2 The interdisciplinary survey of converging conclusions on the problem of the origin of language and languages
The PCP paradigm of IE origins reconcile the still fundamental conquests of traditional historical and comparative linguistics – inevitably neglected by Renfrew and his team – with the conclusions reached by modern sciences and disciplines. And in recent times at least five different sciences and disciplines have addressed the problems of the origin of language in general and of languages in particular: (i) general linguistics and, more specifically, psycho- and cognitive linguistics, (ii) paleo-anthropology, (iii) cognitive science, (iv) genetics and (v) archaeology. Though they have done it from different vantage points and with different approaches, they have reached conclusions that seem to show a remarkable convergence. It is thus on these converging conclusions that a new theory of IE (and language) origins ought to be founded.
2.1 General linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Cognitive linguistics
In general linguistics, the central idea of Noam Chomsky's revolutionary theory on the psychological and formal foundations of language is centered upon the claim that language is innate. Until recently, this claim formed a major obstacle for the integration of his theory in a Darwinian, evolutionary framework. A major breakthrough, however, independently made by scholars specialized in different sciences (see the following points), has provided an unexpected solution for this problem.
2.2 Paleoanthropology
The last twenty years of discoveries in the field have brought Ph. V. Tobias, one of the world leading specialists, to conclude that the question now is no longer whether Homo habilis spoke (which is now considered as ascertained), but whether the capacity for language was already optionally present in some Australopithecus, to become obligatory in Homo, as one of his unique traits. As he himself writes: "Several lines of evidence suggest that the rudiments of speech centers and of speaking were present already before the last common ancestral hominid population spawned Homo and the robust australopithecines [….] Both sets of shoots would then have inherited the propensity for spoken language. The function would probably have been facultative in A. robustus and A. boisei, but obligate in Homo" (Tobias 1996, 94, author's emphasis).
2.3 Cognitive Sciences
On the basis of independent evidence, a similar conclusion has been reached also in the field of cognitive sciences, by Steven Pinker, in his book on 'language instinct', inspired by Chomsky's theory of language (Pinker 1994): "a form of language could first have emerged [...] after the branch leading to humans split off from the one leading to chimpanzees. The result would be languageless chimps and approximately five to seven million years in which language could have gradually evolved" (Pinker 1994, 345). In short, language would indeed be innate in humans, but only as the result of a much longer evolution than traditionally thought, beginning with some Australopithecus.
2.4 Genetics
In genetics, the school founded and led by Luca Cavalli Sforza has made fundamental discoveries about the relationship between genetics and linguistics, such as:
(A) the areal distribution of genetic markers largely corresponds to that of the world languages (Cavalli Sforza et al. 1988, 1994, Menozzi et al. 1978 etc.);
(B) language differentiation must have proceeded step by step with the dispersal of humans (probably Homo sapiens sapiens) (idem).
(C) Independent geneticists working on DNA have recently ascertained that that 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to Paleolithic (e.g. Sykes 2001, 2006).
Despite these conclusions, for the specific problem of the origins of Indo-European languages Cavalli Sforza has first tried to adjust his data to the traditional model of the warlike invasion theory, claiming that the two data converged, and later has done the same with Renfrew's model (Ammerman-Cavalli Sforza 1984). Nevertheless, he has recently had to surrender to the latest outcome of genetic research, i.e. that 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to Paleolithic (Sykes 2001, 240 ff). As Bryan Sykes' has recently commented: "The Neolithic farmers ha[ve] certainly been important; but they ha[ve] only contributed about one fifth of our genes. It [is] the hunters of the Paleolithic that ha[ve]created the main body of modern European gene pool" (Sykes 2001, 242).
In a more recent book devoted to the genetic stock of Great Britain and Ireland, Sykes writes, again: "I can see no evidence at all of a large scale immigration from central Europe to Ireland and the west of the Isles generally, such as been used to explain the presence there of the main body of 'Gaels' or 'Celts'. The 'Celts' of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstatt and La Tène in the shadows of the Alps during the first millennium BC. The people of the Isles who now feel themselves to be Celts have far deeper roots in the Isles than that and, as far as I can see, their ancestors have been here for several thousand years" (Sykes 2006, 281). This conclusion perfectly fits with the PCP interpretation of Celtic ethnogenesis (see § 4).
2.5 Archaeology In the last three decades, archaeological research has made quite a few revolutionary advances, among which the most well-known is the much higher chronologies of European prehistory, obtained by radiocarbon and other innovative dating techniques. However, as far as our topic is concerned, the conclusion that interests us the most –and which we have already mentioned – are:
(A) there is absolutely no trace of a gigantic warlike invasion, such as to have caused a linguistic substitution on continental scale, as envisaged by the traditional IE theory; and
(B) all Neolithic cultures of Europe either are a direct continuation of Mesolithic ones, or have been created by Mesolithic groups after their Neolithization by intrusive farmers from the Middle East.
