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KURGAN CULTURE

Links

http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/Kurgans.htm
http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Z1PzeZUTmGwJ:www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf <= in HTM format

Contents

Introduction     

KURGAN CULTURE

Mario Alinei

Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia

Introduction

The Kurgan people culture existed during the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC, they lived in northern Europe, from N.Pontic across Central Europe.  The word "kurgan" means a mound or a barrow in Türkic. Kurgan culture is characterized by pit-graves or barrows, a particular method of burial. They are also called the Pit-grave people (Pit-grave culture), or Barrow people (Barrow culture).

The earliest Kurgan sites of the fifth, fourth, and third millennia BC are in the N.Pontic, from where they spread by about 2000 BC to Central Europe, crossing the Dnieper River. Wherever Kurgan culture spread, it was marked by common elements unlike those of the surrounding Bronze-Age cultures.

Fourth millennia BC: Kurgan peoples had spread across the entire area north of the Black Sea, across northern Europe, and probably east to the natural barrier of the Ural Mountains. In the Caucasus area, they enjoyed a primitive metal culture. When the portable archeological objects, like ornaments, weaponry and other objects more often used in exchanges, are combined with ceramics, and all this is supported by a similarity in the funeral ceremony, the most permanent ethnic attribute, then the ethnic movement is sufficiently proved. This is the case observed in the migration of the Kurgan (Pit Grave) carriers cultures ( Miziev, 1990, p. 18).

The carriers of the Kurgan Pit Grave cultures, the most ancient nomadic sheep breeders, at the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC spread fanlike from the Itil-Yaik center to the north into the Ugro-Finnish tribes. There they entered into a close contact with the indigenous population, which explains the mass of the Türkisms in the language of the Finno-Ugrians and vice-versa. From the Itil-Yaik center the ancient Kurganians spread to the west and mixed with the tribes of the Late Tripolie cultures (Tripolie is dated ca. 4,600-3,500 B. C.). This explains the penetration of Türkisms and the elements of the Türkic culture to the indigenous tribes in the N.Pontic steppes.

Those ancient nomads who left to the southwest entered a close contact with the tribes of the ancient N. Caucasus. From there they penetrated territory of the future Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Near East Asia, where they came into contact with the most ancient settled farming tribes. Some of them also began to engage in agriculture and settled on the land. Along with the nomadic husbandry, the local herding also appeared at that time.

Migrating to the east, the Kurgan people intermixed with tribes of the yellow race, gradually many of them acquired Mongoloid features. There, in the steppes of the Sayano-Altai mountains, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, they became one of the main components of the Türkic peoples: Kazakhs, Kyrgyzes, Khakases, Altaians, Tuvinians, Uigurs, Yakuts, Uzbeks, Turkmen, etc. Through the south of the Turkmenistan and Aral steppe the most ancient nomads penetrated into the Northern Iran and Afghanistan, where they also met the most ancient agricultural tribes.

The traces of influence of the Itil-Yaik Kurgan Pit Grave culture on the cultures of the neighboring tribes were shown in the works of M.P.Grjaznov, O.A.Krivtsovo-Grakova, S.V.Kiselyov, N.Ya.Merpert, A.X. Halikov, N.L.Chlenova, K.A.Akishev, I.I.Artemenko and other archeologists. So, in the N.L.Chlenova's opinion, the active links of the archeological cultures whose initial native land was the Itil-Ural region, were active in a huge territory during many millennia. She writes that the ceramics with excessively extended shaded triangles is found in the Baikal, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, Northern Afghanistan, Ukraine and in the Danube Bulgaria. This culture extends from the Yenisei river to the Bulgaria for more than seven and a half thousand kilometers ( Chlenova, 1972, p. 120-126; 1981, p. 22-26). N.L.Chlenova's conclusions are confirmed by V.I.Molodin, basing on the results of the research in the Baraba steppes (Western Siberia). As he said, the funeral ceremony of the Barabians coincides completely with the Pit Grave ceremony. The author unfolds a unique continuity of the Baraba culture with the Pit-Grave culture of the Itil-Yaik. By his belief, the carriers of the Pit-Grave cultures came to the Baraba from the north and northwest at the end of the Neolithic Age ( Molodin, 1985, p. 75-77, 171. Molodin, W. I. - US$36.00 BARABA IN THE BRONZE AGE Area of the Ob-Irtysh Rivers (Novosybirsk, 1985) 200 pp., illus., 175 x 268 mm). The retrospective study of the historical and ethnographical, and ethno-cultural features of Türkic peoples,

