WI the Proto-Indo-European language never made it to Europe/India/Persia?

[Korporal Nooij]

Hi.

I'm rather interested in Indo-European languages and Old European languages (Basque; Finnish; Etruscan; etc).

So, i've been wondering, what if the Proto-Indo-European language was never brought into the European and Indian (sub) continents?

Would it leave Europe inhabited by Iberian, Tyrrhenian, Finnic and other peoples, or would Europe be vulnerable to foreign invaders, just like it was against the Indo-Europeans in OTL?

And would these indigenous peoples advance in technology the same way as the Indo-European peoples of OTL did?

I'd love to know your opinion.

 

[Swan Station]

I think it would depend a great deal on unanswered questions about how, when and from where PIE actually spread. I don't know that linguists, archaeologists, historians and geneticists have come up with any consensus for the prehistory of Europe.

 

[Zajir]

The problem is that the Indo-Europeans originate from Europe, more exact from the Northern Black Sea regions that compose today Ukraine and Southern Russia.
So having them not go to Europe is impossible,being already there.

How to keep them from expanding is difficult because we don't know what caused the migration of the Indo-Europeans, If it was because of to great populations than it is impossible to stop.
A possibility is for the Indo-Europeans to migrate only westward, thus not going into Iran and India.
I wander if they could somehow cross the mediteranean and expand also into North Africa?

 

[Brennus]

My guess is that a Semitic language could take a foothold around the Mediterranean region. Northern Europe would possibly be dominated by Uralic languages. You also have to factor in Turkic languages as well (especially Hunnic), which would probably have the second largest presence in the Middle East and may even go into Europe as well. As for India, you'd have a mix of Dravidian, Tibetan and perhaps several other languages as well.

This of course isn't taking into account any of the other languages such as Iberian, Basque, Etruscan, or Pictish (which may or may not be an Indo-European language, no one's quite sure.)

 

[Korporal Nooij]

The problem is that the Indo-Europeans originate from Europe, more exact from the Northern Black Sea regions that compose today Ukraine and Southern Russia.
So having them not go to Europe is impossible,being already there.

Whoops, that's right.

I meant 'WI they never expand westward?'. Thanks!

I'm thinking of writing a TL about a world in which Proto-Indo-European remained just a single language in the Caucasus area, so i wanted to know opinions about it! Thanks everyone!

 

[Alex Richards]

I've heard it postulated that the Black Sea flooding could have been responsible for the migration, and for the prevelence of the Flood Myth in such cultures. Possibly if the current to the Bosphoros is too strong, we see the migration deflected more to the East?

 

[Korporal Nooij]

Here's a little linguistic map i made for fun.

I made it quickly so it is likely ASB and far from perfect.

It's kinda like an alternate ancient period. 400 BCE or something.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

The problem is that the Indo-Europeans originate from Europe, more exact from the Northern Black Sea regions that compose today Ukraine and Southern Russia.
So having them not go to Europe is impossible,being already there.

How to keep them from expanding is difficult because we don't know what caused the migration of the Indo-Europeans, If it was because of to great populations than it is impossible to stop.
A possibility is for the Indo-Europeans to migrate only westward, thus not going into Iran and India.
I wander if they could somehow cross the mediteranean and expand also into North Africa?

Actually modern scholarship suggest the Anatolian plateau, IIRC. There is some reason to think they brought agriculture and language together into Europe.

So... Semites? Akkadian is a Semitic language, yes? Maybe agriculture and Semitic languages spread together iTTL

 

[Nikephoros]

Actually modern scholarship suggest the Anatolian plateau, IIRC. There is some reason to think they brought agriculture and language together into Europe.

There's a flaw with that theory though. Most of the cultural groups in Anatolia were non Indo-European. And it also doesn't match the actual spread of agriculture.

 

[Dan1988]

Actually, one of the problems is that we really don't know what they did. I actually could see PIE remaining in *Persia, though.

 

[Valdemar II]

To my knowledge Baltic are the closest to the original Indo-European and genetic evidence seem to indicate that Ukraine area was the centre of a major spread of genes especially Y-kronosome to modern and historical Indo-European areas around the same time Indo-European spread. While I'm not a linguist that seem to indicate that far East European steppes was the centre of the Indo-European population. Plus the two fact that the spread of Anatolian genes and farming spread to Europe before the split in Indo-European doesn't help on the out of Anatolia theory. There's also the point that both Greek and Germanic terms for the sea and sea life comes from the pre-Indo-European languages seem to indicate that Indo-European had little contact with coastal areas before they spread into Europe, that seem more the result of a culture from the steppes.