So that, again, a language substitution of the imagined scale would be altogether unlikely. There is, instead, every possible evidence for demic and cultural continuity, from Paleolithic to the Metal Ages. Continuity is now universally considered the basic pattern of European prehistory. As already said, even James Mallory, probably the last archaeologist who defends the IE invasion theory, has had to concede: "the archaeologists' easiest pursuit [is] the demonstration of relative continuity and absence of intrusion" (Mallory 1989, 81).
3 Two more contributions on the solution of the problem
To the five conclusions we have summarized, two more contributions on the solution of the problem of IE languages can be added: the so called Uralic Continuity theory, in so far as it provides an illuminating parallel for our case; and research on history of archaeology, linguistics and ideology, in so far as it explains why the founders of IE studies were motivated to create the myth of a recent invasions of Neolithic Europe by superior IE warriors.
3.1 The Uralic Continuity Theory
In the last thirty years, there has been an important breakthrough in the history of European origins, which only recently has begun to attract the attention of specialists of other areas. This is the so called Uralic Continuity Theory (in Finnish: uralilainen jatkuvuusteoria), developed in the Seventies by archaeologists and linguists specialised in the Uralic area of Europe, that is the area of Finno-Ugric and Samoyed languages. This theory claims an uninterrupted continuity of Uralic populations and languages from Paleolithic: Uralic people would belong to the heirs of Homo sapiens sapiens coming from Africa, they would have occupied mid-eastern Europe in Paleolithic glacial times, and during the deglaciation of Northern Europe, in Mesolithic, would have followed the retreating icecap, eventually settling in their present territories (Meinander 1973, Nuñez 1987, 1989, 1996, 1997, 1998).
The relevance of this theory for our problem lies in the following points:
(1) it replaces an earlier 'invasion theory', quite similar to the traditional IE one, and practically modelled on it.
(2) It represents the first claim of uninterrupted continuity from Paleolithic of the second European linguistic phylum, thus opening the way to a similar theory for IE.
(3) It is now current not only among specialists of Finno-Ugric prehistory and of Finno-Ugric languages, but has become part of the general culture in all countries where Uralic languages are spoken.
(4) It obliges to question the validity of the until now accepted chronology for the innumerable Uralic loanwords from contiguous IE and Turkic languages.
There is thus every reason to advance a similar theory for the major linguistic phylum of Europe.
3.2 History of ideas
Many recent studies have shown that the foundation of scientific IE research in the 19th-century was deeply influenced by the contemporary Arian, Pangermanic and colonialist ideology, as first expounded in Count Joseph-Arthur De Gobineau's, Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (1853-1855) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's, Die Grundlagen des XIX Jahrhunderts (1899), with their emphasis on Indo-Europeans racial superiority and their inclination to war and conquest (e.g. Poliakov 1974, Römer 1985, Trigger 1989, Renfrew 1987 etc.).
Here is, for example, how Adolphe Pictet, the founder of the so called Linguistic Paleontology, in his book Les origines des Indo-européennes ou les Aryas primitif. Essai de paléontologie linguistique, Paris, 1859-63, described the "Arian race": "a race destined by the Providence to dominate the whole world… Privileged among all other races for the beauty of its blood, and for the gifts of its intelligence, … this fertile race has worked to create for itself, as a means for its development, a language which is admirable for its richness, its power, its harmony and perfection of forms".
In short, the first IE specialists – imbued with European colonialism of the 19th century - chose to see the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a superior race of warriors and colonizers, who would have conquered the allegedly "pre-IE" Neolithic Europe in the Copper Age, and brought their 'superior' civilization to it. Moreover, since it was necessary for the Indo-European warriors to have weapons and horses, also the choice of the Copper Age was obligatory, because this was the context of Battle Axes, metallurgy and horse riding. At the same time, while the concept of the Arian super-race gave shape to the myth of the Battle-Axe horse-riding invaders, another myth, within the Arian larger myth, emerged: Pangermanism. Within the Arian superior race, the German father-founders of IE studies saw the Germanic people as the supermen, the purest and the closest to the original blessed race, and chose the Germanic area as the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
After WW2, with the end of Nazi ideology, a new variant of the traditional scenario, which soon became the new canonic IE theory, was introduced by Marija Gimbutas, an ardent Baltic nationalist: the PIE Battle-Axe super-warriors were best represented by Baltic élites, instead of Germanic ones (Gimbutas 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980).
