non-Anatolian PIE

[Robert Drews]

At 08:27 PM 02/26/2000 EST, you wrote:

>>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>>The one glitch is that it is not the proto-Hittites/Anatolians who left, but
>>the 'Indo-European' community - the first splitting or branching occuring in
>>either case.

>-- that simply does not work and makes no sense.  Eg., Hittite is intrusive
>in Anatolia, the internal relationships of the other IE languages show none
>of the links one would expect (eg., Greek is not particularly closely related
>to Anatolian), etc.

Although it has been assumed since Hrozny's time, there is no evidence that
Hittite was intrusive in Anatolia.  Intrusive in the Halys arc, yes, but
"Hittite" seems to have come to Hatti from the south, where Luwian and
other Anatolian languages seem to have been spoken as far back as there
were permanent settlements.  Three years ago in a JIES article, "PIE
Speakers and PA Speakers," I tried to make this point, and also the point
that PIE must have arisen as a result of a population movement FROM western
Anatolia, and from this population's subsequent separation from its western
Anatolian roots.  When I wrote the article, Ryan and Pitman had not yet
published their Black Sea Flood discovery.  Now that flood will have to be
taken into account by anyone speculating how the community that gave us PIE
could have been severed from the community that gave us PA.

Robert Drews
(for spring of 2000)
Department of Classical Studies
University of Richmond
Richmond, VA  23173
Telephone: (804) 289:8421
e-mail address: rdrews at richmond.edu