About the Yew1

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/5/2001 2:55:01 AM, acnasvers at hotmail.com writes:
<< If you believe, like Renfrew, that these farmers (who entered Europe from
Anatolia) spoke PIE, then you must explain why "IE" *ebur- should have been
superseded by *eiw- in the north and by other words in the south and east.
This can be done if you posit movement of IE-speakers out of Anatolia and
east of yew-country, then back into Europe. But then we're begging the
question of what IE and non-IE are. It is pointless IMHO to extend
"Indo-European" back to the first European farmers, and equally pointless to
regard PIE as arbitrarily old. >>

Not so.  A good piece of Anatolia does not have yew trees either.  In fact,
the central plateaus have been steppes for most of the more modern climatic
periods.

So there's no difference between Anatolians IEists and the
Somewhere-East-of-Wherever IEists you are positing.  Move 'em up or down a
little and you've located the IE homeland, just avoid some patches of yew
trees here and there.

BTW, what I suspect - rather than believe - is that the evidence can support
a language like *PIE being spoken on the Danube in neolithic times.  Since
*PIE probably didn't fall from the sky, I suspect the predecessor(s) of that
language may have spread there from Anatolia.

Regards,
Steve Long