Bujt in the end I'm neither a linguist, a biologist or a researcher of ancient cultures, so I may be wrong

 

[robertp6165]

Here's a little linguistic map i made for fun.

I made it quickly so it is likely ASB and far from perfect.

It's kinda like an alternate ancient period. 400 BCE or something.

What is the light green color which is in the British Isles and northern France? It doesn't seem to be labeled.

Also, I doubt we'd see Dravidian languages spreading over Iran. There were non-Indo-European peoples in Iran (Gutians, Elamites, etc) which would be more likely to fill that void.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Damnit, you took my WI!!

Uh, anyways, I was going to post something pretty much just like this a while back but never actually got around to it. I imagine it might have some pretty massive effects on later culture and science--to take one example, the idea of linguistic groups deriving from the same root might take longer to get figured out since OTL the discovery that Sanskrit was Indo-European led to that leap. Linguistic groups might on the whole be more compact than OTL, with more limited geographic spread. This might lead to larger cultural variance in *Europe, since linguistic differences would be even more pronounced, particularly if some *Roman group didn't march in and impose it's own culture over everything (though that obviously didn't make much difference in some areas OTL)

 

[Valdemar II]

Damnit, you took my WI!!

Uh, anyways, I was going to post something pretty much just like this a while back but never actually got around to it. I imagine it might have some pretty massive effects on later culture and science--to take one example, the idea of linguistic groups deriving from the same root might take longer to get figured out since OTL the discovery that Sanskrit was Indo-European led to that leap. Linguistic groups might on the whole be more compact than OTL, with more limited geographic spread. This might lead to larger cultural variance in *Europe, since linguistic differences would be even more pronounced, particularly if some *Roman group didn't march in and impose it's own culture over everything (though that obviously didn't make much difference in some areas OTL)

The problem we know text to nothing about the pre-Indo-Europeans, we can make a few educated guesses on the difference between the difference in mythology, culture and language between the people of Europe. In North Europe we have likely seen somekind of shamanism mixed with ancestor worship and gods-spirits, Njord, Frey and Freya are seen as pre-Germanic Gods together with the Vanas. At most I could see it in time develop into some kind of Shinto-like faith. While the South Europeans seem to have been polytheists. But well that's a guess based on the Semites and Egyptians.

 

[Korporal Nooij]

What is the light green color which is in the British Isles and northern France? It doesn't seem to be labeled.

Also, I doubt we'd see Dravidian languages spreading over Iran. There were non-Indo-European peoples in Iran (Gutians, Elamites, etc) which would be more likely to fill that void.

The light green color was pretty much nothing.

Thanks, that's a good idea! I've added and combined the Gutian and Elamite languages as 'Gutielam'.

How's this?

Damnit, you took my WI!!

I'm sorry. Let's share the idea then.

 

[yourworstnightmare]

And of course Finno- Ugric up north.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

The problem with this WI is basically data deficiency: we have no idea what pre-IE Europe looked like, because it was so long ago. I mean, you have to go back at least 4000 years. Even events that are much later are pretty mysterious, for example, we know very little about what the Atlantic region was like prior widespread Celticization ca. 600 BC.

 

[Swan Station]

Personally, I'd think that on your map, it'd be more fun to have the Balkans, Italy and the Alps resemble the west coast of North America here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Langs_N.Amer.png. Lots of language isolates which have been spoken in the same valley since the Mesolithic, plus a few larger families (Tyrrhenian) which are separated from each other by long distances.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

How's this?

I must say that I disagree with the map, especially with the Iberian peninsula. Especially, where are the Basques and the Tartessians on the map?

 

[Atom]

The problem with this WI is basically data deficiency: we have no idea what pre-IE Europe looked like, because it was so long ago. I mean, you have to go back at least 4000 years. Even events that are much later are pretty mysterious, for example, we know very little about what the Atlantic region was like prior widespread Celticization ca. 600 BC.

Exactly. I mean, it's a good and very interesting idea, but we have no idea what would happen! Really, any speculation on this is just not possible with any firm base in fact.

I also think the Kurgan hypothesis has the greatest base. Obviously nothing is certain, but the Anatolian hypothesis has several major flaws, notably the lack of agricultural reconstructed vocabulary, and the fact that the most plausible dates for the time of PIE simply do not match up.