Kurgan ceremony,
Burials in timber, troughs,
Underlayment of the bottom of the tomb with grass, reed , felt,
Accompanying of the deceased with sacrificial horses,
Use in food of koumiss and horsemeat,
Mobile sheep-breeding character of life,
Residing in felt yurts,

- results in a conclusion that genetically these elements go back to the Pit Grave culture, Andronovo, Timber Grave and Scythian tribes. Stated differently, there are all reasons to consider the Pit Grave, or Kurgan culture a basis for the formation of the ethno-cultural features for the most ancient pra-Türkic tribes of the Euro-Asian  steppes.

 

2500-2100 BC: A wave of destruction in Syria and Palestine. Many cities destroyed. The walled town at Bab edh-Dhra in Jordan, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, was destroyed about 2300 BC, in its cemetery outside the city walls, tombs predating the destruction were of the charnel-house type, graves post-dating the destruction are pits covered by stone barrows, containing single burials in a contracted position, with pottery and grave-goods unlike those of the mass graves in the earlier period.

These are the characteristics of the Kurgan Culture people:

The most ancient nomadic tribes of the Itil-Yaik were Caucasoids, but among them were also types with insignificant Lapanoid, also considered Mongoloid, features (Gerasimov, 1955).

 They practiced animal husbandry, in rubbish dumps at Kurgan hill-forts and villages are found bones of lots and lots of horses, many cattle, and a few pigs, sheep and goats. Few bones of wild game (such as deer) were found, so Kurganians were not a hunting culture. Horse-heads carved in diorite were found, with harness-marks cut into them to indicate bridles.

The Kurganian horse-herders, like the Scythians, may had rode geldings only, their main herds being kept wild under stallions, and controlled through the mares which were hobbled near the settlements and milked regularly. Both wild-horse bones and bones of domesticated horses were found in Kurgan sites, modern bone-analysis specialists can apparently tell the difference between the two types. Moreover, modern methods allow to discern between a harnessed horse and a herd horse. The chances of finding bridled horse buried with its owner exist even though for each riding horse were thousands of the herd horses.

Kurgan people typically lived on flat steppe grasslands, near wooded areas and watercourses. There were mixed forests of oak, birch, fir, beech, elder, elm, ash, aspen, apple, cherry and willow. There were aurochs, elk, boar, wild horses, wolves, fox, beaver, squirrels, badgers, hare and roe deer. Their ornaments were made from elk antlers, cattle and sheep bones, and boar tusks, one of the most common implements found at their settlements was a hammer-hoe made from elk antler. They had bone awls, chisels, and polishers, and wooden bows with flint-tipped arrows which were carried in skin quivers (called in Turkic "kolčan, kulčan", another loan to Slavic - Translator's Note), Scythian-style. They fished: in their villages were bone harpoons, points, fishhooks, and also fish bones. They had wool and flax.

Kurgan people didn't raise much grain (that is, they were not heavily into farming) - only a few sickles were found in their villages, though archeologists found grindstones, pestles, and saddle-querns, also found was millet grain and melon seeds. One object which may have been a ploughshare was discovered. Beneath one Kurgan barrow-mound, a stretch of ground protected by the mound itself showed unmistakable plough-furrows.

Kurgan people used two- and four-wheeled wagons with big unspoked wheels of solid wood. Examples of these have been found, along with of clay images: toy wagons, buried with royalty (maybe?). Also found were copper figurines of yoked oxen in pairs, so oxen probably drew these solid-wheel carts - which were of about the same proportions, wheel to cartbed, as a child's toy cart with a low rim around it.

Metal objects.

Early Kurgan period: copper awls plus tanged, leaf-shaped copper knives or small daggers.

Late Kurgan period: daggers, awls, flat shaft-hole axes. The Kurgan people of the northwest Caucasus mountain region (a center for metallurgy from way back) at about 3500 BC and afterward possessed gold and silver vases, beads, and rings, also bull, goat and lion figurines, also copper axes, adzes, daggers and knives. No bronze objects were found, this means they either had no knowledge of alloying, or no access to tin. The last is unlikely, tin was available to the Persians and Greeks in later days, though the sites of the ancient tin mines are not known. The Kurgans would have panned their gold from rivers in the Caucasus mountains: gold, copper and silver can be found raw in their pure form, ready for use.

