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THE PALEOLITHIC CONTINUITY THEORY AN INTRODUCTION by Mario Alinei - (185 KB) 1
The
two theories on the origins of Indo-Europeans preceding the PCT
1.1
The
traditional Indo-European Calcholithic Invasion Theory
As is known,
until recently the received doctrine for the origins of Indo-Europeans (IE)
in Europe was centered upon the idea - now called the ‘myth’ (Häusler 2003) -
of an Indo-European Invasion in the Copper Age (IV millennium B.C.), by
horse-riding warrior pastoralists. The last and most authoritative version of
this theory was the so called kurgan theory, elaborated by Marija
Gimbutas, according to which the Proto-IE were the warrior pastoralists who
built kurgan, i.e. burial mounds, in the steppe area of Ukraine (e.g.
Gimbutas 1970, 1973, 1977, 1980). From the steppe area, the Proto-IE kurgan
conquerors would have then first invaded By placing the
arrival of the IEs in the IV millennium, and the process of transformation
from Proto-IE to separate language groups in the III, the subsequent process,
by which the separate language groups would evolve into the major attested
languages, will inevitably take place in the II and I millennium that is in
the Bronze and Iron Age. Although most
IE specialists are still reluctant to admit it, this chronology, as well as
the scenario behind it, can now be considered as altogether obsolete. The evidence
collected by archaeology in the last thirty years, in fact, overwhelmingly prove
the absence of any large scale invasion in Europe, and the uninterrupted
continuity of most Copper and Bronze Age cultures of Europe from Neolithic,
and of most Neolithic cultures from Mesolithic and final Paleolithic. Archaeologists
usually do not address linguistic issues. This is probably why, although firm
conclusions about absence of invasions and cultural continuity already began
to appear in the archaeological literature of the Seventies, historical
linguists have continued to assume the traditional theory as an undisputed
truth. 1.2
Renfrew’s
Neolithic Discontinuity Theory
In a book
titled Archaeology and Linguistics. The IE puzzle, published in 1987, the
archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew did not limit himself to collect the
archaeological evidence now available to deliver the last fatal blow to the
traditional theory, but presented a new theory of IE origins, called by its
author the IE Neolithic Dispersal, which is based on the observation that the
only moment in European prehistory which might coincide with a gigantic
change such as the presumed indo-europeanization of Europe is the beginning
of farming in the VII millennium B.C. More over,
since farming originated in the Middle East, and archaeology does detect in
southern Europe a modest migratory contribution from that direction,
associated with the introduction of farming, Renfrew has concluded that these
early farmers were the Proto-Indo-Europeans, responsible for the introduction
of IE in southern and central Europe, and that the subsequent IE dispersal
started from these two areas, along with the dispersal of farming techniques.
And since an intrusive contribution is especially evident in the two earliest
Neolithic cultures of southern Europe, both dated to the VII millennium,
namely the Balkan complex and the Impresso/Cardial Ware in Western and
Central Mediterranean, and to a lesser extent in the Linienbandkeramik (LBK)
culture in Germany and Eastern Europe, dated to the V millennium, these
cultures would represent the first introduction of IE into Europe. The philosophy
behind this theory is thus that the Proto-Indo-Europeans, far from being
warriors who invaded and conquered Renfrew’s book
has unleashed a very lively international debate, which has been constantly
growing, at the same time shifting its focus in response to growing
objections. His theory, which owing to its focus on the Neolithic
discontinuity can be called the Neolithic Discontinuity Theory (NDT), is
undoubtedly superior to the traditional Invasion Theory, as far as it does
eliminate the myth of the PIE Blitzkrieg against the peaceful Old Europeans.
However, for the rest it creates more problems than it solves: (1)
Archaeology proves that most European Neolithic cultures directly continue
earlier Mesolithic cultures, and even in those areas where intrusions are
archaeologically ascertained, the Mesolithic populations were quickly
involved in the acculturation process: there is no real discontinuity between
Mesolithic and Neolithic (e.g. Zvelebil 1986, Zvelebil and Dolukhanov 1991). (2) The two
Southern European areas, where Neolithic cultures do show infiltrations from
the Middle East, are precisely the areas where non-IE linguistic traits are
most evident and important, as every linguist who is familiar with the
linguistic record of ancient (and modern) Italy and Greece will readily admit.
