0
So at what point did you switch from India to West Asia Protospatha?
I think we're looking for a homeland around the Black Sea somewhere whether north or south of it.
Were they IE or just early loan words from the Neolithic civilisations?We can learn more about the earliest Indo-Europeans from other aspects of their reconstructed vocabulary. Some words, for example, describe an agricultural technology whose existence dates back to 5000 B.C. By that time the agricultural revolution had spread north from its origins in the Fertile Crescent, where the first archaeological evidence of cultivation dates back to at least 8000 B.C.
Barley, wheat and Flax are all from West Asia.The Indo-European words for "barley," "wheat" and "flax"; for "apples," "cherries" and their trees, for "mulberries" and their bushes; for "grapes" and their vines; and for the various implements with which to cultivate and harvest them describe a way of life unknown in northern Europe until the third or second millennium B.C., when the first archaeological evidence appears.
Domestic Apples are native to the mountains of Kazakhstan - the steppes but Crab Apples are native everywhere in many species and there's evidence for their consumption in the Ertobolle and Swiss lake villages.
Cherries are native to most of Europe. Prunus avium from England to the Caucasus and Prunus cerasus from Germany to the Caucasus - those are the two species which people eat (that and Black Cherries but they came from America latter on).
Cherries would have been consumed from the wild trees until they were domesticated around the South Caucasus somewhere.
Mulberries are in different areas of East Asia (the ones which are eaten anyway) and likely spread along the trade routes, perhaps the Silk Road.
Grapes are native to most of the northern hemisphere. Most species occur in the Americas but it is Vitis vinifera which has always been consumed and made into wine in the Near East and Europe.
That is native to Southern Europe to the Caucasus, the furthest north it gets naturally is on the Rhine. They were likely domesticated around the Caucasus too.
So only the grains point to West Asia specifically, Maykop next to the Yamna was noted for the cultivation of fruit - they could easily be West Asia or the edge of the Pontic Steppe.
It described well the Caucasus, the region at the edge of both West Asia and the Steppes. Thus this proves nothing in itself, just that Indo-Europeans lived on one side of the Caucasus.THE LANDSCAPE DESCRIBED BY THE INDO-EUROPEAN PROTOLANGUAGE
The landscape described by the reconstructed Indo-European protolanguage is mountainous—as evidenced by the many words for high mountains, mountain lakes and rapid rivers flowing from mountain sources[/B][/I][/U]. Such a picture cannot be reconciled with either the plains of central Europe or the steppes north of the Black Sea, which have been advanced as an alternative homeland for the Indo-Europeans. The vocabulary does, however, fit the landscape of eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia, backed by the splendor of the Caucasus Mountains. The language clothes its landscape in the flora of this region, having words for "mountain oak," "birch," "beech," "hornbeam," "ash," "willow" or"white willow," "yew," "pine" or"fir," "heather" and "moss."
Ukraine and Southern Russia aren't Northern Europe. This article seems to be arguing against IE being native to Northern Europe which nobody here has even suggested anyway.Moreover, the language has words for animals that are alien to northern Europe: "leopard," "snow leopard," "lion," "monkey" and "elephant."
The Pontic Steppe is Eastern Europe.
Leopards could be the Persian Leopard found in the Caucasus and Turkmenistan as well as Iran.
Snow leopards are found in Kazakhstan.
European Lions were formerly found in the Caucasus and Southern Europe, being a subspecies of Asiatic Lions which are still found in India.
I don't think this proves anything, both species are as common as muck everywhere from England to the Caucasus.The presence of a word for "beech tree," incidentally, has been cited in favor of the European plains and against the lower Volga as the putative Indo -European homeland. Beech trees, it is true, do not grow east of a line drawn from Gdansk on the Baltic to the northwest corner of the Black Sea. Two species of beech ( Fagus orientatis and F. sylvatica) flourish, however, in modern Turkey. Opposing the so-called beech argument is the oak argument: paleobotanical evidence shows that oak trees (which are listed in the reconstructed language's lexicon) were not native to postglacial northern Europe but began to spread there from the south as late as the turn of the fourth to the third millennium B.C.
Oak spread north - from Iberia and the Balkans back into post glacial northern Europe.
Again, the Pontic Steppe is Eastern Europe and right next to the Caucasus.
Indo-Europeans could have easily copied and refined the technology. The Sumerians had wagons but not horses which came latter from the steppes.Another significant clue to the identification of the Indo-European home land is provided by the terminology for wheeled transport. There are words for "wheel" (*rotho-), "axle" (*hakhs-), "yoke" (*iak'om) and associated gear. "Horse" is *ekhos and "foal" *pholo. The bronze parts of the chariot and the bronze tools, with which chariots were fashioned from mountain hardwoods, furnish words that embrace the smelting of metals.Petroglyphs, symbols marked on stone, found in the area from the Transcaucasus to upper Mesopotamia between the lakes Van and Urmia are the earliest pictures of horse-drawn chariots.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Protospatha
Bookmarks