The lion figurines at first sound odd, there are certainly no lions in Europe or Asia today. But there is artwork depicting lions, and references to wild lions in the mountains of Macedonia and Asia Minor, which came down into settled lands and preyed upon livestock. So the Kurgan artisans were probably familiar with lions. Equally, there were wild bison in the north of the C. Europe right up to the modern times.

The early scholar-traveler P. S. Pallas ("The Southern Provinces of the Russian Reichs", originally published 1812) remarks that in the steppes of the lower Volga lived a giant land reptile called the Coluber Jaculator lizard, named the courageous Sheltopufik, he wrote that it "is not venomous, is often six feet long, it moves about with erect head and breast, and when pursued defends itself by darting against the horse and his rider. There are likewise two other species of reptiles, the Berus, and the Halys, both of a poisonous nature." Large lizards like those of the species mentioned by Pallas inhabited the lands of Asia from the N. Caspian steppe all the way to the Persian Gulf. It is probably not a coincidence that the earliest dragon legends come from the same area.

Kurgan pottery: this was very primitive, made from clay mixed with crushed shells and sand. The pots were decorated with incision-marks made by a triangular stick, with pit impressing (?), cord impressing and impressing with a stick wound with cords.

Neighbors: The expansion of Kurgan culture brought it into neiborhood of many different peoples. The expansion was mostly peaceful, and the simbiotic influences considerable and diverse. Soon after the first encounter are evident the traces of genetical and cultural influences of the nomadic lifestile, technology, art and rituals upon the settled aboriginal population. These traces are visible for the settled agricultural communities, while the influences upon the hunter-gatherer communities are ephemeral and practically undetectable.

The settlements neighboring Kurgan sites came in two types. The first is a simple village, usually located on a river terrace, there would be ten to twenty small, rectangular, semi-subterranean houses with pitched roofs supported by thin wooden posts. There would be stone-walled hearths, usually one hearth per house, but situated either indoors or just outside. A very large village could have up to two hundred houses.

The second type is a hill-fort placed on a steep river bank in a place difficult of access - usually a promontory at the juncture of two rivers. Note: both types of settlement had the advantage of being defensible, so the neibors of the Kurgan people had to put up with being raided by their neighbors, and probably raiding them right back. That is, they were well acquainted with war. The semi-subterranean houses sound like the underground homes of the Slavs, Armenians and Gobi desert peoples, which existed right up to modern times, the Armenians lived underground by reason of the cold of their winters, and the Gobi people by reason of the intense heat of their summers. Also, in the Russian steppe as late as 1900, the Cossacks lived in semi-subterranean houses. They did it to escape the terrible storms and blizzards of the winter months, taking underground with them all their livestock and fuel, and many a disgusted British traveler attests to it.

Some examples of excavated settlements neighboring the Kurgan sites:

Hill-fort One (Miklajlovka, where the Podpil'na River meets the Dnieper): a settlement guarded by massive stone walls 3 meters high, built of about ten courses of large stones. It had rectangular houses totally unlike the river village houses: built with timber walls on massive stone foundations (the last up to one meter in height) and two or more large interior rooms. In the last period of usage, the fort became very large, girdled with huge walls and ditches, and held houses with stone foundations and wattle-and-daub walls.

Hill-fort Two (Skelja-Kamenolomnja, on promontory overlooking Dnieper River): it was built on a site with cliffs on three sides, and a thick stone wall on the slope approaching the fourth side. Within the boundaries were rectangular houses on stone foundations. Also found were workshops for fabricating polished stone tools, battle-axes and mace-heads etc. (i.e. Battle-Axe Culture neighboring the Kurgan site - Translator's Note)

Hill-fort Three (Liventsovka at Rostov on the Don): this stood on a high hill surrounded by a massive stone wall, with ditches both inside and outside the wall. There were square or circular hearths in the houses.

Hill-fort Four (Nagyarpad, southern Hungary): this housed an estimated 250 people, in fifty small houses standing in rows along a paved road leading to the top of a steep hill. Two large wooden houses, probably royal, stood on the terrace at the terminus of the road.

