Pre-Greek languages

[Stanley Friesen]

At 04:46 AM 10/15/99 +00-06, Mark Odegard <Odegard at means.net> wrote:
>My own current view is that Anatolian moved from what is now SE
>Bulgaria into Anatolia via the Black Sea (yeah, boats).
>... The did not go over the mountains
>into Thessaly and thence into nothern or central Greece. They went to
>Troy! An easier route when you have boats.

Actually, this is quite an interesting possibility.  Certainly I agree, the
earliest IE type cultures in Anatolia appear in the Troy area.

>So. As a seat-of-the pants theory that cannot be proved, the
>Anatolians were, oh, 3100, 3200 BCE while the other group of
>IE-speakers, the group that was ancestral to all the other IE
>languages, were still hopelessly land-lubbers up where the steppe
>merged into forest. Anatolian can be seen as a happenstance offshoot
>that got lucky and left us written records 2500 years later. The rest
>of us, of course, were still chasing aurochesen somewhere rather
>north of the Black Sea.

Actually by that date the IE speakers were apparently very widespread
indeed, from the Corded Ware groups in northern Europe to the Afanasievo
culture of central Asia.  That is an east-west range of over 3000 km.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com