I'll do a short update on linguistics next week.
Glad you like it!
The Book of the Holy Mountain - An Alternate Seminar in Alternate Pre- and Ancient History
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
Glad you like it!
I wasn't quite sure as it used a capital fita rather than theta
.A few authorial contemplations on regions not discussed in myth and seminar, but heavily affected by the divergences of this timeline.
The time frame is 3500-2600 BCE – in other words, the period in which IOTL the Yamnaya horizon expanded (or should I say exploded?) across Eurasia.
Two main keywords describe the divergences in many (but not all) regions globally: continuity and homogeneity – not in comparison to earlier times, no, in comparison to them, these times are turbulent transformations and fragmented in nature, but in comparison to OTL, this clearly describes the ATL trend of divergence from OTL.
This is most evident in the Eastern half of the huge, immensely long latitudinal band of heavy butterfly infestation, which, the farther we move to the East, the more it coincides with the areas which IOTL were affected by the Afanasievo migrations and later the Yamnaya expansion.
IOTL, the entire Kazakh and Baraba steppes and the Altai region had been populated, before the 38th century BCE, by semi-nomadic / semi-sedentary groups who lived around rivers and lakes, where they fished, but didn’t practice any agriculture, and which they periodically left to follow the migratory patterns of animals which they hunted. (Basically what people in the Pontic-Caspian steppe had done, too, before contact with Starčevo-Criş / Cucuteni-Tripolye had turned them into pastoralists over the course of the last centuries of the 6th millennium BCE, or in the case of the Easternmost pastoralist cultures along the Volga, in the early 5th millennium BCE.)
Compared to later times IOTL, when people on the steppe corridor lived radically different lives from their Northern forest-dwelling and their Southern desert-crossing neighbors, their cultures were a lot more similar to all these. Certainly, they hunted different animals (horses and saiga antilopes in the steppe, as compared to moose and aurochs in the Northern woodlands), they built their dug-in dwellings with different material (wood in the North, leather in the South) and wore different clothes. But they were all comparatively small groups of foragers who had almost settled down in permanent bases of operation, and they even decorated their pottery in much the same ways: by applying pressure with bone combs on the clay.
IOTL, all this changed radically when horse-domesticating people from the Dnieper, Don, and Volga began first to migrate across their lands and settle in the Altai and in the Minusinsk Hollow on the Upper Yenissey, then, much later, established themselves and their nomadic pastoralist ways there. ITTL, neither the Afanasievo, nor the Yamnaya culture occur, and as a consequence, neither do the Botai culture and the Glazkovo culture.
So, what takes their place?
Until 2600 BCE, I think it’s not much of a stretch to postulate that we’d see cultures in a continuous relation to those like the Yekaterininka culture (unfortunately only on German Wikipedia) in this region, and its Northern and Southern neighbors, who IOTL became increasingly influenced by the Yamnaya expansion, to show Pit Comb Ware traits across the entire Northern forest zone, while in the South I’d expect, for example, the Kelteminar culture to continue and develop a lot more continuous for a much longer time.
What does that mean, beyond archaeological shorthand? It means that, East of the Ural Mountains, in the Eurasian steppe West of the Dzungarian Gates, where horses have become extinct before 3500 BCE ITTL, things continue a lot less changed. People will fish, people will hunt, and when there are no longer any meaty horses around, they’ll probably target the next best group (Red List alert for saigas….). They won’t be washed over by influences from the West Yamnaya-style – instead, there will be autochtonous innovations (better dog breeds, better bows and arrowheads, maybe flat-bottomed pots) and in some limited areas, external influences, too – mostly in the “West of the East”, i.e. in relative proximity to the Caspian Sea, where both influences from the South, from what we call IOTL the Iranian plateau – at this point, a hotbed of civilizational developments: Jiroft! Teppe Sialk! – and from the West, from the Pontic-Caspian space (see below) seep in. Without a horse culture, their dissemination will be severely spatially limited and slow, though. So, their lifestyle will look increasingly archaic when compared to the rest of the world.
A less extreme, yet still marked example of greater continuity and less heterogeneity compared to OTL is Central Europe. In the time frame 3500-2800 BCE, i.e. after Lengyel but before Corded Ware, OTL’s Central Europe is a stunningly heterogeneous patchwork of cultures: Baden, Wartberg, Walternienburg-Bernburg, Havel, Horgen, Cham, Globular Amphora… They differ in so many ways from each other, even locally contingent ones: some are depositing their dead in stone chambers, others in holes, others burn them; some with and some without burial gifts; some have copper, others don’t; their ceramics differ massively, and so do their dwellings (with regards to geography, architecture, building materials etc.). Little of that has anything to do with natural geographical determinants, for earlier (e.g. LBK) or later (e.g. Corded Ware) horizons were much more uniform over much larger parts of the very same territory. Where does this heterogeneity come from?