These hill-forts are the prototypes for Greek, Illyrian, Celtic, Baltic, Germanic etc castle-hills et al. Walls and citadels built from massive stones are characteristic of the earliest historical times, the proper term for such work is Cyclopean, from the ancient Greeks who were convinced only giants could have built on such a scale.

Graves: the Kurgan people left rich treasure-graves containing gold, silver and precious stones. These important graves are set aside in separate cemeteries, and the bodies are committed in timber or stone houses. One body of a man was dressed in a garment onto which gold ornaments had been sewn: 68 lion images, 19 bulls and 38 rings. (Scythians, who succeeded the Kurganians in N.Pontic, too wore garments decorated all over with small gold plaques, like beads but flat and stamped with tiny images.) Necklaces of animal teeth were common. Sun images were also commonplace. Also found were stag figurines with enormous antlers, ornamented with concentric-circle motifs, these were probably linked to rock engravings of stags with supernatural antlers. Also found were horse-heads carved from stone, mounted on rods and used as scepters. (The scepters was the archeologist's interpretation, the garment hung with metal and horse-wand sounds shamanistic to me. Wands surmounted by horse-heads are a well-known accouterment of Mongolian shamans, who also make a point of sewing metal objects and ribbons onto their ceremonial garments. The more metal the better was their rationale, ie the heavier the garment, the more desirable it was, as for the wands with horse-heads, modern shamans use them as drum-sticks and also as "magic horses" for spirit journeys.)

Braziers were found in Kurgan houses and grave-houses: these burned charcoal and also cow's-dung. Ashes and charcoal were found in the graves: fires had been lit in the braziers inside the grave-houses. The charcoal deserves a special mention because while dung as fuel is free and easy to gather (and cow-droppings, pastoral peoples say, burns better than those of horses or sheep) charcoal has to be specially prepared, but dung burns with an acrid fume and people who live in homes heated by dung fires usually develop eye problems, while charcoal burns with little or no smoke and those who enjoy a charcoal fire are happier and healthier.

Red ochre was found in the graves . . . but then, red ochre graves go from southern Palestine to the coast of England.

Also found were metal cauldrons. . . as in the Scythian graves, where the household goods were buried with the dead chief. The graves of poor people usually contained only a ceramic pot, a flint tool, or nothing.

Also found in some graves were bones from the tails of sheep, the rationale is that the tails of Asian fat-tailed sheep were buried with the dead. The fat-tailed sheep themselves have been raised in Central Asia since before history began. Herodotus mentions them, and they were commonly kept by nomads from the Bedouin of north Africa right up into Siberia. Unlike European breeds, these sheep grow enormous tails (Türkic 'kurdük'), rather like the humps of camels, fat and marrow-like substances are stored in their tails, just as with the humps of camels, and the sheep themselves are better able to endure arid country. The tails themselves used to be cut off and kept to provide cooking fat, for the kitchens of Türkic, Persian and Arabian women. And they still are to this day.

And since the harnesses of Kurgan horses were made from bone and leather, the graves of poor Kurgans contained only flint tools, and the only worked metal was sewn on people's clothing, one might conclude these people were still well in the grip of the Stone Age.

The mortuary houses themselves mimicked actual houses, being made of timber or of stone slabs. Husbands were frequently buried with their wives, sometimes an adult was buried with one or more children. Animal bones were found jumbled in pits near the graves, Kurgan graves north of the Black Sea usually included snake skeletons, sometimes up to ten of them. (Note: Edith Durham in her book High Albania mentions that many old graves in the Albanian mountains - one of the remotest places on earth - were frequently marked with pre-Christian symbols, suns and crescent moons combined with Christian crosses were common, and a serpent image which the Albanians told her represented courage and war, ie the snake was the mark of a hero!) Sometimes human bones were found jumbled in with the animal bones in the adjoining offering-pits. It was a Türkic custom up to historic times for animals to be sacrificed at the grave, their flesh eaten and their bones then collected in skins and interred.

These grave-houses were covered by earth or stone mounds, and then topped with stone stelae. Each stela was carved with a crude human shape, male, holding a mace or axe in one hand, one figure holds a bow. In the graves of men, ornamental axes of antler, copper, stone, or semiprecious stone were found. Some of these axes were made from nephrite, serpentine, diorite, amber, or other materials obviously not meant for utility. The amber came from the Baltic region, and since mother-of-pearl and faience beads were also found in the graves, this certainly points to a thriving trade between regions.

