Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing periphery"
>model?

-- not really, although you do have a point.  Eg., the Baltic languages (and
the Slavic) undergo satemization, a late development in the eastern IE
dialects.  What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup of PIE they
became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than Slavic.

That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The degree of
retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared to, say, Hittite.

There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other features in the
area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was historically attested).

>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, Lithuania is the
>Urheimat.

-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the Baltic.  And
once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very much "out of the way".