I believe it boils down to two interrelated reasons: the occasional Westward movement of groups influenced by the Indo-Europeanisation and horse adaptation on the Danube, and the introduction of society-changing innovations like the horse, the wheel, everything related to the Secondary Products Revolution, and improving metallurgy.
ITTL, the latter factor will still make itself felt, but in a different way, because the former is missing. In contrast to highly mobile horse-based groups who have made the Pannonian plains into a sort of Western outpost loosely connected with their steppe-centered world, the Amaloxians, who are going to do the “influence from the East” part in this timeline, are comparatively slow and limited in overland range.
So, what still affects Central Europe around this time is a slow dissemination of wheeled vehicles, which creeps Westwards in the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BCE, an integration of the Eastern fringe into the economic system dominated by Amaloxia (e.g. tin exports, bronze imports), possibly Amaloxian settlers in that fringe, too, and increased importance of wool, dairy products etc., along with the scattering of settlements and the “conquest” of more marginal lands as herding increases its relative importance, even though agriculture, fishing and hunting are going to remain as predominant here as IOTL, or even more so. Also, cultural concepts are going to seep in from the Amaloxian East: statehood, female-centered theocracy, writing… While the socio-economic conditions in comparatively sparsely populated Central Europe are not conducive to a wholesale adoption of any of these feature, they’re still likely to produce reactions. And such reactions are rarely purely rejective or assimilative, and most of the time a mix of both, with differing emphases. Both developments are probable to occur: a tendentially adversive group may hold on to male-centered concepts, but these are likely to transform from acephalous patrilinear societies into cultures with warrior chiefs, for example – and the latter are certainly going to cloak themselves with religious roles, not just because that’s the mindset of the time, but also because the Amaloxians are doing the same. If you’re a copper-, brass- and later bronze-rejecting culture, which at first means your leaders won’t let the Amaloxians buy their loyalty with gifts, but later means a lot more, you’ll still have to adapt at least your weaponry to be able to compete with neighbours whom the Amaloxians outfit with brass, then bronze long-sickles.
Some innovations may seep in in less polarizing (e.g. the introduction of Eastern Mediterranean fruits like cherries or cereal crops like new types of wheat) and maybe even more superficial ways – chiefly among them writing. Central Europe mostly isn’t ready to develop full-fledged sign systems of their own yet which would be variations of the Amaloxian one – but it might enter the stage of proto-writing around this time, with both Amaloxian signs being understood and used by a very small group of people doing trade with the Amaloxians, mostly in the East and along the Danube, and maybe a few altered signs turning up in religious contexts of other groups. I can well imagine the stone chambers and other megalithic monuments of this time being increasingly adorned, in some places, with enigmatic, mysterious signs which bear remote resemblance to Old Amaloxian logographemes but which TTL’s palaeolinguists are yet unable to decipher.
So, while major transformations AND differential and polarizing developments in reaction to Amaloxian influences are still likely, that doesn’t mean it’s going to result in the same type of checkerboard that OTL was. Also, Amaloxian influences are not the only ones affecting Central Europe around this time. This is also a period of massive territorial expansion of megalith construction. The reasons (ideology…) behind megaliths are still mostly unknown to us, so my choice to define their culture as emphatically community-oriented and ancestor-worshipping, with males dominating as warriors, is certainly putative and controversial. But whatever they were, they were an expanding horizon for sure; something about it was highly attractive.
If, as I said, Eastern/Danubian influence is at once highly asymmetrical and comparatively slower than IOTL, then I believe it makes sense to postulate the emergence of only three major cultural horizons in Central Europe:
So what about this Ɵinu? Prof Hadjeamin has so far only mentioned him as a sign of increased organization in the rest of Tanaya. He’s a cautious scholar here. What I wanted this character to open up is the potential / the question of what happens when B2 allies with C: I’ve put Central Europe on a collision course between an Eastward-expanding megalithic horizon – which is still a lot more fragmented, heterogeneous and less organized – and a Westward expanding Amaloxian sphere of influence.
Finally, let’s tackle the proper Pontic-Caspian steppe, where all the divergence began. The homeland of Proto-Indo-European speaker, ITTL like IOTL. ITTL, I’ve already said that they’re going to differentiate into a Western and an Eastern branch around this time.
What I haven’t said is how f***ed these guys really are without horses and with a hostile civilsed neighbor like the Amaloxians at their doorstep. They adopted pastoralism with the cattle/sheep/goat kit (pigs weren’t much good without agriculture in the steppe from the beginning) between 5400-5200 BCE in the West (and until 4750 BCE farther East), i.e. the same kit as OTL only without horses. Two times already until 2600 BCE, the climate grows colder and more arid yet: once around 4250 BCE, and once around 3250 BCE. Each time, the steppe becomes a worse place for pastoralists without horses – and in 3250 BCE in contrast to OTL also without wheels yet. (The steppe has also become a worse place for agriculturalists, too – which is why TTL’s Amaloxian cultures and states have quietly abandoned all lands East of the Dniester without further mention. It’s land cursed by Apašuň’s and Akšiwe’s absence, land barely fit for the crazy sky-worshipping Dyuh, don’t mention it.)
