zompist bboard

Matrix wrote:

Littman, Robert J., 2007 wrote:Archaeologists who agree with Renfrew must dismiss what linguists have been saying about PIE for the past 200 years. Most linguists would be loath to do so. On the other hand, most archaeologists have agreed with Renfrew. They see comparative linguistics as unreliable and based on incomplete premises in reconstructing historical situations. They argue that there is not one piece of archaeological material that can unequivocally be called Indo-European.

What is meant by 'Indo-European' here? I would have thought that Hittite tables counted as Indo-European! Or are they no longer 'archaeological material'?

Inspired by a stab at the intended meaning in the quote, do we actually know when Proto-Romance was spoken? I accept that we easily date it to within ±500 years.

Terra wrote:I have a couple questions:
(1) Where does the term "Yamna(ya)" come from?
(2) Do we know what the Indo-Europeans called themselves? (Maybe *teuto ?)
(3) What do the genetics of the Basques look like, relative to those of Northern Europe, Southern Europe, and the Caucasus?

1) It's the slavic word for a pit, as in "Pit Culture" or "Pit Grave Culture". Because they were in Ukraine, and made pits.
2) I don't think we know. *teutéh2 is reconstructable as 'folk' in some Germanic, Celtic, Italic and Baltic languages - but it's not necessarily "OUR people", and the distribution and lack of obvious derivation lead people to think it might be a common substratum word in western IE, rather than a PIE word. Another root would be *h1leudh-, 'to grow, increase', which meanings like 'people' and 'nation' in Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Dardic - but that's not exactly a wide distribution either, and it seems semantically stretched - in many languages it means 'growth', and in Latin and Greek it gives words like 'free' and 'children'. So it may be that this did just mean "the children" (i.e. the growing ones) and it's come to mean "the people" in several different daughters. Other words are clearly derived from verbs relating to birth or to division. (eg 'nation' and 'genus' from 'birth', and 'demos' from 'to divide' - all probably specified clans or families and lineages rather than a nation as a whole). So no, there's no clear ethnonym.

3) See earlier in this thread. But to summarise, there is broadly a line ('cline') through europe, running from northeast to southwest, with the IE invasion strongest in the NE, and the Neolithic population strongest in the southwest [the neatness of the line is disturbed by a big drift in Med regions toward north africans and middle easterners (and vice versa on the other side of the Med]. The basques fit exactly where you'd expect them to be, exceptly that they are slightly but significantly pulled out of that line in the direction of the Mesolithic europeans.

So the Basques in no way represent a remnant mesolithic population. They do, however, look like a group who have somewhat more west-european mesolithic inheritance than most europeans have (though still less mesolithic inheritance in general than people to the east and north, because the Yamna were themselves 50% east-european mesolithic). It's the Sardinians who are the only real outlier population in modern europe, being more or less pure Neolithic farmers.

Sal, can you give a brief timeline of when (in years before present) and how long the paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic, bronze age, and stone age eras are?

So no, there's no clear ethnonym.

Hmm. That seems strange to me... Don't most people have a name for themselves?

Richard W wrote:What is meant by 'Indo-European' here? I would have thought that Hittite tables counted as Indo-European! Or are they no longer 'archaeological material'?

Indo-European as in Proto-Indo-European.

Terra wrote:Sal, can you give a brief timeline of when (in years before present) and how long the paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic, bronze age, and stone age eras are?

Annoyingly, it's unclear - depends on area (because it's technology-based) and definitions.

But in the European context, the Palaeolithic ends sometime around 12kya (end of the ice age, although it had been thawing rapidly for nearly 10k before that). The Neolithic then begins sometime between 9kya and 6kya: it starts in Greece and the Aegean, by 7kya the LBK and Cardial cultures are dominant, and by 6kya the Neolithic has reached all but the most remote parts of Europe.

The Mesolithic is the bit between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. So in Greece it doesn't last very long; in Britain or the Baltic it lasts a very long time.

The Bronze Age starts probably around 5kya in some areas (again, Greece, the Aegean, the lower Danube) but it takes until 3500kya to spread everywhere. It lasts until around 600kya, though again obviously it varies.

Conveniently, these eras also broadly define populations: the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic are the original hunter-gatherers, the Neolithic is the farmers from the Near East, and the Bronze Age are the IE invasions.

Unfortunately, the confusing bit is that although 'Bronze Age' and 'IE Invasions' go hand-in-hand, the Indo-Europeans did not bring bronze with them. At least, not into eastern and southern europe. The PIEs probably had primitive bronze, but they were technologically behind some of the areas that they invaded. This is why the Kurgan Hypothesis was initially unwelcome. It suggests that a huge influx of steppe barbarians would have had to overwhelm a technologically-superior continent, without bringing with them any easily-identifiable common culture in the process.

However, linguists have now shown that IE did exist: despite the lack of any clear Greek invasion of Greece, for instance, they must have come from somewhere, and they must have had a shared origin, at least linguistically, with Celts, Romans, etc. And geneticists have shown that there WAS a vast population movement from the steppe at exactly the time we want IE to have existed. The fact that the linguistic and genetic revolutions DON'T seem to coincide with a cultural revolution (like the introduction of Bronze) is therefore left as a rather inelegant irritation.