Interestingly, also the central idea of the NDT, namely that the inventors of farming were the Indo-Europeans, rather than the 'real' Middle-Eastern, Sumerian and/or Semitic, people, is yet another vein of this often unwitting ethnocentrism that runs through the history of research on IE origins.
4 The main lines of the PCP historical reconstruction
Summarizing, the fundamental lines of the PCP historical reconstruction are:
(1) The 'arrival' of Indo-European people in Europe and Asia must be seen as one of the major episodes of the 'arrival' of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa, and not as an event of recent prehistory. As Marcel Otte writes, "from the strictly archaeological point of view, the fringes of the European continent retrace a phenomenon of complete continuity between the last hunters and the most authentic Indo-European population known from texts: Celts, Germans, Slavs. […] The only true break visible in terms of archaeology and human paleontology (and hence of ethnic groups) corresponds to the transition from the Middle Palaeolitihc (Neanderthal Man) to the upper Palaeolithic ('Modern' or 'Cro Magnon Man'). It is from this moment onward that a history of cultures develops on this continent in an autonomous way. It is also from this moment that continuity begins and lasts until protohistory. It is also from this moment that the non-Indo-European peoples appear as a stark contrast against this communal background: Finno-Ugric speakers or Turco-Mongols" (Otte 1997, 80).
(2) The differentiation process of IE languages from the Proto-IE common language, reconstructed by comparative linguistics, as well as that of their already separated branches (Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Balto-Slavic, Proto-Greek etc.) into their presently 'substandard', 'dialect' varieties, must have taken an extremely long time, and they must have been associated first with the varying episodes of the original migration from Africa, and then – with an increasingly faster tempo as social stratification and colonial wars began – with the varying cultural, social and political stages the new fragmented groups went through in the different settlement areas.
For example:
(a) The 'mysterious arrival' of the Celts in Western Europe, obligatory in the traditional theory as well as in the NDT – is replaced by the scenario of an early differentiation of Celts, as the westernmost IE group in Europe. Western Europe must of course have always been Celtic, and the recent prehistory of Western Europe – from the Megalithic culture through the Beaker Bell to the colonialistic La Tène – must have all been Celtic (Alinei 2000a, Alinei-Benozzo 2006, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d; Benozzo 2007d, 2007f, 2009a). Consequently, the duration of the colonial expansion of the Celts was much longer than thought, and its direction was from West to East and not vice versa.
(b) The extremely successful (and sedentary) Mesolithic fishing cultures of Northern Europe must be attributed to already differentiated Celts, Germanic people and Balts, besides to Uralic people.
(c) The continental Germanic area must have extended, before the deglaciation, from the Alps to the icecap, including what are now the Frisian islands and part of the British islands. After the deglaciation, in Mesolithic, it expanded to Scandinavia (where its earlier, 'Mesolithic' stage is still best preserved), and its first Neolithic appearance was the LBK. While the conspicuous fragmentation of the LBK, caused by the complexity of the recent prehistory of the area, is reflected by the rich dialect picture of Germany and of the contiguous Germanophone countries, the much simpler prehistory, and the completely different geographic context of Scandinavia, made it possible for much of the language original characters to be preserved.
(d) What is now called the Romance area – closely corresponding to the area of the Epigravettian Paleolithic culture, of Mesolithic cultures such as Castelnovian and Sauveterrian, and of the Impresso/Cardial culture of Neolithic – Instead of representing solely the remnant of Roman imperialism, must now be seen as mainly an original Italid (or Italoid, or Ibero-Dalmatic) linguistic area, in which several proto-languages akin to Latin, besides Latin and the other Italic languages, were spoken (besides Alinei 2000a, see also 1991, 1997c, 1997d, 1998b, 1998c, 2000c, 2001b, 2001c, 2009a), and for the speakers of which the Latin of Rome must have been an (easy to learn) superstrate (see Alinei-Benozzo 2009). Rumanian appears to be an intrusive language, introduced in Neolithic times into the Slavic area by Impresso/Cardial farmers coming from Dalmatia (Hamangia culture).
(e) The totally absurd thesis of the so called 'late arrival' of the Slavs in Europe must be replaced by the scenario of Slavic continuity from Paleolithic, and the demographic growth and geographic expansion of the Slavs can be explained, much more realistically, by the extraordinary success, continuity and stability of the Neolithic cultures of South-Eastern Europe (the only ones in Europe that caused the formation of tells) (Alinei 2000a, 2003b).
Future research will enhance and confirm these conclusions, as well as open new vistas on our past.
What language was spoken in West Europe before?
?
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by rashka
Bookmarks