With one hostile neighbor (in the West, on the Danube) and another neighbor coming later to the club of the civilized than IOTL (the Maykop culture, probably Northwest Caucasian-speaking wine-growers and terrace-builders) because of the absence of horses which shorten the distances across the Caucasus to the fountains of technological innovation in Mesopotamia, they also stand little chance to face these challenges by improving what they’ve got. Breeding sheep for longer and more useful hair is probably still going to happen – and help everyone else a great deal, too. But other than that, I doubt that the Pontic-Caspian steppe of this timeline is going to be anything other than a rather miserable dry backwater.
So, before around 3000 BCE, the only thing we can expect coming from there is people trying to get out.
The Western branch, those people who were closest to the Amaloxians and pushed off by them, moved Westward along the Pripyat marches and jumping Westward from one river/brook of the Carpathians’ Northern piedmont (a region OTL-historically referred to as Galicia-Wolhynia) to the next, will run into the alt-Funnelbeaker guys sooner or later. A few people are going to die, and a lot of people will have to make choices they don’t like, but sooner or later, the Western branch of the Indo-Europeans are going to start chopping down trees, sowing emmer, barley, einkorn, lentils, and peas, and earning their hot cereal mash by the sweat of their brow, like all their neighbors. After all, there is no universal law stating that early Indo-European speakers must remain predominantly pastoralists – they were IOTL because it was a successful prestigious model, but ITTL their model sucks in this region and time, and some of them are going to leave it behind. When they do, it’ll be just a matter of time until they also take over other cultural attributes and maybe even the language of their alt-Funnelbeaker neighbors, which is probably Very Old European (to differentiate it from what we tend to call Old European, like the Danubian languages, and which is derived from a wave of immigration from Anatolia in the 8th and 7th millennium BCE) and bears resemblance with no language that we know. By 2600 BCE, such a language change will not have happened yet, though.
The Eastern branch, from the Crimea to the alt-Maykop and upriver on the Dnieper and Don, are probably periodically haunting the Northern piedmont of the Caucasus and not faring any better – until roughly around 3000 BCE. By this time, two important things happen: they will have adopted the innovation of the wheel, and they come into contact with a new colony of sedentary agriculturalists of the especially commercially-minded type (Tikhwiz!), at exactly a time when they have something to offer (wool in great quantities). As the last two updates already hinted at, I think this is the time when things get moving in the Pontic-Caspian steppe again. They won’t necessarily start writing or worship a mother goddess. But wheeled vehicles facilitate transhumance and migration a lot, and massive exposition to metallurgy may, if it hits someone with knowledge about the ores of the Urals, lead to an adoption of metallurgy on their part, too – a lot later than IOTL, but at least it does start moving. And, as comparatively friendly relations may blossom at least temporarily here, the appearance of yet more little towns practicing agriculture in the valleys of the Dnieper and the Don and in the Maeotian swamps and maybe even along the Volga (and if metal is used, even farther up North-East) is not excluded. That is – until 2600 BCE, when the first event descried in the next regular update (beside another authorial one concerning linguistic questions) is going to happen…
A question I am currently massively pondering is to what extent the events of this timeline so far would butterfly the Kura-Araxes migrations across the Southern Caucasus, or divert them. I would be really grateful if anyone could provide me with some ideas and input here.
Any other feedback is very welcome, too, of course!
The time frame is 3500-2600 BCE – in other words, the period in which IOTL the Yamnaya horizon expanded (or should I say exploded?) across Eurasia.
Two main keywords describe the divergences in many (but not all) regions globally: continuity and homogeneity – not in comparison to earlier times, no, in comparison to them, these times are turbulent transformations and fragmented in nature, but in comparison to OTL, this clearly describes the ATL trend of divergence from OTL.
This is most evident in the Eastern half of the huge, immensely long latitudinal band of heavy butterfly infestation, which, the farther we move to the East, the more it coincides with the areas which IOTL were affected by the Afanasievo migrations and later the Yamnaya expansion.
IOTL, the entire Kazakh and Baraba steppes and the Altai region had been populated, before the 38th century BCE, by semi-nomadic / semi-sedentary groups who lived around rivers and lakes, where they fished, but didn’t practice any agriculture, and which they periodically left to follow the migratory patterns of animals which they hunted. (Basically what people in the Pontic-Caspian steppe had done, too, before contact with Starčevo-Criş / Cucuteni-Tripolye had turned them into pastoralists over the course of the last centuries of the 6th millennium BCE, or in the case of the Easternmost pastoralist cultures along the Volga, in the early 5th millennium BCE.)