So no, there's no clear ethnonym.

Hmm. That seems strange to me... Don't most people have a name for themselves?

Do they? It was a long time before the advent of modern nationalism. Plus that community quickly fractured, and its successors may have named themselves differently. Even in historic times, steppe populations are hard to get a label on: they tended to name themselves as political confederacies (which could be multi-ethnic), so when the politics changed the name changed. There may just not have been a single enduring ethnic-racial-national ethnonym for the PIE as a people.

Salmoneus wrote:The Bronze Age starts probably around 5kya in some areas (again, Greece, the Aegean, the lower Danube) but it takes until 3500kya to spread everywhere. It lasts until around 600kya, though again obviously it varies.

Surely, it must be "1500 BC" instead of "3500kya" and "600 BC" instead of "600kya"?

I hypothesised at one point that PIE speakers expanded with the first horses. I can't quite remember on what it was based but it seems to be about the same time and place and the IE speakers sure seem to have liked their horses. Is there any more concrete evidence of this? That could be the technological advantage we are looking for.

WeepingElf wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:The Bronze Age starts probably around 5kya in some areas (again, Greece, the Aegean, the lower Danube) but it takes until 3500kya to spread everywhere. It lasts until around 600kya, though again obviously it varies.

Surely, it must be "1500 BC" instead of "3500kya" and "600 BC" instead of "600kya"?

Yes, sorry, 3500ya and 2600ya.

Salmoneus wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:The Bronze Age starts probably around 5kya in some areas (again, Greece, the Aegean, the lower Danube) but it takes until 3500kya to spread everywhere. It lasts until around 600kya, though again obviously it varies.

Surely, it must be "1500 BC" instead of "3500kya" and "600 BC" instead of "600kya"?

Yes, sorry, 3500ya and 2600ya.

I suggest you mean 3500 BC to around 600 BC, i.e. 5·5 kya to 2·6 kya. The end starts around 1300 BC in Anatolia and spreads outwards especially as iron becomes superior to as well as cheaper than bronze.

However, linguists have now shown that IE did exist: despite the lack of any clear Greek invasion of Greece, for instance, they must have come from somewhere, and they must have had a shared origin, at least linguistically, with Celts, Romans, etc. And geneticists have shown that there WAS a vast population movement from the steppe at exactly the time we want IE to have existed. The fact that the linguistic and genetic revolutions DON'T seem to coincide with a cultural revolution (like the introduction of Bronze) is therefore left as a rather inelegant irritation.

Okay, this explains why the archeologists disagree. But, if they want superior technology, doesn't the horse and the wheel count? (The Indo-Europeans were one of the first peoples to tame the horse, right?)

Terra wrote:

However, linguists have now shown that IE did exist: despite the lack of any clear Greek invasion of Greece, for instance, they must have come from somewhere, and they must have had a shared origin, at least linguistically, with Celts, Romans, etc. And geneticists have shown that there WAS a vast population movement from the steppe at exactly the time we want IE to have existed. The fact that the linguistic and genetic revolutions DON'T seem to coincide with a cultural revolution (like the introduction of Bronze) is therefore left as a rather inelegant irritation.

Okay, this explains why the archeologists disagree. But, if they want superior technology, doesn't the horse and the wheel count? (The Indo-Europeans were one of the first peoples to tame the horse, right?)

Surely, the horse and the wheel count. It seems as if the horse was domesticated on the Pontic steppe around 4000 BC, and AFAIK the oldest wheels were also found there. So it may have been the Proto-Indo-Europeans in both cases. Both innovations probably were connected, because for wagons and carts being actually useful, you need good draught animals, and horses are the best.

Terra wrote:But, if they want superior technology, doesn't the horse and the wheel count?

The wheel spread very quickly. We don't whether it was invented in Sumer or on the steppe.

Richard W wrote:

Terra wrote:But, if they want superior technology, doesn't the horse and the wheel count?

The wheel spread very quickly. We don't whether it was invented in Sumer or on the steppe.

But unless the Hungarian nationalists are right, the Sumerians aren't suspected of having invaded Europe, so is it relevant if it came from Mesopotamia first?

But amybe the Indo-Europeans were the first of the steppe peoples to adopt the wheel from the Mesopatomians?

The Sumerian word for wheel is perhaps relevant in this case, would help if anyone knows it. If it's not anything like the PIE word, then the technology may have not been directly transferred.

According to the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, Sumerian had two attested words for wheel (as of the Ur III period, at least): humbum (possibly /xumpum/) and umbin (possibly /umpin/), which look like they could be related. However, Wiktionary (citing John Farndon's "The World's Greatest Idea") suggests that the PIE term likely came from the Sumerian gigir, which the PSD defines as "chariot," probably via Semitic.

CatDoom wrote:However, Wiktionary (citing John Farndon's "The World's Greatest Idea") suggests that the PIE term likely came from the Sumerian gigir, which the PSD defines as "chariot," probably via Semitic.

Nope. PIE k^wek^wlos 'wheel' has a very good IE-internal etymology - it is from the root *k^wel- 'to turn' and just can't be a loanword from another language.

CatDoom wrote: However, Wiktionary (citing John Farndon's "The World's Greatest Idea") suggests that the PIE term likely came from the Sumerian gigir, which the PSD defines as "chariot," probably via Semitic.

I'm also reading Wiktionary and it says the opposite to me, that the Sumerian word was possibly borrowed from PIE or an IE.

M Mira wrote:

CatDoom wrote: However, Wiktionary (citing John Farndon's "The World's Greatest Idea") suggests that the PIE term likely came from the Sumerian gigir, which the PSD defines as "chariot," probably via Semitic.

I'm also reading Wiktionary and it says the opposite to me, that the Sumerian word was possibly borrowed from PIE or an IE.

We are probably dealing with a Wanderwort here, but the language of origin quite certainly is PIE.

WeepingElf wrote:Nope. PIE k^wek^wlos 'wheel' has a very good IE-internal etymology - it is from the root *k^wel- 'to turn' and just can't be a loanword from another language.

That is an extremely rare way of deriving a noun from a verb. This raises the prospects that it was an old word, or perhaps folk etymology. I could try suggesting that Indo-Iranians borrowed it as *kakros and then their Western neighbours applied to folk etymology, resulting in *kʷekʷlos. However, the Semitic (or whatever) reduplicated root *glgl 'to roll' argues against /r/ being borrowed into IE languages. When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular. That sort of thing is supposed to be evidence of borrowing from one dialect to another!

Richard W wrote:When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular.

How so? I've just checked a list of reflexes, and they all look regular to me.

KathTheDragon wrote:

Richard W wrote:When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular.

How so? I've just checked a list of reflexes, and they all look regular to me.

See pp6-7 of this thread. However, as an irrelevant starter, is /r/ definitely the regular Sanskrit reflex of PIE *l in this position?

Richard W wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote:

Richard W wrote:When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular.

How so? I've just checked a list of reflexes, and they all look regular to me.

See pp6-7 of this thread. However, as an irrelevant starter, is /r/ definitely the regular Sanskrit reflex of PIE *l in this position?

Yes. It's pretty well-established that Indo-Iranian merged *r and *l across the board, with later l being lexically conditioned.

Pre-empting your next question, compare kúklos "circle" < *kʷékʷlo- with gunḗ "woman" < *gʷénh₂- ~ gʷnéh₂-. It is probable that there is a regular phonetic development underlying these two cases of *Kʷ(e)C > KuC. It's possible that *kʷékʷlo- was not originally thematic, which would imply that its collective *kʷekʷléh₂- might have had a zero-grade in the reduplication syllable. The Greek development would then have an epenthetic schwa inserted in place of the zero-grade, which is then coloured to *u by the labiovelar, and then in turn delabialises the labiovelar. For a parallel scenario (an originally ablauting athematic noun being thematised everywhere in post-Anatolian IE, and all but Greek showing full grade, with Greek showing zero-grade) compare traditional *h₁éḱwo-, which must in fact have been *h₁éḱu- ~ h₁ḱw- on the testimony of Anatolian's u-stem. The familiar *h₁éḱwo- is then a pan-IE thematisation, but Greek actually continues the zero-grade instead, the i of híppos being due to regular epenthesis in the cluster *h₁ḱw- (generally, *CCC- > *CiCC-).

Richard W wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:Nope. PIE k^wek^wlos 'wheel' has a very good IE-internal etymology - it is from the root *k^wel- 'to turn' and just can't be a loanword from another language.

That is an extremely rare way of deriving a noun from a verb. This raises the prospects that it was an old word, or perhaps folk etymology. I could try suggesting that Indo-Iranians borrowed it as *kakros and then their Western neighbours applied to folk etymology, resulting in *kʷekʷlos. However, the Semitic (or whatever) reduplicated root *glgl 'to roll' argues against /r/ being borrowed into IE languages. When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular. That sort of thing is supposed to be evidence of borrowing from one dialect to another!

Then you have the Slavic word, kolo, that appears to be derived from the o-grade of *kʷel-.

Pole, the wrote:

Richard W wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:Nope. PIE k^wek^wlos 'wheel' has a very good IE-internal etymology - it is from the root *k^wel- 'to turn' and just can't be a loanword from another language.

That is an extremely rare way of deriving a noun from a verb. This raises the prospects that it was an old word, or perhaps folk etymology. I could try suggesting that Indo-Iranians borrowed it as *kakros and then their Western neighbours applied to folk etymology, resulting in *kʷekʷlos. However, the Semitic (or whatever) reduplicated root *glgl 'to roll' argues against /r/ being borrowed into IE languages. When it was examined closely on this board, it was found that the reflexes of *kʷekʷlos were not actually regular. That sort of thing is supposed to be evidence of borrowing from one dialect to another!

Then you have the Slavic word, kolo, that appears to be derived from the o-grade of *kʷel-.

Also Greek pólos "axis, pivot", which is similarly from the o-grade of *kʷel(h₁)-, but note that the Slavic word is an s-stem. More interesting is Latvian kakls "neck, throat" < *kʷo-kʷl-o-.