Which points precisely to the contrary of what the NDT implies, namely that
the South of Europe should have received the strongest influence from the PIE
coming from the Middle East. To explain the real linguistic situation, in
fact, the NDT assumption must be simply reversed: the Middle Eastern farmers
introducing Neolithic into Southern Europe were precisely the
non-Indo-European groups responsible for the non-IE element of the area
(Alinei 2000, 2001). (3) As far as
the North and the West of Europe are concerned, the NDT is obliged to assume
that IE ‘arrived’ there long after the first Neolithic cultures. However,
that period is precisely the one in which archaeology detects no trace
whatsoever of discontinuity: there is, for example, absolutely no trace of
the ‘arrival’ of the Celts in Western Europe (which simply means that they
were always there), and as to Germanic people, it is preposterous to think
that the farmers of the LBK, Proto-Germanic according to the NDT, would be
motivated to spread northward to Scandinavia and to Norway, would adopt the
Mesolithic fishing tools and deep-sea fishing techniques and habits of the
rich Mesolithic specialised fishing cultures of that area, without adopting,
however, any part of their fishing terminology, and especially without
adopting any their place names: the whole Scandinavian toponymy is either
Germanic or Uralic! Obviously, the convergence between the continuity of
Northern peoples, fishing cultures and technologies, and the Germanic or
Uralic character of terminologies and place names point to continuity of
language, just as it does in the Uralic area (Alinei 2000). (4) As I have
shown in my book (Alinei 1996, 2000) and in a number of articles (e.g. Alinei
1991g, 1992f, 1997f, 1997g, 1998e, 1998g, 2000c, 2001a, 2001d), there is just
no way to reconcile the semantic history of innumerable IE words, and their
chronological implications, with the NDT scenario. Any thorough and unbiased
analysis of the rich IE record points to a Paleolithic depth for the earliest
layers of the PIE vocabulary, and to a very early, Upper Paleolithic and
Mesolithic linguistic differentiation of Proto-Indo-Europeans. This is the
reason why the IE Neolithic terminology, as now admitted even by traditional
scholars (Villar 1991, 81), is neatly differentiated from group to
group: a fact that clashes against the very idea of the Indo-Europeans as
inventors of farming (idem). 2
An
interdisciplinary survey of converging conclusions on the problem of the
origin of language and languages
Discarding the
two competing theories as inadequate, a really new theory of IE origins ought
to 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, 240 ff). 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».
(Bryan Sykes, 2001, 242). 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. 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 summarised, two more contributions on the solution of the
problem of Indo-European 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
new synthesis: the Paleolithic Continuity Theory on the origin of
Indo-European
On the basis
of these converging conclusions, a Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT)
on the origins of the Indo-Europeans, as well as on language origin and
evolution, has been proposed (Alinei 1996-2000), the main points of which
are: 4.1
Continuity
as the basic working hypothesis on the origins of IE languages
If the
demonstration of continuity, as James Mallory has had to admit, is "the
archaeologists' easiest pursuit” (Mallory 1989, 81)), then it follows: (1) that also
for the question of European origin, the easiest
working hypothesis is the continuity model, and no other alternative; (2) that
consequently the burden of proof now lies on the (Chalcolithic or Neolithic)
invasionist's shoulders, and not on the anti-invasionist's; (3) that as
long as no alternative theory provides irrefutable counter-evidence, the
Paleolithic Continuity can be considered as the winning theory. 4.2
Antiquity
and stability of language and languages, in general
Language and
languages are much more ancient than traditionally thought. Consequently,
also the record of their origins, change and development must be mapped onto
a much longer chronology, instead of being compressed into a few millennia,
as traditionally done, and as the NDT also obliges to do. While traditional
linguistics, by reifying language, had made change into
a sort of biological, organic law of language development, the extraordinary
tempo of it would fit the short chronologies of the recent invasion or of the
earlier Neolithization, the new, much longer chronologies of language origins
and language development impose a reversal of this conception: conservation
is the law of language and languages, and change is the exception, being
caused not by an alleged ‘biological law of language’, but by major external
(ethnic or social) factors, i. e. by language contacts and hybridization, in
concomitance with the major ecological, socio-economic and cultural events
that have shaped each area of the globe (Alinei 1996). 4.3
Antiquity
and periodization of the lexicon of natural languages
An important corollary of
this new conception and new chronology of language origins and development is
that the emerging and formation of the lexicon of all world language phyla
and their groups, including of course Indo-European, should be ‘periodized’
along the entire course of human evolution, and not compressed in the recent
prehistory, as typical of the traditional theory as well as of the NDT. The
linguistic illustration of this principle fills many of the 2000 pages of my
two volumes, and represents the first detailed linguistic analysis of the IE
record in the light of the new chronologies and scenario imposed by
scientific advance. Here are some examples of this lexical periodization
applied to IE: (1) The Proto-IE
lexicon, i.e. the lexicon common to all IE languages, which includes among
other things grammatical words such as personal pronouns, WH- words and the
like, forms by definition its earliest layer. As such it ought to be placed
in the depth of Paleolithic, and be seen as reflecting the awakening and
developing of human conscience and cultural activities of an already
separated and independent language phylum. In fact, the differences in the
lexicon of the grammatical structure shown by most language phyla should
suffice to disqualify as meaningless any research aiming at reconstructing a
universal monogenetic lexicon (cp. e.g. Ruhlen 1994). (2) If IE
words for ‘dying’ (coming from PIE *-mer) belong to the PIE lexicon,
while for ‘burying’ there are different words in most IE languages, this must
be seen as evidence that by the time ritual burying began, in Upper
Paleolithic, IE groups were already differentiated. Similarly, if the name of
several wild animals, among which that of the bear (PIE *rkÞo-s),
belong to the PIE lexicon, this means that these animals belonged to the
cognitive and cultural world of IE pre-religious Paleolithic hunters.
