Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
The thread title "Language as a Clue to Prehistory" is a fascinating topic. Historic events like imperial conquests by the Romans, Arabs, and Turks are plainly visible in the present-day distribution of languages. BUT some prehistoric events are invisible in the archaeological record and can ONLY be discovered via linguistic evidence. The Bantu and Austronesian expansions are vividly apparent in the languages of sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. The Algonquin language family is best known from encounters along the Atlantic coast by early American settlers (the Powhatan of Virginia and Wampanoag of Massachusetts) but many expert historical linguists agree — though this is still very controversial — that this language family originated far to the West, perhaps near Montana.
The most pondered language grouping of all is the Indo-European language family, which extended in pre-history from Ireland to Siberia and India. The homeland and expansion of the I-E family was one of the great mysteries of the social sciences, and has finally been resolved by careful study of linguistic evidence, assisted by DNA evidence.
Do the details of I-E case markers offer clues to I-E development and expansion? If so, please connect the dots. I don't see it.
The I-E Homeland, and its outward radiation beginning with Anatolian (Hittite) ca 4000 BC is now rather well understood. It is STUNNING how much can be deduced, and how well the archaeological, linguistic, and DNA evidence fit together like a hand fits a glove. The corpse called Amesbury Archer found buried richly at Stonehenge (ca 2370 BC) probably spoke a language ancestral to Celtic; his agnatic ancestry can be traced back to West Central Europe, to the Yamnaya (P-I-E) of East Central Europe, and from there to the Samara culture near the Volga River ca 4400 BC.
The big exception is Germanic — its detailed development is uncertain. I commented on this earlier in the thread, though without any apparent interest from fellow Infidels.
The most pondered language grouping of all is the Indo-European language family, which extended in pre-history from Ireland to Siberia and India. The homeland and expansion of the I-E family was one of the great mysteries of the social sciences, and has finally been resolved by careful study of linguistic evidence, assisted by DNA evidence.
Do the details of I-E case markers offer clues to I-E development and expansion? If so, please connect the dots. I don't see it.
The I-E Homeland, and its outward radiation beginning with Anatolian (Hittite) ca 4000 BC is now rather well understood. It is STUNNING how much can be deduced, and how well the archaeological, linguistic, and DNA evidence fit together like a hand fits a glove. The corpse called Amesbury Archer found buried richly at Stonehenge (ca 2370 BC) probably spoke a language ancestral to Celtic; his agnatic ancestry can be traced back to West Central Europe, to the Yamnaya (P-I-E) of East Central Europe, and from there to the Samara culture near the Volga River ca 4400 BC.
The big exception is Germanic — its detailed development is uncertain. I commented on this earlier in the thread, though without any apparent interest from fellow Infidels.
Development of proto-Germanic language is a mystery
With one exception the relationships — at least in broad brush-stroke form — can be deduced between the early adventures of the P-I-E people and the eventual placement of the subfamilies of Indo-European language. The exception is Germanic.
When farmers arrived, hunter-gatherers were outnumbered and had to adopt farming themselves, flee to the north, or die out. The "shell midden" people along the Atlantic coast with a very productive littoral economy could hold out longest, but they eventually adopted farming also, celebrating this new success by becoming the "Megalithic" people, doing the initial constructions at Stonehenge and erecting le Grand Menhir Brisé in Armorica (Brittany).
Europe's North was the one place where non-farmers held out. Around the shorelines of Denmark, northern Germany, Sweden and Norway, hunter-gatherers practiced sealing and fishing, and were building log-boats before 6000 BC. These ancient people are among the ancestors of the Germanic people.
The Mesolithic Ertebølle culture of Scandinavia gave birth to the Funnelbeaker culture which was unique in several ways. It had little resemblance to the farming cultures of Linear Pottery culture to its south, nor to the Kurgan P-I-E cultures emerging to its east. The slovenly style of Funnelbeaker (aka TRB) settlements betray its origin from hunter-gatherer culture, yet it led the way in some Neolithic developments. The earliest preserved wagon-wheels are found at TRB sites.
TRB eventually came into competition with the Kurgan-derived Globular Amphora and Corded Ware (aka Battle-Axe or Single-Grave) cultures, but I think care should be taken before generalizing about these vast cultural horizons which stretched from the Rhine to the Volga. The Western portion of Corded Ware was sibling to Bell Beaker and might have spoken a language sibling to Italo-Celtic. The eastern part of Corded Ware had R1a haplogroup compared with R1b in the West, and eventually spoke proto-Baltic. Meanwhile Funnelbeaker persisted and competed with Corded Ware for several centuries in Denmark and northern Germany. Conditions would have been ripe for the creation of a creole language, but if such a language survived it was probably re-creolized 1000 years later! Funnelbeaker (TRB) was also in conflict with the Pitted Ware culture to its north, a non-farming culture possibly related to the (Uralic speaking?) Comb Ceramic culture to its east. Although non-farmers, Pitted Ware should not be under-estimated! They were superb hunters, sealers, fishers and sea navigators; had fur-skins and amber to trade for agricultural goods they wanted; and might have been daring raiders and warriors.
It is said that the Nordic Bronze Age began in Denmark or southern Sweden, as a result of a union between the Corded Ware-Battle-axe culture and Pitted Ware. Again there was opportunity for language creolization, or at least the emergence of a strong Pitted Ware substrate in the language that became proto-Germanic.
I detail the above just to argue against a glib equation of proto-Germanic with Corded Ware. The Germanic languages are most divergent from other I-E branches based on grammar, lexicon and phonology, and show evidence of inheritance both from Italo-Celtic and from proto-Baltoslavic. The development of proto-Germanic language is a complicated, largely-unknown story.
Yes, Germanic's sources include both a "core" language (Satem like Balto-Slavic, or para-Satem like Albanian) and a Western Centum language (Italic or Celtic), but there must have been a THIRD source as well. I think the third source was a sea-faring Baltic people, either the Pitted Ware culture or the Pit–Comb Ware culture.
The sea-faring terms Ship, Sail, Sea, Seal, Keel, Eel possibly Ice and perhaps even Boat are all non-IE words found in both West Germanic and North Germanic. The Finnic (or Fennic) language is often associated with these Scandinavian seal-hunters but I don't think any of the eight words just mentioned has a clear Uralic cognate. Although 'Boat' has a possible PIE etymology (*bheid- "to split"), cognates of Boat in Romance languages are considered borrowings from Germanic. (And Irish bád is borrowed from Old English.)
Basic vocabulary words found in both Western and Northern Germanic but not in other I-E languages include finger, toe, neck, bone, wife, oak, berry and even horse.
Ocean-going ships were in use in the Baltic as early as 2500 BC, about the same time as Corded Ware farmers arrived in Sweden. But some fisher-gatherers of Sweden rejected farming and adopted a rich economy on the shores of the Baltic. They could trade furs and amber for agricultural products; or even use their sea-going skills as pirates to raid and steal what they wanted.
The Nordic Bronze Age was centered in Sweden, not Germany or Denmark. I think the "proto-Vikings" — whose existence isn't even hinted at in Barry Cunliffe's otherwise excellent Europe Between the Oceans — gained control during that Age. (Perhaps their sea-faring skills gave them access to the English tin needed for bronze.) At some point they switched to the I-E (Corded Ware) language of those they conquered but they retained some of their old language, calling their king Kuningaz instead of Rēx, and so on.
The origin of the Germanic people and their language is surely a fascinating story but one we'll never be able to reconstruct. Still, I think linguistics may offer some clues.