the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>4000 years is a VERY long time in linguistic terms.  4000 years ago was 2000
>BCE, when Greek hadn't emerged, and pre-proto-Germanic probably was still
>mutually comprehensible with pre-proto-Celtic and pre-proto-Balto-Slavic.

?

>>And yet you find it linguistically plausible that the language of this mass
>>of technically advanced

>-- Neolithic farmers in scattered hamlets.

>>speakers

>-- "speakers" =/= admissable term.  You're assuming your conclusion again.

>>across Europe was completely substituted
>>without leaving any thing remotely resembling a substrate

>-- plenty of evidence of substrate influence in many IE languages,
>particularly in central and western Europe.  Less so in Baltic/Slavic
>territory.

Important point, I think.  Since Germanic and Balto-Slavic (as
far as they're traceable to the "Corded Ware" cultural area) both
developed on a TRB substrate (c.q. out of a TRB substrate), it is
strange that none of the Germanic substrate words appear in
Balto-Slavic.  On the other hand, western TRB did have quite a
different substrate (the sedentary Ertebolle-Ellerbek group) than
eastern TRB (which extended into sparsely populated areas).

>>that first dispersed from the Ukraine in 3500BC and that did not even bother
>>to leave a relative behind

>-- what on earth do you mean?

>The Ukraine was Indo-European speaking at the earliest historic attestation.
>Indo-Iranian, to be precise;

The Scythians were intrusive.  As far as we can tell, the
leftover relative may have been Cimmerian (nothing is known about
the language, although it is presumed IE).

>-- incidentally, the spread of Indo-Iranian languages over a much _larger_
>area than Europe took place within historic times and is not seriously
>disputed.  If then, why not before?

Probably because there'a a historic postcedent (the spread of
Turkic) in the same area (the Central Asian-Ukrainian(-Hungarian)
steppe zone).  Nothing of the sort is known to have happened in
the North European temperate forest area.

>>Not to mention that a large part of the Ukraine had already been
>>neoliticized when this happened - and most probably by these speakers of the
>>lost neolithic language of Europe.

>-- so?

Well, that would make Mallory's "Proto-IE'ans" the descendants of
Renfrew's "Proto-IE'ans".

>>Linguistically, you are changing the languages of a massive group of speakers
>>across the middle of a continent on the basis that a starting date (narrow
>>PIE) from the Danube of 5500BC is too early.

>-- no, 7000 BCE.

>If PIE spread across Europe from the beginnng of the neolithic, it would have
>to remain in a unified form _from_ the colonization of Greece (7000 BCE)
>_through_ the settlement of Central Europe (around 6000 BCE) to the arrival
>of farming cultures on the Atlantic shore (5300 BCE).

>The, according to Renfrew, PIE would _already be in place across 2000 miles
>and hundreds of thousands of square miles_.

>You can't logically pick and chose a later time and a smaller portion.
>Either it was the whole sweep of agriculture from Greece to Holland, or it
>wasn't.  Them's the choices.

No they ain't.  The problem with IE homeland problem is that
there are so many choices to choose from (Starcevo?  LBK?  Sredny
Stog?  Tripolye?  Catal Hu"yu"k?  Halafian?  Indus Valley?).
You can't just limit the choices to "The Truth" and "Renfrew".
Intuitions about how long the IE languages had been diverging
when they are first attested c. 1500 BC, can't pin anything down
to a higher degree of confidence than "give or take a millennium
or two".  The study of the proto-lexicon doesn't offer much more
certainty either: absence says nothing (what the hell is a
weighted-web loom anyway?), and presence of an item must remain
subject to the effects of semantic drift and/or new
archaeological findings/datings.  Moreover, the boundaries of
what we call "PIE" in space and time are almost by definition not
very well defined.  It is perfectly possible that Renfrew has
correctly identified the "PIE" homeland (only it's really some
Pre-PIE homeland) and so has Gimbutas (only it's some post-PIE
homeland), but that as a matter fact Diakonov's homeland (the
Balkans in the 5th mill. BCE) is the "real" PIE homeland.  Or
maybe they're all wrong.  Take your pick.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl