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

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.

That is the problem. I have created a map for that is supposed to illustrate things, in regard for how sparse our knowledge of pre-IE languages actually is. Note that the map is ANACHRONISTIC, depicting times between circa 800BC and 50BC, depending on where on the map you are. It's also quite inaccurate, but it's supposed to be a visualization, anyways.

Also note that I used UCS colors, but I heavily misused them. ;)

- Swedish dark blue denotes the areas where Uralic languages were spoken. Note that Estonia probably was originally Baltic-speaking, and became Uralized only later. In Antiquity, there's mentioning of a (very probably) IE-speaking people called the "Aestii" which lived along the shores of the Baltic sea, and with all likelihood, they were Baltic, and the name got later inherited by the Estonians.

- British red is the area of the Picts. As far as I understand it, there's the discussion wether Picts were non-IE, non-Celtic-IE or Celtic. In any case, there appears to have been some pre-IE residue in the Pictish language, which wasn't preserved in other Celtic languages of the British Isles.

The situation in Iberia is approximately in 200 BC:
- French blue is for Aquitanian, aka Old Basque.
- Spanish brown is for Iberian, and the lightly colored areas are those that presumably spoke Iberian previously, but were subsequently Celticized.
- The Mali dark grey area is where Turdetanian (the descendants of the Tartessian) was spoken. The lighter grey area is those where - presumably, Tartessian was also spoken earlier, however the denizens of these areas (the Turduli) were Celticized or Lusitanianized. The relationship of Tartessian to Basque and/or Iberian is unknown.
- The northern area denoted as Celtic probably was the area of Iberia first to be Celticized (around 600-500 BC).
- The Lusitanians were clearly Indo-European peoples, though there's the dispute wether they spoke a variety of Celtic, a language related with Ligurian, or an isolated IE language.

- Lighted Austrian pink denotes the area of approximately where Raetian was spoken, which is very disputed in it's affinities, as far as I understand it.

- The Italian colored area (and it's lighter variety) denotes the area where Etruscan was spoken.

- Carthaginian Pink in North Africa denotes Berber languages spoken there.

- Babylonian blue in Anatolia denotes Semitic influence (principally Aramaic, the official language of the Assyrian Empire).

So, in essence, we know virtually nothing about the Pre-IE languages in most parts of Europe.

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.

I agree, the Kurgan hypothesis is probably the one that works the best.

OldEurope.jpg
 
Note that Estonia probably was originally Baltic-speaking, and became Uralized only later.
Wikipedia sez Finno-Ugrics have been living in Estonia for 5000 years at the most, 3800 years at the least. The "Aesti" were only said to live near the Vistula and on the shore of the Baltic Sea. That could easily refer to the area of Old Prussians and Lithuanians.

Getting saddled with the wrong exonym by foreign chucklefucks is something of a pan-Finnic curse...
 
Wikipedia sez Finno-Ugrics have been living in Estonia for 5000 years at the most, 3800 years at the least. The "Aesti" were only said to live near the Vistula and on the shore of the Baltic Sea. That could easily refer to the area of Old Prussians and Lithuanians.

Getting saddled with the wrong exonym by foreign chucklefucks is something of a pan-Finnic curse...

Thanks for clarifying that. I feel guilty now, then again, I kind of expected my map was grossly inaccurate... :(

Talking about false exonyms, did you know that there was a Celtiberian tribe called "Germani"?
 
I love your map! :D

It's not inaccurate, especially not when compared to mine! ;)

Well thanks. I'd like to remind you that it's highly anachronistic. It's just to show how little we actually know about pre-IE languages in Europe, and with all likelihood, several language families wholly went extinct whom we don't even know they existed in the first place.

A few additional thoughts:

- We can assume that no Indo-European languages were spoken in the Atlantic region before ca. 500-600 BC, and the Celts and Lusitanians were the first, and they came from central-southern Europe. It is quite tempting to think that the languages spoken in the Atlantic region were somehow related with Basque, Iberian and/or Tartessian, but we ultimately have no way of proving that. OTOH, it is a real difficulty to explain how Celtic was able to supplant any previous existing languages so thoroughly in Ireland, Britain and Gaul that by Roman times, there was virtually no traces left.

- The farther we go back, the more uncertain things get, really, because by 2000 BC much of Central and Eastern Europe probably already spoke some form of IE. The people of the widespread Corded Ware culture probably already spoke some form of Indo-European (though they weren't the only speakers of IE).
 
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There should be an original Saami language there. Apparently the Finno-Ugric language that was named for the Saami people is an import from the east, which had supplanted the original language spoken by 500 AD. Only a few words of the original language remains in the vocabulary.

Given genetic evidence of the Saami going through a long period of isolation, it is tempting to specualte that this was a language isolate, but we don't actually know.

This threads need Leo!
 
There should be an original Saami language there. Apparently the Finno-Ugric language that was named for the Saami people is an import from the east, which had supplanted the original language spoken by 500 AD. Only a few words of the original language remains in the vocabulary.