Compared to later times IOTL, when people on the steppe corridor lived radically different lives from their Northern forest-dwelling and their Southern desert-crossing neighbors, their cultures were a lot more similar to all these. Certainly, they hunted different animals (horses and saiga antilopes in the steppe, as compared to moose and aurochs in the Northern woodlands), they built their dug-in dwellings with different material (wood in the North, leather in the South) and wore different clothes. But they were all comparatively small groups of foragers who had almost settled down in permanent bases of operation, and they even decorated their pottery in much the same ways: by applying pressure with bone combs on the clay.
IOTL, all this changed radically when horse-domesticating people from the Dnieper, Don, and Volga began first to migrate across their lands and settle in the Altai and in the Minusinsk Hollow on the Upper Yenissey, then, much later, established themselves and their nomadic pastoralist ways there. ITTL, neither the Afanasievo, nor the Yamnaya culture occur, and as a consequence, neither do the Botai culture and the Glazkovo culture.
So, what takes their place?
Until 2600 BCE, I think it’s not much of a stretch to postulate that we’d see cultures in a continuous relation to those like the Yekaterininka culture (unfortunately only on German Wikipedia) in this region, and its Northern and Southern neighbors, who IOTL became increasingly influenced by the Yamnaya expansion, to show Pit Comb Ware traits across the entire Northern forest zone, while in the South I’d expect, for example, the Kelteminar culture to continue and develop a lot more continuous for a much longer time.
What does that mean, beyond archaeological shorthand? It means that, East of the Ural Mountains, in the Eurasian steppe West of the Dzungarian Gates, where horses have become extinct before 3500 BCE ITTL, things continue a lot less changed. People will fish, people will hunt, and when there are no longer any meaty horses around, they’ll probably target the next best group (Red List alert for saigas….). They won’t be washed over by influences from the West Yamnaya-style – instead, there will be autochtonous innovations (better dog breeds, better bows and arrowheads, maybe flat-bottomed pots) and in some limited areas, external influences, too – mostly in the “West of the East”, i.e. in relative proximity to the Caspian Sea, where both influences from the South, from what we call IOTL the Iranian plateau – at this point, a hotbed of civilizational developments: Jiroft! Teppe Sialk! – and from the West, from the Pontic-Caspian space (see below) seep in. Without a horse culture, their dissemination will be severely spatially limited and slow, though. So, their lifestyle will look increasingly archaic when compared to the rest of the world.
A less extreme, yet still marked example of greater continuity and less heterogeneity compared to OTL is Central Europe. In the time frame 3500-2800 BCE, i.e. after Lengyel but before Corded Ware, OTL’s Central Europe is a stunningly heterogeneous patchwork of cultures: Baden, Wartberg, Walternienburg-Bernburg, Havel, Horgen, Cham, Globular Amphora… They differ in so many ways from each other, even locally contingent ones: some are depositing their dead in stone chambers, others in holes, others burn them; some with and some without burial gifts; some have copper, others don’t; their ceramics differ massively, and so do their dwellings (with regards to geography, architecture, building materials etc.). Little of that has anything to do with natural geographical determinants, for earlier (e.g. LBK) or later (e.g. Corded Ware) horizons were much more uniform over much larger parts of the very same territory. Where does this heterogeneity come from?
I believe it boils down to two interrelated reasons: the occasional Westward movement of groups influenced by the Indo-Europeanisation and horse adaptation on the Danube, and the introduction of society-changing innovations like the horse, the wheel, everything related to the Secondary Products Revolution, and improving metallurgy.
ITTL, the latter factor will still make itself felt, but in a different way, because the former is missing. In contrast to highly mobile horse-based groups who have made the Pannonian plains into a sort of Western outpost loosely connected with their steppe-centered world, the Amaloxians, who are going to do the “influence from the East” part in this timeline, are comparatively slow and limited in overland range.
So, what still affects Central Europe around this time is a slow dissemination of wheeled vehicles, which creeps Westwards in the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BCE, an integration of the Eastern fringe into the economic system dominated by Amaloxia (e.g. tin exports, bronze imports), possibly Amaloxian settlers in that fringe, too, and increased importance of wool, dairy products etc., along with the scattering of settlements and the “conquest” of more marginal lands as herding increases its relative importance, even though agriculture, fishing and hunting are going to remain as predominant here as IOTL, or even more so. Also, cultural concepts are going to seep in from the Amaloxian East: statehood, female-centered theocracy, writing… While the socio-economic conditions in comparatively sparsely populated Central Europe are not conducive to a wholesale adoption of any of these feature, they’re still likely to produce reactions. And such reactions are rarely purely rejective or assimilative, and most of the time a mix of both, with differing emphases. Both developments are probable to occur: a tendentially adversive group may hold on to male-centered concepts, but these are likely to transform from acephalous patrilinear societies into cultures with warrior chiefs, for example – and the latter are certainly going to cloak themselves with religious roles, not just because that’s the mindset of the time, but also because the Amaloxians are doing the same. If you’re a copper-, brass- and later bronze-rejecting culture, which at first means your leaders won’t let the Amaloxians buy their loyalty with gifts, but later means a lot more, you’ll still have to adapt at least your weaponry to be able to compete with neighbours whom the Amaloxians outfit with brass, then bronze long-sickles.
