Fallow Deer/A Closer Look

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/30/2001 2:44:19 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
<< Likewise, PIE lacks a word for the fallow deer, common throughout southern
Europe, but has terms for 'elk' and 'red deer'.... The logical conclusion
would be that the IE languages were intrusive in areas which had... fallow
deer,... and native to an area with roe deer...>>

I believe all or most members of this list are motivated by a sincere
scholarly interest in the truth, no matter how it may turn out.  The
difficulty here is that the "anti-Anatolian" position is in such a majority
on this list that it's difficult to keep up with all assertions of the type
above.  So, this is why I am suggesting that, even if you agree with the
"anti-Anatolian" position, it might be worthwhile looking at statements like
the one above with a critical eye.  What I'm attempting to do is just point
out examples of problems that may not be obvious unless one takes a step back.

I think when one (even the most "anti-Anatolian") does take a step back and
looks at the statements above critically, if only for the moment, one becomes
more and more unhappy with their value as evidence.

Take the example of the fallow deer mentioned so often in the topic bars
recently.

Consider, for example, that when English speakers came to America, they
impliedly misppplied the very deer names mentioned above.  The American Elk
is in fact the same species as the European Red Deer.  The European Elk, on
the other hand, is the same species as the American Moose.  Anyone familiar
with these two types of deer, not just in appearance but also in terms of
what they output, will know how big a miscue this was.  What is striking here
is that IE speakers were giving animals they were supposedly already quite
familiar with completely opposite names.

Champlain and DeSoto also reported back the wide presence of "Dama" and
"Dain" (names for fallow deer) in America, when in fact there were no fallow
deer in America.  They probably saw small spotted whitetail fawns and that
would be a very easy mistake to make.  In fact, French Canadians continued to
use the fallow deer name for the American Whitetail Deer into the 20th
Century.   (And it should be pointed out that the fallow deer is most
definitely a deer.  It is probably in fact, in one of its many variations,
the famous white stag of legend.)

Someone, a relatively disinterested outsider, might take this alone to
undermine the idea that there was any necessary connection between the names
for elk, red deer and fallow deer and any particular types of deer.
Especially when IE speakers were faced with a much more difficult task than
the american colonists.  Retaining specific meanings as the language spread
from wherever over a very large geographic areas in the days before picture
books.  And over thousands of years.

And the problem here is not phonology or morphology or the comparative
method.  It simply is that the names just don't seem to stick to the objects
that reliably.
And it simply means that IE speakers could have used one name in one place
and another name in another place for the same deer or vice versa.

In fact, the very name used for the Red Deer, for example, suggests that it
wasn't a name for just the Red Deer initially.  Buck's universal "cervus" is
reconstructed in *PIE by many as *ker-wo-s, consisting of the root *ker,
meaning "horn," a nomimalizing suffix -wo-, and the nominative singular
inflection -s.  Wild goats, aurochs, roedeer all have horns.  Female red deer
never have horns and they make up the great majority of the actual red deer
population.  It's possible from this to suspect that *ker-wo-s did not mean
"red deer" in PIE.  There's no indication it ever meant red deer in Greek.
Like the word "deer" itself, perhaps it only came to mean a specific animal
after its original sense was lost, after IE speakers had traveled some
distance from home.

But there's something much weaker about this approach and I offer this not in
rancour but in the hopes that the logic problem can be looked at objectively
and unemotionally.

Pretend you are a disinterested obserser.  You are presented with evidence
that IE languages did not originate in Anatolia, but intruded there.  The
evidence is there is no common name for the fallow deer among IE languages.
The reasoning is that if IE languages originated in Anatolia there would have
been name for fallow deer in those languages.  Because the fallow deer was
present in Anatolia but not in most of Europe.  And since there is no common
name in IE, IE languages could not have originated in Anatolia.

Now, as a pretend outsider, you might ask the innocent question.  What if the
PIEers moved into non-fallow territory and simply forgot the name?  Since
there was no fallow deer in the north, why would they remember the name?
There'd be nothing to apply it to.

If some very early form of IE left Anatolia in say 6000BC, the people
speaking it who went to or were in Germany or Britain or Ireland might not
see a fallow deer for another 7000 years.  (The common date for the
introduction of the fallow deer into the British Isles is after the Norman
invasions.  Even if the Romans introduced it, the gap would be over 5000
years.)

So as an objective observer, you are being asked to accept the following:

If IE languages originated in Anatolia in 6000BC, Insular Celtic and Germanic
speakers would have had to have a name for the fallow deer, even though they
hadn't seen one for 6000+ years.

I think that stepping back and with a critical eye, even the most adamant
anti-Anatolian can see why an outsider might see this as a very poor
argument.  And I think the same applies to most of these animal arguments.
I'll try to get to those soon.  They simply do little or nothing for the
anti-Anatolian position, even if that position is true.

Let me repeat that and add something.  The "fallow deer" does little or
nothing for the anti-Anatolian position, no matter how correct that position
is.  In fact, I think, to someone who holds the anti-Anatolian, this whole
line of argument will create in the end nothing more than a credibility
problem.  That's just an impression.

Finally, there is the matter of the fallow deer itself.  It seems it may have
been introduced into southern Italy in Neolithic times.  There seems to have
been a native population in Bulgaria and Romania (darn close to the Ukraine)
from late neolithic times into the present (N. Spassov 2000) and in Greece.
The fallow deer and its names are actually an interesting example of how we
should not take the things behind the names for granted.  The dama (Gr. tame)
in "Dama Dama", it's formal scientific name, is appropriate.  The fallow deer
appears to have been a very early semi-domesticate, not just another furry
thing in the woods.  I hope to send a little more on this soon.

For those who've been kind enough to temporarily see the other side of this
issue, my appreciation.

Best Wishes,
Steve Long