Conversely, the so called ‘noa’ names of the bear (i.e replacing the tabooed
real one) in the Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages, all different
from one another, can only indicate that by the time religious concern for
hunted animals connected with totemism emerged in Upper Paleolithic (along
with the earliest attestations of bear cult), IE languages were already
differentiated (Alinei 1996, 2000, 2003b). (3) Also words
for typical Mesolithic inventions, such ‘bow’, ‘tar’, fishing tools,
carpentry and many others, are different in each IE group, proving that by
Mesolithic time IE languages were already differentiated (idem). (4) The sharp,
and now at last admitted even by traditionalists (Villar 1991),
differentiation of farming terminology in the different IE languages, while
absolutely unexplainable in the context of Renfrew’s NDT, provides yet
another fundamental proof that the differentiation of IE languages goes back
to remote prehistory. 4.4
Archaeological
frontiers coincide with linguistic frontiers
(i) Depending
on their chronological depth, importance and stability, these cultural
frontiers can now be seen as corresponding to linguistic-family frontiers, to
linguistic-group frontiers, to dialect frontiers. (ii) The
various geographical sub-areas indicated by the columns of an archaeological
chart are not chosen subjectively, but their delimitation is self-generated,
i.e. ‘governed’ by the very specific and exclusive sequence of cultural
development, which shapes –as it were- each sub-area, identifying and
distinguishing it from the others. (iii) Each
cultural sequence, corresponding to a given geographical sub-area, has thus a
very distinct and strong cultural identity, which could easily be
connected, depending on the period and the area involved, with a language
family, a language group, or a dialect group. If, for example, the Neolithic
Cardial Ware can be seen as corresponding to an already differentiated Italid
group, each of its later sub-areas can be interpreted as representing a kind
of ‘dialect’ differentiation from the same common ‘language’. The same can be
said for the LBK in Germany, and for similar large cultural units in other
areas. (iv) As far as
Europe is concerned, the picture revealed by these charts, already evident as
soon as the archaeological record permits adequate geographical mapping of
cultures (i.e. in the late Paleolithic and Mesolithic), is one of the
formation of large ethnolinguistic cultural ‘orbits’. This picture continues
also in the early Neolithic, until, beginning in the course of Neolithic, and
steadily increasing in the Metal Ages, a fragmentation of each original
‘orbit’ takes place. Some periods of frontier shifting and transitional
discontinuity, which are caused by the transitory expansion of elite groups
in the late Metal Ages, usually come to an end in subsequent developments,
with the reappearing of the previous frontiers. All of this
seems to correspond quite closely with what we should expect if one or more
populations speaking one and the same language –such as the
Proto-Indo-Europeans or the Proto-Uralic people- had first spread to Europe
from Africa, and then had broken up into different groups (cultural
‘orbits’), as a result of their exposure first to different ecological
niches, different social networks and different neighbors, then to waves of
intrusive immigrants introducing agriculture and stock-raising in Neolithic,
and later, in the Metal Ages, when stratified societies develop, to waves of
invading elites of akin or distant groups, speaking cognate or foreign
languages. As examples
(for a detailed illustration see Alinei 2000a, 2001b, 2002, 2003b, fc). I
will briefly mention here: (I) the linguistic-phylum frontier between Uralic
and IE in the Baltic area coincides with the extremely stable Latvian
frontier separating, from Mesolithic to Chalcolithic, the Kunda, Narva,
Pit-and-Comb Ware cultures of the Uralic-speaking
area in the North, from the Nemunas 1, Nemunas 2, Globular Amphora, Corded
Ware/Boat Axes and Bay Coast cultures of the IE, Baltic-speaking area in the South (1). (II) The language frontier between French and German
in Alsace coincides with the stable archaeological frontier separating the
Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures of Chassey, Michelsberg, SOM,
Vienne-Charente, etc. of the Celtic (now French-speaking) area, from those of
the LBK, SBK, Hinkelstein, Grossgartach, Rössen cultures etc., of the now
German-speaking area. (III) The
complex of language and dialect frontiers in
the Western Alps, respectively between German and Neo-Latin in Switzerland,
between Franco-Provençal and oïl in Switzerland, between
Franco-Provençal and Occitan in France and Italy, and Gallo-Italic in Italy,
coincide with the frontiers separating, in the different Alpine areas, the