Some innovations may seep in in less polarizing (e.g. the introduction of Eastern Mediterranean fruits like cherries or cereal crops like new types of wheat) and maybe even more superficial ways – chiefly among them writing. Central Europe mostly isn’t ready to develop full-fledged sign systems of their own yet which would be variations of the Amaloxian one – but it might enter the stage of proto-writing around this time, with both Amaloxian signs being understood and used by a very small group of people doing trade with the Amaloxians, mostly in the East and along the Danube, and maybe a few altered signs turning up in religious contexts of other groups. I can well imagine the stone chambers and other megalithic monuments of this time being increasingly adorned, in some places, with enigmatic, mysterious signs which bear remote resemblance to Old Amaloxian logographemes but which TTL’s palaeolinguists are yet unable to decipher.
So, while major transformations AND differential and polarizing developments in reaction to Amaloxian influences are still likely, that doesn’t mean it’s going to result in the same type of checkerboard that OTL was. Also, Amaloxian influences are not the only ones affecting Central Europe around this time. This is also a period of massive territorial expansion of megalith construction. The reasons (ideology…) behind megaliths are still mostly unknown to us, so my choice to define their culture as emphatically community-oriented and ancestor-worshipping, with males dominating as warriors, is certainly putative and controversial. But whatever they were, they were an expanding horizon for sure; something about it was highly attractive.
If, as I said, Eastern/Danubian influence is at once highly asymmetrical and comparatively slower than IOTL, then I believe it makes sense to postulate the emergence of only three major cultural horizons in Central Europe:
- one in the North (A), which is similar to OTL’s Funnelbeaker, but stretches slightly farther Southward in the absence of newly arrived alien groups in the Walternienburg-Bernburg and the Globular Amphora territory, and shows much greater megalith-isation tendencies over time – this one is likely the one which, at its Eastern fringe, comes into contact with Western Indo-European speakers (see below), causing, via a transitional period in which agriculture is cautiously adopted, the latter's absorption into the wider Tanayan world;
- a split one in the South-East, as a follower of alt-Lengyel, where two groups live together in the same area: one which shows clear signs of Amaloxianisation (B1), and another one which shows signs of rejection of said trend (B2);
- and one in the South-West (C), which shares OTL Wartburg’s preference for stone chamber burials, but doesn’t necessarily feature so many settlements on elevated, fortifiable positions, instead being considered one and the same with more Westerly groups like OTL’s Seine-Oise-Marne and Horgen.
So what about this Ɵinu? Prof Hadjeamin has so far only mentioned him as a sign of increased organization in the rest of Tanaya. He’s a cautious scholar here. What I wanted this character to open up is the potential / the question of what happens when B2 allies with C: I’ve put Central Europe on a collision course between an Eastward-expanding megalithic horizon – which is still a lot more fragmented, heterogeneous and less organized – and a Westward expanding Amaloxian sphere of influence.
Finally, let’s tackle the proper Pontic-Caspian steppe, where all the divergence began. The homeland of Proto-Indo-European speaker, ITTL like IOTL. ITTL, I’ve already said that they’re going to differentiate into a Western and an Eastern branch around this time.
What I haven’t said is how f***ed these guys really are without horses and with a hostile civilsed neighbor like the Amaloxians at their doorstep. They adopted pastoralism with the cattle/sheep/goat kit (pigs weren’t much good without agriculture in the steppe from the beginning) between 5400-5200 BCE in the West (and until 4750 BCE farther East), i.e. the same kit as OTL only without horses. Two times already until 2600 BCE, the climate grows colder and more arid yet: once around 4250 BCE, and once around 3250 BCE. Each time, the steppe becomes a worse place for pastoralists without horses – and in 3250 BCE in contrast to OTL also without wheels yet. (The steppe has also become a worse place for agriculturalists, too – which is why TTL’s Amaloxian cultures and states have quietly abandoned all lands East of the Dniester without further mention. It’s land cursed by Apašuň’s and Akšiwe’s absence, land barely fit for the crazy sky-worshipping Dyuh, don’t mention it.)
With one hostile neighbor (in the West, on the Danube) and another neighbor coming later to the club of the civilized than IOTL (the Maykop culture, probably Northwest Caucasian-speaking wine-growers and terrace-builders) because of the absence of horses which shorten the distances across the Caucasus to the fountains of technological innovation in Mesopotamia, they also stand little chance to face these challenges by improving what they’ve got. Breeding sheep for longer and more useful hair is probably still going to happen – and help everyone else a great deal, too. But other than that, I doubt that the Pontic-Caspian steppe of this timeline is going to be anything other than a rather miserable dry backwater.
So, before around 3000 BCE, the only thing we can expect coming from there is people trying to get out.