The knucklebones of sheep were found in many graves (particularly the graves of children) throughout European sites. Knucklebones are a gaming device.

And how do you play knucklebones with the knucklebones of sheep? The Uzbek nomads call it the Ashik-game (after ashik, the word for the anklebones of sheep) and played it as dicing, with four anklebones. The upper part of the bone they called tava, the lower altchi, and the two sides called yantarap. The player took all four bones in the palm of his hand, threw them up and got half of the stake wagered, if two tava or two altchi turned up, or the whole stake, if all four tava or altchi showed.

The Venus figurines of the late Stone Age are not Kurgan. They pre-date the Kurgan expansion into Anatolian, Aegean, and Balkan cultures. Seated goddesses of clay, alabaster or marble also appeared in the N.Pontic and north Caucasus regions prior to the third millennium BC, these were borrowed from southern cultures in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.

 Male and female figures carved from stone (called in Türkic 'Baba') spread across the steppe from Danube to Amur Rivers, are attributed to the descendants of the Scythians, not to prehistoric peoples. According to late middle age chronicle, a legendary statue named Slata Baba once stood near upper Ob river.

Mario Alinei
Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia, with an excursus on Slavic ethnogenesis
Expanded version of a paper read at the Conference Ancient Settlers in Europe, Kobarid, 29-30 May 2003. – Forthcoming in “Quaderni di semantica”, 26.
 
About the Author

Mario Alinei is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987, Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University. Founder and editor of "Quaderni di semantica" review, he is president of "Atlas Linguarum Europae". For incomplete list of his works see Literature at the bottom of the page

Citations from the work

4.4.3 The cultural sequence in Western Ukraine and in the Pontic Steppes

 CHART III: The cultural sequence in Western Ukraine and in the Pontic Steppes

  Western Ukraine Pontic Steppes
Late Chalcolithic Corded Ware, Globular Amphora Catacombs
Middle Chalcolithic Gorodsk-Usatovo Yamna (pastoral nomadism)
Early Chalcolithic Tripolje AII etc. (farming, fortifications) Serednij Stog/Chvalynsk (pastoralism, horse-riding)
Late Neolithic Tripolje AI (farming) Dneper-Donec (pastoralism, horse domestication)
Middle Neolithic Bug-Dnestr (farming) Sursk-Dneper (pastoralism)

  Because of the appearing of the famous kurgan culture in them, the two sequences shown by this chart can be considered as quite well-known also to linguists. In fact, the evident contrast between the farming cultures in Western Ukraine, and the pastoral ones in the Pontic steppes is what moved Marija Gimbutas to envisage the epochal clash between peaceful autochthonous non IE farmers of the “Old Europe”, and the warlike intrusive IE who submerged them. Colin Renfrew has lucidly demolished this myth, but in my opinion has not given a satisfactory explanation of the contrast, which remains quite evident and important.

In the PCT framework this quite conspicuous frontier proves to be the frontier between an already separated and flourishing eastern Slavic population of farmers to the West, and warlike Turkic pastoral nomadic groups to the East, which would be responsible, among other things, of the two innovations of horse raising and horse riding. Linguistically, this new interpretation has the advantage of explaining the antiquity and the quantity of Turkic loanwords precisely for horse terminology in both branches of Samoyed (i.e. Nenets - Translator's Note), in the Ugric languages, as well as in Slavic languages (see also further), and, more generally, the quantity of Turkic Neolithic terms in South-Eastern European languages, including Hungarian, which would have been brought into its present area precisely by the kurgan culture (Alinei 2003).

Interestingly, the uninterrupted continuity of Altaic steppe cultures, from Chalcolithic to the Middle Ages, can be symbolized precisely by the kurgan themselves: for on the one hand, the custom of raising kurgans on burial sites has always been one of the most characteristic features of Altaic steppe nomadic populations, from their first historical appearance to the late Middle Ages. On the other, the Russian word kurgan itself is not of Russian, or Slavic, or IE origin, but is a Turkic loanword, with a very wide diffusion area in Southern Europe, which corresponds to the spread of the kurgan culture (Alinei 2000, 2003, and see further).

