Dating the final IE unity

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<< Where specifically do you find this?  And I mean in Renfrew. Where
specifically do you find this?  And I mean in Renfrew.  What book?
What page?>>

In a message dated 1/26/00 11:19:04 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com replied:
<<-- Renfrew (in Language and Archaeology) says that the pre-Celtic IE
language reached Ireland with the first farmers -- that's 4000 BCE, roughly
-- and that the Celtic languages developed _in situ_ all across their
historic range, except for some outliers (Italy, Anatolia).>>

I've looked through Renfrew and I do not find any reference to either
"Celtic" or "pre-Celtic" reaching these areas at that time.  I do find him
saying the precise same thing about "an early Indoeuropean language."  I
suspect the difference is critical.

<<Yet when the Celts are first observed, in the last couple of centuries BCE,
their languages are quite strikingly uniform, all the way from Ireland to the
Danube Valley.>>

I can only ask here what these Celtic language sources from BCE are.  Once
again I mean what specifically?

I do not believe you will find this kind of evidence in the period you are
speaking of in the Danube area.  This despite the fact that Celtic migrations
out of Gaul into the Danube area are attested to by the Romans (so that you
would expect some uniformity.)   Nor will you find it in Ireland (where there
is history, folk memories and other evidence of a series of migrations from
the continent ABOUT OR AFTER this time. - and therefore you also might expect
some uniformity - if there was any such evidence.)

I am willing to be corrected. I believe we have fragmentary evidence of
Gallic Celtic, Lepontic and Celtiberian and many centuries later we have the
more substantial evidence of the Celtic of the British Isles.  I do not
believe either Lepontic or Celtiberian demonstrate what anyone has called
"striking uniformity."  Gallic is specifically limited to only a third of
Gaul by Caesar and I am not aware of actual evidence of it being found
anywhere else - with the possible exception of an accountable presence in the
British Isles.  Once again I may be wrong, but I do hope there is specific
evidence that I can look to.

<<Eg., take the Ogham (early Irish, 4th-7th centuries CE) inscription verstion
of "the women" -- 'indas mnas'.  This is _precisely_ the same as a Gallic
form of 100 CE.  Observers as late as the 4th century CE said that the
Gallic-Celtic of Lyon, in the Rhone valley, was mutually comprehensible with
that of the Galatians of Anatolia (who arrived from the Balkans about 270
BCE). ... Then the Celtic languages -- once we can "look" at them through
literate
observers -- start changing quite rapidly>>

You are saying that here is Celtic was unchanging for 700 years.  But then
Celtic changes very quickly in the eyes of literate observers.  Well perhaps
literate observers would have observed the same rate of change earlier, but
they weren't there and we have no record of them.  (And of course the
Galatians were identified by both the Greeks and by Cicero as being Volcae
and from the tribe of the Gallic Volcae - and I believe the observer,
mentioned in Renfrew, did not know Celtic and merely said they sounded the
same.   And the ogham use of a word for women - what about the rest of the
words in ogham? is "the women" the only match? - does not prove a lot
geographically  and I'm not sure it is particularly strong proof of 'striking
uniformity from Ireland to the Danube.")

<<This requires either no change, or perfectly synchronized change, in
pre-Celtic across thousands of miles, for 4000 years.  Which is in blatant
violation of everything we know about languages and how they develop.>>

You have demonstrated 700 years of very little change with two pieces of
rather circumstantial evidence.  The evidence of Celtic in the BC years is
very small indeed and comes from a very limited number of sources.  (Once
again I'm ready to be proved wrong but I would like to know of specific
evidence -especially real textual evidence.  I don't believe Lapontic or
Celtiberian supports your claim based on the difficulty in deciphering them.
And I don't believe there is much else evidence besides Gallic - and not much
of it.)

I don't know if I agree with Renfrew but it is not hard to see that a lot
could have gone on between "an early Indoeuropean language" and pre-Celtic.
The intervening period could have witnessed all sorts of changes that would
eventually lead to a lot of different dialects, one or some of which became
dominant or more universal through trade in the early Iron Age.  On the other
hand many dialects may have persisted into the Roman period and simply been
unrecorded, after all - we know at some point some Celts acquired a taboo
against writing.  And of course Celtic had to turn into Celtic somewhere -
what is the difference between IE>Celtic in the Danube or in France?  Any
expansion - wherever it happened - could have been at the expense of other
dialects or IE languages wherever Celt started.  And 4000 years versus 3000
years or even 2000 years would not seem to solve the problem of the this
telling striking uniformity in 275BC, would it?

The scenario Renfrew describes certainly seems adjustable to linguistic
processes.  The problem of the evidence of what happened during those 4000
years is precisely the problem you face anywhere you don't find written
records.

Myceanean records are after all just over 3000 years old but there are plenty
of folk comfortable calling it not pre-Greek, but Greek.  If we had no
intervening evidence of Greek until modern Greek in the year1999AD in the
same location - what would we make of the difference between the two
languages? Why is "an early indoeuropean language" turning into the Celtic
languages with no record of the intervening years expected to perform so
differently - if an early indoeuropean language analogous to Mycenaean
existed in 4000BC?

I think all this may appear to be a bigger problem than it really is.

Once again, I may be wrong.  However, I would like to have some
substantiation of the uniformity that you speak of in Celtic from Ireland to
the Danube in the pre-Christian era.

Regards,
Steve Long