respective cuneiform
signs. Signs depicting, for example, a fish, fox, bird, beer vessel and
wagon have the orphan phonetic readings *pesh*, *lib/lub*, *hu*, *bi*, and
*gurush/geresh*, recalling IE *pisk-i- 'fish', *wlp-eh- 'fox', *haw-i-
'bird', *pih- 'drink', and *krs-o- 'wagon'. By orphan readings I mean values
without any known link to actual Sumerian words in the depicted semantic
domains. Usually, the phonetic value is reassigned to a rough homophone in
Sumerian. Thus, *pesh* has the logographic value 'be broad',
*gurush/geresh*, the value of a sign depicting a vehicle with runners (sled)
or alternatively wheels (wagon), has the logographic value 'young
man/able-bodied worker'. In other cases the entire logographic value was
borrowed, as in the case of *nirah* 'snake, adder', recalling IE *neh-tr-ah
'snake, adder', or *umbin*, variously 'nail, claw', 'wheel', 'container for
pig and sheep fat', represented by one sign depicting a claw or nail. The
latter value recalls IE terms for 'nail', 'navel', and 'salve'. And so on.

Now that early phonetic renditions of Sumerian terms are known from Ebla
(ca. 2300 B.C.), Old Sumerian forms of well-known terms are coming to light.
The Sumerian term for 'ewe' is *u* (with subscript 8), preserved as *us* in
a compound. This word crops up in Ebla in the earlier form *uwi* (and
'vowel-harmonized' as *uwa*), reflecting IE *how-i- 'sheep'. Early
speculation about a link between Sum. *gud* 'bull, ox' and IE *gwou-s
'bovine' can now be turned on its head. Final Sum. *d/r* corresponds
regularly to IE nom. case marker *-s. I'll leave it at that for now.

The problem with all of this is simply that it is unacceptable to most
Assyriologists to pursue such lines of enquiry, much for the same reason
that Indo-Europeanists used to discount excellent evidence for a PIE word
for wine -- it doesn't belong because the Indo-European speakers were
allegedly nowhere near wine-growing regions originally. Or, as Calvert
Watkmns succinctly put it to me, " What are Indo-Europeans doing in
Mesopotamia anyway?"

Germans have an appropriate expression, that 'nicht sein kann, was nicht
sein darf'!

-----Urspr|ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Stanley Friesen <sarima at ix.netcom.com>
An: Indo-European at xkl.com <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Datum: 19 October 1999 23:03
Betreff: Re: Pre-Greek languages

>Starting from the Ukraine, we have the following constraints:
>A) there is no evidence of any IE languages ever having been in the
>Caucasus prior to Armenian, making that route unlikely in the extreme.
>B) cultures with written history predate the probable appearance of the
>Hittites in Anatolian in Mesopotamia.  None of these written sources give
>*any* indication of any likely pre-Anatolian people anywhere near
>Mesopotamia.  (They do indicate an early appearance of proto-Iranian
>peoples to the east of Mesopotamia)

>>Even if you don't buy Anatolia as the PIE homeland, why couldn't Anatolian
>>have entered Anatolia across the Caucasus or from east of the Caspian Sea,
>>through Iran?

>The first is made unlikely by the lack of IE-related cultural artifacts in
>the Caucusus and the *total* lack of any pre-Armenian IE substratal
>influences in any of the non-IE languages of the Caucasus.

>For the second you have to explain why the Sumerians, Old Bablyonians and
>Assyians make NO mention of any possible pre-Anatolian peoples, while they
>*do* give indications of the existence of proto-Iranian peoples in Iran
>(look at the Mitanni words for charioteering).



More information about the Indo-european mailing list