The Western branch, those people who were closest to the Amaloxians and pushed off by them, moved Westward along the Pripyat marches and jumping Westward from one river/brook of the Carpathians’ Northern piedmont (a region OTL-historically referred to as Galicia-Wolhynia) to the next, will run into the alt-Funnelbeaker guys sooner or later. A few people are going to die, and a lot of people will have to make choices they don’t like, but sooner or later, the Western branch of the Indo-Europeans are going to start chopping down trees, sowing emmer, barley, einkorn, lentils, and peas, and earning their hot cereal mash by the sweat of their brow, like all their neighbors. After all, there is no universal law stating that early Indo-European speakers must remain predominantly pastoralists – they were IOTL because it was a successful prestigious model, but ITTL their model sucks in this region and time, and some of them are going to leave it behind. When they do, it’ll be just a matter of time until they also take over other cultural attributes and maybe even the language of their alt-Funnelbeaker neighbors, which is probably Very Old European (to differentiate it from what we tend to call Old European, like the Danubian languages, and which is derived from a wave of immigration from Anatolia in the 8th and 7th millennium BCE) and bears resemblance with no language that we know. By 2600 BCE, such a language change will not have happened yet, though.
The Eastern branch, from the Crimea to the alt-Maykop and upriver on the Dnieper and Don, are probably periodically haunting the Northern piedmont of the Caucasus and not faring any better – until roughly around 3000 BCE. By this time, two important things happen: they will have adopted the innovation of the wheel, and they come into contact with a new colony of sedentary agriculturalists of the especially commercially-minded type (Tikhwiz!), at exactly a time when they have something to offer (wool in great quantities). As the last two updates already hinted at, I think this is the time when things get moving in the Pontic-Caspian steppe again. They won’t necessarily start writing or worship a mother goddess. But wheeled vehicles facilitate transhumance and migration a lot, and massive exposition to metallurgy may, if it hits someone with knowledge about the ores of the Urals, lead to an adoption of metallurgy on their part, too – a lot later than IOTL, but at least it does start moving. And, as comparatively friendly relations may blossom at least temporarily here, the appearance of yet more little towns practicing agriculture in the valleys of the Dnieper and the Don and in the Maeotian swamps and maybe even along the Volga (and if metal is used, even farther up North-East) is not excluded. That is – until 2600 BCE, when the first event descried in the next regular update (beside another authorial one concerning linguistic questions) is going to happen…
A question I am currently massively pondering is to what extent the events of this timeline so far would butterfly the Kura-Araxes migrations across the Southern Caucasus, or divert them. I would be really grateful if anyone could provide me with some ideas and input here.
Any other feedback is very welcome, too, of course!
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You mean 2600 BCE, right, or is the next regular update really 600 years in the future from the present?
Yes, I most likely do, but can't find the error right now... where is it? Thanks for noticing!
I doubt I know anything about the Kura-Araxes that you don't, but here's my perspective: the expansion of the Kura-Araxes culture to the south and west seems to have occurred circa 3000 BCE following the arrival of domesticated horses south of the Caucasus. Without horses to fuel their expansion, I suspect their expansion would be stunted and confined to the southern Caucasus. The northern Caucasus might then be more vulnerable compared to eastern Anatolia and the Zagros mountains, although the Caucasus mountains have served as a pretty reliable geographic barrier. Domesticated donkeys brought north by Semitic cultures provide the next best opportunity for the Kura-Araxes to expand. In that case, their expansion could be delayed by centuries and would be limited in scope. I doubt they'd make it to the Levant as in OTL and the Hattians might be healthy enough to resist expansion. Given all of that, I think that in the near term, the Kura Araxes will either be confined to the southern Caucasus or expand southeast along the Zagros Mountains.
I agree with your view. What I ask myself is if there is something that actually pushed specifically the Kura Araxes group out (besides the opportunity which horses gave them, the model which steppe horsemen were, and the attraction with which Mesopotamia and the Levante pulled them towards their wealth). If not, then I suppose there may well be migrations in Eastern Anatolia, the Southern Caucasus and the Zagros, but maybe not by a group coming from the Kura or Araxes river valleys. No Kura-Araxes migrations probably prevents a lot more people from getting pushed around (there are a few theories around about the Gutians and Lullubi originating farther North than where they began to bother the Sumerians), so any actual mass migration and major trouble-making needs to be justified with its own reasons. Of which there shall be plenty still, of course.
Notes on language
I have already mentioned that I assume “Amaloxian” to belong to a language family that spans from the Middle Danube to Northern Anatolia, including the Balkans and Thessaly. The map below should illustrate this – and a few other things:
Turquoise shall be named the “Amaloxianic language family”. It has probably splintered into over a dozen varieties, but within the classical Amaloxian state / empire, a standard variety has emerged, based on Northern (ex-Cucuteni) dialects (because the first temple state was in Kalazza), but by now heavily “Southernized” by Danubian (ex-Boian/Gumelniţa) dialects. It is the language of the temple state, and used by the elite throughout the core territories on the Danube and in what is IOTL Transilvania. Simple peasants likely speak their local varieties.
