SV: method of dating RV, III

[N. Ganesan]

Subject:      Re: SV: method of dating RV, III

<<<<<
I fail to see any mention here of the oldest recorded IE language,
Hittite, or of Mycenaean Greek, for that matter, which being both
second millennium languages themselves, and showing differences
between them which amount to several millennia of separation even by
the fastest observed rates of change, completely exclude a second
millennium date for the breakup of PIE.  Especially the gap that
separates Hittite (and to a lesser extent, Tocharian) from the rest
of IE suggests a date which might even go beyond Gimbutas' proposals.
I favour a sixth millennium date.
>>>>>>

In about 30 pages, Drews discusses the Hittites, their language.
He talks about Mycenaean Greek too in a few places.
> From R. Drews, The coming of the Greeks: The Indo-European conquests
in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton UP, 1988:
p. 200:

"A second conclusion on which our alternative picture of 'the IE
invasions' is based has to do with the so-called Hittites. There was
once a consensus among historians that a Hittite nation had invaded
central Anatolia by the beginning of the second millennium. This
Hittite nation, historians supposed, was the first in a series of
 IE nations to have left its distant homeland and to have arrived in the
more-or-less civilized world. Indo-Europeanists, however, have long
known
that the relationship of Hittite (or Proto-Anatolian) to the other
IE languages is unclear: although possibly a sibling to Greek, Sanskrit,
Latin and the other daughter languages of PIE, it is increasingly
 more likely that Proto-Anatolian was an 'aunt' rather than a siser
of the IE languages. In a clear light not only the Hittite invasion
but even the Hittite nation disappears: its existence depended not upon
any evidence, literary or archaeological, but upon a cluster of
presuppositions (the most importatnt being that a Greek nation had come
to
the other side of the Aegean by 1900 B.C.)."

Regards,
N. Ganesan






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