Dating the final IE unity

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>mclasutt at brigham.net writes:

>Aramaic spread with the Neo-Babylonian Empire and replaced other languages in
>its path.  >>

-- Aramaic began to spread long before the Neo-Babylonian period; it was
carried by a folk-migration of nomads out of the desert fringes.  Aramaic
tribes were plaguing the Assyrians as early as the 11th century BCE and there
was a concurrent spread into Syria.

The adoption of Aramaic as a chancery language by the Babylonians and later
the Persians certainly helped the spread of the langauge, but they didn't
initiate it.

Likewise, Arabic had displaced Armaean in the desert fringes of the Middle
East long before the great Islamic expansion.