Fallow Deer/A Closer Look

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

[ Moderator's note:
  The following quoted material is from a post by Steve Long dated 10 May 2001.
  -- rma ]

> 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.

-- you're missing the point entirely.  The lack of a term for fallow deer in
IE languages _outside_ the prehistoric range of the fallow deer has _nothing
to do_ with the argument.

Fallow deer _are_ present in Anatolia, and they _are_ present in Greece, and
they _are_ present in Italy, and they _are_ present in the Iranian plateau
from extremely early times.  Along with many other animals mentioned in this
context.

All of these areas have IE languages, and all of which, _according to the
Anatolian hypothesis_, would have been Indo-Europeanized from Anatolia.

But the Indo-European languages _of those areas_ lack cognate terms for
fallow deer; and for other animals _common to those areas_.  (Eg., the
chamois, etc.)

That is, Italic, Greek, Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian lack such terms.  And if
those languages had spread from a center _in Anatolia_, then a term for
"fallow deer", which would have been in continuous use, should be
reconstructable to PIE.  It should show up in Anatolian IE, Italic, Greek,
and Indo-Iranian, which would be more than enough for inclusion in the IE
lexicon.

And it doesn't.

Whereas terms for red deer, etc. _are_ reconstructable to PIE.

Of course, you could claim that the IE languages in question first looped up
into northern Eurasian, lost the animal terms, and then looped back down into
their historic positions and picked up local loan-words and/or invented
separate new ones.

This is known as "unnecessary complication of the hypothesis"; now you'd be
invoking migrations and counter-migrations and counter-counter-migrations,
like Renfrew's rather sad attempt in a recent issue of JIES; it's covered
with blobs and arrows moving hither and yon like a tactical rendition of
multiple blitzkreigs.

Which, when you consider that the whole Anatolian mess was originated to try
and _avoid_ positing archaeologically unattested migrations...  rather sad,
as I said.

> 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.

-- but the people in Anatolia and Greece and Italy and Iran WOULD be seeing
fallow deer, all the time.  Why don't they have cognate lexica for these
animals?

> 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.

-- see above.

> 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.

-- see above.  As I said, you missed the point completely.