Cardial/Impresso-derived cultures of the Italid-speaking area from the
LBK-derived cultures in Germanic Switzerland. More precisely: on the one hand
Cortaillod corresponds closely to the Franco-Provençal dialects, Chassey to
Occitan, Lagozza to Gallo-Italic dialects; on the other Pfyn and Rössen
corresponds with the Alemannic, Swiss-German dialect area. More over, on the
Ligurian coast and the Piedmont Alps, the frontier between Occitan and
Gallo-Italic dialects corresponds to the prehistoric frontier between Chassey
and the VBQ culture of the Po Valley. (IV) On the
steppes of Eastern Europe, a conspicuous and well-known
Neolithic-Chalcolithic frontier separates the farming cultures of Bug-Dnestr,
Tripolye AI, Tripolye AII, Gorodsk-Usatovo, Corded Ware and Globular Amphora
in Ukraine, from the pastoral, horse-raising and horse-riding cultures of Sursk-Dnepr,
Dnepr-Donec, Seredny Stog/Chvalynsk, Yamna (kurgan!) and Catacombs, in
the Pontic steppes: this is the frontier that moved Marija Gimbutas to
envisage the epochal clash between the peaceful autochthonous non-IE farmers
of the “Old Europe”, and the warlike intrusive IE who submerged them. In the
light of the PCT and of the available linguistic evidence, instead, this
frontier corresponds to an earlier linguistic
phylum frontier between an already separated and flourishing eastern
Slavic population of farmers to the West, and warlike Turkic pastoral nomadic
groups to the East, which would be responsible, among other things, of the
two innovations of horse raising and horse-riding.
Linguistically, the new interpretation has the advantage of explaining (A)
the antiquity and the quantity of Turkic loanwords precisely for horse terminology in both branches of Samoyed, in
the Ugric languages, as well as in Slavic languages, and (B), more generally,
the quantity of Turkic agro-pastoral terms in South-Eastern European
languages, including Hungarian, which would have been brought into its
present area precisely by the kurgan culture (Alinei 2003a). Interestingly,
the uninterrupted continuity of Altaic steppe cultures, from Chalcolithic to
the Middle Ages, can be symbolized precisely by the kurgan themselves:
for on the one hand, the custom of raising kurgans on burial sites has
always been one of the most characteristic features of Altaic steppe nomadic
populations, from their first historical appearance to the late Middle Ages.
On the other, the Russian word kurgan itself is not of Russian, or
Slavic, or IE, origin, but a Turkic loanword, with a very wide diffusion area
in Southern Europe, which closely corresponds to the spread of the kurgan
culture (Alinei 2000, 2003). Notice that
this phylum frontier between IE (Slavic) and Turkic in the course of history
has been pushed to the East, leaving however Turkic minorities, as well as
innumerable Turkic place names and other linguistic traces behind. 4.5
The
main lines of the PCT historical recnstruction
Summarizing,
the fundamental lines of the PCT 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. (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. 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 2000, see also 1991, 1997cd,
1998b, 1998c, 2000c, 2001b, 2001c), and for the speakers of which the Latin
of Rome must have been an (easy to learn) superstrate. 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 2000, fc.b) 4.6
A
short history of the PCT
In the Nineties, three archaeologists and three
linguists, all independently from one another, presented a new theory of IE
origins, which is similar to the Uralic continuity, in that it claims
uninterrupted continuity from Paleolithic also for IE people and languages.
The three archaologists and prehistorians are the American Homer L. Thomas
(Thomas 1991), the Belgian Marcel Otte (Otte 1994, 1995), one of the world
major specialists on Middle and Upper Paleolithic, and the German Alexander
Häusler, a specialist in the prehistory of Central Europe (Häusler 1996,
1998, 2003). The linguists are, besides myself (Alinei 1996, 2000), Gabriele
Costa (Costa 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002), and Cicerone Poghirc (Poghirc 1992).
Two more linguists are now working on the same line (Ballester 2000a, 2000b,
2001, Cavazza 2001), and more have expressed their general assent (Benozzo
2002, Contini 2000, Le Du 2003, Simoni Aurembou 2002). It is
therefore important to note that this theory, compared to the NDT, is the
only one which has been advanced not only by archaeologists, but also by
professional linguists, and therefore has been carefully checked as to its
linguistic coherence, rigor and, especially, productivity. NOTE (1) Only at the end of Neolithic, the non-Uralic
Bay Coast culture spreads to Estonia, but only to be soon reabsorbed by the
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