Paired Horse and PIE breakup

[Paul Kekai Manansala]

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>
>
> As I said, there is pretty good evidence to link Etruscan (and
> therefore Lemnian) to IE, especially to Anatolian/Hittite, consistent
> with 7000 BC as an approximate date of separation.

But I think most linguists do not see any relationship between Etruscan
and IE.

>The linguistic
> vs. geographical terminology is a little confusing of course.  In my
> map for, say, 4000 BC, the "Etruscoids" are in Greece and Anatolia,
> possibly also in the Balkans, the "Hittite/Anatolians" are in the
> Balkans or the Tripolye area (Romania/W.Ukraine), and the "Greeks"
> are in the Ukraine.  It would be some time before everyone was in
> their proper place (3000 ~ 2500 BC or so for Hittite and Greek, 1200
> BC for Etruscan).
>
> >I wonder also how you explain to
> >yourself the fact that agriculture spread also around the Mediterranean
> >coast from Turkey and Greece as far as Spain and then northwards to France
> >and Britain. Do you maintain that it was by speakers of IE?
>

Many people explain the spread of agriculture through demic diffusion
originating somewhere in Syro-Palestine or Mesopotamia. I'm sure if you
can put a language tag, but the thrust seems more toward peoples
like the Etruscans, Basques, Picts, etc.  That is, people before IE
migrations.

> No, that is one of Renfrew's more silly theories.  There is
> sufficient evidence in SW Europe for non-IE speakers, especially in
> Spain with Iberian, Tartessian? and Basque.  Italy and France (apart
> from Basque-speaking Aquitania) are less clear (Etruscan being a
> recent arrival from the Aegean, not a pre-IE survival), but we have
> the Novilara stela from E.Italy in a non-IE, non-Etruscan language,
> and the toponymic evidence for non-Celtic elements in Ligurian.
> Which is another thing that is absent in the area from the Low
> Countries through Germany to Poland: traces of the pre-IE
> inhabitants.  If the LBK/TRB (5500-3000 BC) people were not IE, we
> would expect to find something.
>

Well, the substratum could come from extinct languages that, unlike
Etruscan, were not literate. Or they were literate and have not left
traces that have been found. I don't think anyone would suggest that
Germanic and Slavic are "pure" languages free of any non-IE influence.
Certainly there are at least some Finno-Ugrian influences even in the
oldest examples of these languages.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manasala