In the relatively newly acquired territories, especially in Thrace, the situation is slightly different. Here, even wealthy and influential townsfolk speak their own language, which is related to Amaloxian, but no longer mutually intelligible with it. Of course, Standard Amaloxian exerts an influence on their language, too, especially through its logographemic writing system, which works perfectly well across languages 99 % of the time, except for those words in language B, which base language A does not have and thus do not have logographemes in A-based Old Amaloxian script – and for words which exist in A, but had not existed hitherto in B. In the latter case, these words seep into *Thrace’s language B, while in the former case, B words without logographemes are bound to sink in status to that of colloquial or slang.
The only OTL language related to Amaloxianic is Hattic, as I’ve stated often before. I’ve molded quite a few Amaloxian vocabulary on the few known Hattic words, and the plural prefix “la-“ is also taken from the Hattic plural prefix “le-“. As for phonology, I took cues from the Germanic and the Greek substrates in the respective ancient Indo-European languages because these are the spaces where I suppose IOTL speakers of languages related to TTL’s Amaloxian lived in earlier times (North-Eastern Carpathian piedmont resp. Thessaly). As for the pre-Greek substrate, it is hypothesized in a number of place names ending in ancient Greek in “-xos” and “-ssos”, which is why I have quite a few words end in –x and –š (-os being a genuine Indo-European male nominative singular suffix of Greek). The pre-Germanic substrate I took as a cue to create Amaloxian without soft and voiced –bh, -dh, or –gh phonemes and instead with lots of hard “p”s, “t”s and “k”s, plus the dental fricative “θ“ and the voiced velar nasal “ŋ” (for which I had mistakenly used the “ň” sign from the start, my mistake).
Green is a language family whose OTL members are Eteocypriot, Eteocretan, Lemnian, and maybe also Etruscan and Raetian, but I'm not decided on the latter (they're so late, it's really difficult to reconstruct). Neolithic migratory patterns suggest that similar languages may have been spoken in the Peloponnese, in Italy and along the Adriatic coast as on Crete, Cyprus and Southern Anatolia, and this is what I base this map for 2600 BCE ATL on.
Brown is a language family which has left no traces whatsoever and which, millennia earlier, was probably spoken across much of Europe. I’ve labelled it half-mockingly “Very Old European”, because I take it to be the family of the languages spoken by the hunter-gatherers who were replaced by Neolithic agriculturalists who came from Anatolia from the 8th millennium BCE onwards (IOTL “Old Europeans”). On the Upper Danube and in the rest of Central Europe, the Neolithic pioneering groups were few and far between initially (the LBK), and they comparatively adapted their culture a lot more, when compared to the Danubian groups who show so many similarities with Anatolia. So I assumed they had assimilated linguistically in the 6th millennium BCE, changing Very Old European languages considerably in the process, but keeping them alive nonetheless (like French-speaking Normans did with English).
Purple-blue are Afro-Asiatic languages: Semitic in the Levante, and something which, for lack of a better term, I'll call "Proto-Berber" in the West, in what is OTL Tunisia.
Red is Indo-European, which ITTL does not have a name yet but needs one soon. I’m unable to make a decision here because I feel I haven’t found an appropriate term yet. It has an Eastern and a Western branch, which by 2600 BCE are no longer mutually intelligible.
The Crimea is supposed to be dotted with little turquoise and pink spots at the Southern coast. (Pink is North-Western Caucasian.) More on that in next week's update. Myth and seminar will have to wait until next week; I'm sorry, I'm terribly busy at work right now.
I have already mentioned that I assume “Amaloxian” to belong to a language family that spans from the Middle Danube to Northern Anatolia, including the Balkans and Thessaly. The map below should illustrate this – and a few other things:
Turquoise shall be named the “Amaloxianic language family”. It has probably splintered into over a dozen varieties, but within the classical Amaloxian state / empire, a standard variety has emerged, based on Northern (ex-Cucuteni) dialects (because the first temple state was in Kalazza), but by now heavily “Southernized” by Danubian (ex-Boian/Gumelniţa) dialects. It is the language of the temple state, and used by the elite throughout the core territories on the Danube and in what is IOTL Transilvania. Simple peasants likely speak their local varieties.
In the relatively newly acquired territories, especially in Thrace, the situation is slightly different. Here, even wealthy and influential townsfolk speak their own language, which is related to Amaloxian, but no longer mutually intelligible with it. Of course, Standard Amaloxian exerts an influence on their language, too, especially through its logographemic writing system, which works perfectly well across languages 99 % of the time, except for those words in language B, which base language A does not have and thus do not have logographemes in A-based Old Amaloxian script – and for words which exist in A, but had not existed hitherto in B. In the latter case, these words seep into *Thrace’s language B, while in the former case, B words without logographemes are bound to sink in status to that of colloquial or slang.