4.4 Archaeological charts as means to reconstruct ethnic and language development

Once linguists assume Paleolithic continuity to explain the linguistic picture of Europe (and of IE Asia), they can make systematic and fruitful use of archaeological chronostratigraphical charts – both of Europe in general and of the different areas of Europe in particular –, in order to come to the identification of the languages (and dialects: a fundamental, more authentic relic of prehistory than standard languages!) involved in the different periods and areas of development in prehistoric Europe.

As is known, these charts aims at representing, on their two axes, the chronological evolution of prehistoric culture in a given, geographic area. This is achieved by condensing the cultural development of the different sub-areas of the territory in the chart vertical columns, while the different periods of prehistory correspond to the chart horizontal lines. As examples, two European charts are reproduced here (fig. 4-5): the one that Gordon Childe kept publishing at the end of all the editions of his Dawn of European Civilization (Childe 1925-1957), and a combination of two more recent ones published by Lichardus & Lichardus (1985) in their synthesis on European Neolithic

Gordon Childe chart

Click on image to enlarge ==> CLICK HERE TO REDUCE

Archeological Cultures 27c. to 8c. BC GordonChilde

Lichardus & Lichardus chart

Click on image to enlarge ==> CLICK HERE TO REDUCE

Archeological Cultures 27c. to 8c. BC LichardusLichardus

5 Survey of recent theories on the origins of non Indo-European languages in Europe

... It is also important to see how the origins of the non-Indo-European peoples and languages of Europe are currently seen by the respective specialists.

5.1 Uralic indigenism (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed)

As far as the Uralic people and languages are concerned, a new theory of their origins was advanced about thirty years ago and is now universally recognized by linguists as well as archaeologists: it is called the Uralic Continuity Theory (UCT) and claims an uninterrupted continuity of Uralic populations and languages from Paleolithic (Meinander 1973, Nuñez 1987, 1989, 1996, 1997, 1998).

 Fig. 6. Map of Uralic settlements

Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE

Uralics 1300 to 9000 BC

According to this theory, which historically represents the first claim of uninterrupted continuity of a European people from Paleolithic, Uralic people must belong to the populations of Homo sapiens sapiens coming from Africa, who occupied mid-eastern Europe in Paleolithic glacial times (fig. 6: map on the left), and followed the retreating icecap in Mesolithic, eventually settling in their present territories (map on the right).

Needless to say, the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) is the only model that can offer adequate synchronization of the IE language development with the Uralic one, as conceived by the UCT.

5.2 Basque indigenism? Recent discoveries

 The main novelties concerning Basque come from genetics, but also traditional linguistics has recently made a most important discovery....

... A recent linguistic discovery, however, has cast serious doubts on Basque indigenism, at the same time producing evidence for a much greater antiquity of Indo-European than traditionally thought. And to make this discovery even more striking is the circumstance that its author is a well-known traditional IE specialist, Francisco Villar (Villar 2000).

While this conclusion does not solve the problem of Basque origins, it does make in any case evident that the old doctrine of Basque indigenism, opposed to IE intrusiveness, can no longer be maintained.

5.3 Altaic indigenism in the Euro-Aasiatic steppes

Although the origins of the Altaic (i.e. Turkic and Mongol) people and languages has not yet been the object of serious studies, the common opinion is that their presence in central Asia and eastern Europe should be attributed to a recent migration from an unknown focus (with the usual indifference for the lack of any archaeological evidence supporting this event), replacing an earlier layer of Iranian people, in turn considered also as invaders, submerging the prehistoric presumed pre-IE settlers: the typical scenario of ethnic ‘merry-go-round’ which characterizes the traditional theory. In my books (Alinei 1996, 2000, 2003), I have argued for Altaic indigenism in Asia and eastern Europe, on the basis – among other things – of the following points:

Fig 7. Map of steppes

Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE

Kergan Invasion 4th millenia BC

(1) Throughout history, the Asiatic steppe area has always been inhabited by Altaic pastoral nomadic populations (fig. 7), characterized, among other things, by the use of funerary mounds called kurgan.

