Mummies of Urumchi

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>Georg at home.ivm.de writes:

>a smooth development over time" is exactly what archaeologists tell us
>about people there. No indication of the arrival of different people from
>somewhere else over a considerable span of millennia. This can only mean
>(and it has been said by Balticists !) that the Baltic region is simply
>the Urheimat der Indogermanen. Now do we follow this ? We have to, by the
>"usual standards of the field" ... >>

-- actually, there's one clear disruption in the archaeological continuity of
the area; the Corded Ware/Battle Axe expansion of the late 4th and early 3rd
millenia.

The extreme conservatism of the Baltic IE languages would support this; no
significant outside contact (except peripherally with Finno-Ugrian speakers)
since then.

In point of fact, since the introduction of the Corded Ware material complex
coincided with the beginnings of agriculture in much of that area, implying
(as in the Tarim Basin) the absence of a large substratum population, you
could make a very good case for the Balts being the other 'pole' indicating of
the type of the early IE-speakers.

And they do, of course, look much like the Tarim Basin mummies; or the Tarim
Basin mummies share many characteristics with Lithuanians, to put it in
reverse.