The only OTL language related to Amaloxianic is Hattic, as I’ve stated often before. I’ve molded quite a few Amaloxian vocabulary on the few known Hattic words, and the plural prefix “la-“ is also taken from the Hattic plural prefix “le-“. As for phonology, I took cues from the Germanic and the Greek substrates in the respective ancient Indo-European languages because these are the spaces where I suppose IOTL speakers of languages related to TTL’s Amaloxian lived in earlier times (North-Eastern Carpathian piedmont resp. Thessaly). As for the pre-Greek substrate, it is hypothesized in a number of place names ending in ancient Greek in “-xos” and “-ssos”, which is why I have quite a few words end in –x and –š (-os being a genuine Indo-European male nominative singular suffix of Greek). The pre-Germanic substrate I took as a cue to create Amaloxian without soft and voiced –bh, -dh, or –gh phonemes and instead with lots of hard “p”s, “t”s and “k”s, plus the dental fricative “θ“ and the voiced velar nasal “ŋ” (for which I had mistakenly used the “ň” sign from the start, my mistake).
Green is a language family whose OTL members are Eteocypriot, Eteocretan, Lemnian, and maybe also Etruscan and Raetian, but I'm not decided on the latter (they're so late, it's really difficult to reconstruct). Neolithic migratory patterns suggest that similar languages may have been spoken in the Peloponnese, in Italy and along the Adriatic coast as on Crete, Cyprus and Southern Anatolia, and this is what I base this map for 2600 BCE ATL on.
Brown is a language family which has left no traces whatsoever and which, millennia earlier, was probably spoken across much of Europe. I’ve labelled it half-mockingly “Very Old European”, because I take it to be the family of the languages spoken by the hunter-gatherers who were replaced by Neolithic agriculturalists who came from Anatolia from the 8th millennium BCE onwards (IOTL “Old Europeans”). On the Upper Danube and in the rest of Central Europe, the Neolithic pioneering groups were few and far between initially (the LBK), and they comparatively adapted their culture a lot more, when compared to the Danubian groups who show so many similarities with Anatolia. So I assumed they had assimilated linguistically in the 6th millennium BCE, changing Very Old European languages considerably in the process, but keeping them alive nonetheless (like French-speaking Normans did with English).
Purple-blue are Afro-Asiatic languages: Semitic in the Levante, and something which, for lack of a better term, I'll call "Proto-Berber" in the West, in what is OTL Tunisia.
Red is Indo-European, which ITTL does not have a name yet but needs one soon. I’m unable to make a decision here because I feel I haven’t found an appropriate term yet. It has an Eastern and a Western branch, which by 2600 BCE are no longer mutually intelligible.
The Crimea is supposed to be dotted with little turquoise and pink spots at the Southern coast. (Pink is North-Western Caucasian.) More on that in next week's update. Myth and seminar will have to wait until next week; I'm sorry, I'm terribly busy at work right now.
Yellow was the map's underlying color for landmass, so that's where I didn't layer. In the Alps, it Stands for "very sparsely populated". In the Middle east, it Stands for "no idea yet" because I'm still pondering the whole Kura-araxes, i.e. Hurro-Urartian question.
Interesting stuff. As for the Indo-Europeans' name, I might suggest either "Pontic" or "Transpontic" (to set it apart from the languages on the south shore of the Black Sea). Unless you're looking for an in-universe term derived from PIE or an Amaloxianic exonym, in which case I have little to offer and it's not my business to intrude upon.
Yeah, I'm looking for an in-universe term. Haven't worked out yet who will leave the most lasting imprint in Egyptian and global memory, though, to name the language family afte them.
Almost. I think the existence of two separate, but perhaps remotely related linguistic families of Very Old European is more likely than that of just one. Basque / Vasconic languages are going to be called "Waethic" languages ITTL and constitute the core area of the megalithic horizon, in much of France and on the Western and Northern coasts of Iberia, on the British Isles and North-Eastwards up to the Rhine.You could almost call brown Basque
But this is really interesting
The Brown language family lies East of that.
Why?
Because Europe's recolonisation at the end of the Ice Age was undertaken by several groups, starting from different points and ending up in different regions.
(Oh yes, this goes back terribly far into the past.)
I would guess it would be the Wolgosu, but perhaps they are regarded as a sub-branch? Also, the update confirms that when you use the letter x, it is to be read as [ks]?
On one hand, I personally think that the Basque/Waethic language is the last holdout of the languages of the dark skinned blue eyed people's of Europe. You could also kinda cop out and call the group "the *insert archaeological site in that area* culture." Perhaps brown is also a subset of another random language family altogether, like have it be related to Korean or something.
Also I know it's not the focus of this TL but it would be interesting if the Chinese disease package developed earlier and you went by the Dravidian-Korean hypothesis so you end up with a gigantic Dravidian china