"Upper limit" of PIE

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/23/00 10:47:45 PM Mountain Standard Time, jer at cphling.dk
writes:

>Does the quoted statement mean that PIE split up "no later than" 4500 BC, or
>does it mean "no earlier than" 4500 BC? >>

-- "no earlier than" 4500 BCE is what was meant, I think.

Probably rather later.  My own take would be "sometime after 4000 BCE" for
the split with Anatolian;  "Sometime after 3500" for the beginning of the
breakup of the rest of PIE.

I'd say around 3500 BCE or a little earlier for the split with Anatolian and
around 3000 BCE for the rest, myself.

Of course, there are no absolute dates here.  In 3000 BCE, PIE was
undoubtedly already a collection of dialects.  Some of them went on sharing
innovations much longer than others -- the percusors of
Balto-Slavic-Greek-Phyrgian-Armenian-Indo-Iranian (and probably the lost IE
languages of the Balkans) for example.  Germanic seems to have made many of
its most characteristic changes very late -- in the Iron Age.  It's like very
slowly pulling a mass of warm taffy in various directions, rather than
chopping it up with a cleaver.