IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

>I don't want to create an "I'm right, you're wrong" thread here. When I say
>major upheaval, I'm referring to catastrophic events along the lines of
>European invasions

-- catastrophe is the norm of history.  Eg., the rise of the Zulu kingdom
(due to purely indigenous developments) killed half the population of South
Africa, caused other upheavals like the Kololo migration which changed the
language of the Upper Zambezi to a Sotho dialect from 1000 miles southwards,
and sent Nguni-speaking war bands marauding as far north as Lake Victoria --
all within a single generation, all on foot, and all with a technology in
most respects more primitive than that of the European neolithic.  No wheeled
vehicles or draught animals, to name only two aspects.

(Archaeological traces of all this are nil, by the way.  We wouldn't know
about it at all if it weren't for written records and linguistic traces, like
Sotho in Zambia and Ndebele in Zimbabwe.)

The Galla migrations into the Ethiopian highlands, or the movement of the
Maa-speakers into Kenya (the Maasai and Samburu) are other examples.

Not to mention that the Germanics had been expanding at the expense of
Celtic-speakers for centuries before the Romans came along; as a matter of
fact, it was Caesar who forced them out of Gaul and back across the Rhine.
What's now Southern Germany and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland was
once Celtic-speaking territory.

As was Bohemia, which became Germanic and then Slavic in turn.