Given genetic evidence of the Saami going through a long period of isolation, it is tempting to specualte that this was a language isolate, but we don't actually know.
Why? Yes, we know that there were people there who were probably Saami, and they spoke something, but we have no idea of where they were (beyond th vague fact that they probably are close to where they are today) and have no knowledge of what they spoke.

This threads need Leo!
Really? I don't think so, is there that much more to say beyond "we don't know?" Leo maybe a very intelligent guy and the person with the most linguistic knowledge, but theres not much more to add. We simply don't have enough data to really debate this.
 
Why? Yes, we know that there were people there who were probably Saami, and they spoke something, but we have no idea of where they were (beyond th vague fact that they probably are close to where they are today) and have no knowledge of what they spoke.

We do know generally where they were. We are uncertain about the eastern extent, but the western end is pretty well established. We don't know what they spoke, but we have some indications that the language spoken before the language today called Saami was not Finno-Ugric. Hence my remark that it needed a separate section on the map.

And the fact that we are having a thread pretty much means that we have passed by the question of "Why? " and decided to have a discussion about it;) Feel free to add to it.

And every language thread needs Leo and the Academic Beatstick:) Just for starters he could probably make an educated guess on how long the two celtic language groups have been separated.
 
there is some thinking that the non indoeuropean languages are related to each other, Ibearian and basque anyway
 
there is some thinking that the non indoeuropean languages are related to each other, Ibearian and basque anyway


Yes, all pre-Indo-European languages of the Iberian peninsula seemed to be related to each other. Basque and Aquitanian and Iberian are a few examples of these languages. :)

But, i do not believe that for example Basque and Finnish are related to each other. I know you didn't state that either, but it's just an example. ;)

Although this has nothing to do with it, there is of course this "Nostratic Language Family" theory, which suggests that Indo-European languages and Uralic languages (and even Afro-Asiatic; Dravidian; Eskimo Aleut; etc languages) have a common ancestors.

Here, take a look at this, it's some interesting 'evidence':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages#Personal_pronouns

Nostratic.gif


Nostratic_tree.PNG


Does seem interesting doesn't it? :)
 
Yes, all pre-Indo-European languages of the Iberian peninsula seemed to be related to each other. Basque and Aquitanian and Iberian are a few examples of these languages. :)

A small nitpick there: Basque and Aquitanian are more or less the same. Or, more precisely, Aquitanian is probably the same as Old Basque.

But, i do not believe that for example Basque and Finnish are related to each other. I know you didn't state that either, but it's just an example. ;)

Finnic (or at a greater extend, Uralic) and Basque are definitely not related with each other. Finnic is something indigenous to northern Eurasia (historically probably all the way from Scandinavia to Yakutia), whereas Basque is something indigenous to Atlantic Europe.

Although this has nothing to do with it, there is of course this "Nostratic Language Family" theory, which suggests that Indo-European languages and Uralic languages (and even Afro-Asiatic; Dravidian; Eskimo Aleut; etc languages) have a common ancestors.

Here, take a look at this, it's some interesting 'evidence':

Does seem interesting doesn't it? :)

Actually, I am extremely sceptical about that. The Nostratic group just assumes similarities where there probably are very few, or, they are too far in the past. That's just too spurious. Thing is also, we have no idea how long it takes for languages to become mutually unintelligible.
 
Actually, I am extremely sceptical about that. The Nostratic group just assumes similarities where there probably are very few, or, they are too far in the past. That's just too spurious. Thing is also, we have no idea how long it takes for languages to become mutually unintelligible.
The main issue with the Nostratic theory is the simple lack of evidence. It's just too sketchy to pull in all of those languages. Considering that specialists in Altaic can't even seem agree that they're specialty is a language family, trying to connect them is a bit farther along.

There's a theory that the Germanic languages developed as a "creole" between Indo-European and a non IE substrate. My guess this would be Finno-Ugric.

Its possible much of the population of Europe are more closely related to the Finno-Ugrics than IEs.

This is an interesting alternate view of the IEs.

http://www.enter.net/~torve/trogholm/wonder/indoeuropean/indoeuropean4.html
No. Just no. Look, there are a number of problems with this theory; I'm not going to bother listing all of them since theres on huge gaping one: his dates. Theres no way, absolutely none, that any of the subbranches of Indo-European could be that old. Even if language change differs to the extent that he believes it has, that's just enormous. That's about 10,000 years more then any other reconstruction! It's simply too long. He's suggesting something along the lines of 10,000 years of complete linguistic stability! That just doesn't work no matter how precise you believe glottochronology is.

Besides that there are a number of other problems with his work, like over reliance on the centum/satem split, genetic evidence and archaeology. Please people try to remember that pots aren't people, and genes aren't languages! That's simply not how things work. Please don't listen to this crank, and if you don't think hes a crank I invite to look at section 11 of the link provided, or the rest of the site. Very entertaining as long as you don't take him seriously.
 
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