(2) The word kurgan ‘funerary mound’, which is not only diffused in Russia, but is diffused in the whole of South-Eastern Europe (Ru. kurgán, ORu. kurganu, Ukr. kurhán, BRu. kurhan, Pol. kurhan, kurchan, kuran ‘mound’; Rumanian gurgan, dial. Hung. korhány), is a loanword from Turkic Tatar: OTc. kurgan ‘fortification’, Tat., Osm., Kum. kurgan, Kirg. and Jagat. korgan, Karakirg. korgon, all from Turkotat. kurgamak ‘fortify’, kurmak ‘erect’. Its distribution area in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the spread area of the Yamnaya (i.e. Pit Grave -Tanslator's Note) or kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe.

(3) As is known, the Yamnaya or kurgan culture descends from the steppic culture called Serednyi Stog (for bibliography see Alinei 2000). It is within the latter culture that horse domestication and horse riding took place for the first time (fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Map of Serednyi Stog (SS) and Kurgan (K) cultures

Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE

Altaics And Uralics 4th millenia BC

The most economical and productive hypothesis is then to consider both the Serednyi Stog and the Yamnaya cultures as Turkic, which would imply that Turkic people were the first to have mastered horse domestication, and to have passed it on to the neighboring people.

This is confirmed by the presence of Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in both branches (Northern and Southern) of Samoyed and in some Finno-Ugric, the antiquity of which has been proved by specialists, and which imply the antiquity of the Turkic presence in Eastern Europe. For example:

(1) From Ancient Tc qaptï, OTsh qap- ‘to grab with hands and teeth’: Proto-Samoyed (= PSam) *kåptê- ‘to castrate’; Sam. kåptê ‘male castrated reindeer’;

(2) From Ancient Tc yam ‘the typical caravan-tent of the nomads’: PSam *yam, S. yamda- ‘to travel with caravan-tent’;

(3) From Ancient Tc yuntâ ‘horse’ (generic): PSam *yunta ‘horse’, Sam. yuntê ‘idem’.

(4) From Tat. alaša ‘pack horse’ (> Tchuv. laša ‘horse’), Osm., Crim.-Turk., Kaz., Kar.-Balk. alaša ‘castrated horse’: Mari alasa and Mordvin alaša ‘castrated horse’.

Especially important is the presence of such Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in both branches of Samoyed, as it proves beyond any possible doubt that Turkic horse-riders were present in the area after the split between Samoyed and Finno-Ugric – the earliest split that occurred in the Uralic phylum, within the framework of the Uralic Paleolithic Continuity certainly datable to the remote prehistory – but before the split and the subsequent profound differentiation of the two Northern (Nenets, Enets, Nganasan) and Southern (Selkup, Sayan) Samoyed branches, which would be altogether absurd to date after the presumed ‘arrival’ of Turkic people in Asia in the 3rd or 4th centuries of our era. This also explains why horse terminology in the European area bordering Asia and in most of Eastern Europe is Turkic (and not IE, nor Iranian!). In Slavic, for example, we have:

(1) From Tat. alaša ‘pack horse’ (> Tchuv. laša ‘horse’), Osm., Crim.-Turk., Kaz., Kar.-Balk. Alaša: Ru. lošad’ ‘horse’, lošá ‘colt’, lošak ‘mule’, Ukr. łošá ‘colt’, łošák ‘young stallion’, Pol. łoszak ‘horse’, ‘tatar horse’, łosze (Vasmer s.v., Buck 3.41);

(2) From Tu. aygur ‘stallion’: Cr., Serb. ajgir, Pol. ogier ‘stallion’ (Buck 3.42);

(3) From an Anatolian word, the three groups of cognate terms, represented by:

(A) ORu. komon’, OPruss. camnet ‘horse’ (Lith. kumelys, Latv. kumelš ‘colt’);

(B) Cr., Serb. konj ‘horse’, ‘castrated horse’, Cz. kůň, Pol. koń ‘horse’;

(C) Cr., Serb. kobila, Cz., Ru. kobyla ‘mare’ (cp. Lat. caballus) (Buck 3.41, DELL);

(4) From Tchuv. χomət, Kasan Tat. kamət, Kirg. kamįt, Mong. χomûd; Ru., Ukr., Slovk. chomút ‘horse collar’, Bulg. chomót ‘idem’, Slovn. homôt, Cz. chomout, Pol. chomąt, Sorb. chomot, all ‘horse collar’. The penetration of this loanword into the Germanic area (Germ. Kummet) as well as in North East Italian dialects, proves the importance of the notion, connected with the beginning of horse riding.

In Hungarian and in the other two Ugric languages the main Turkic loanwords related to horse riding and vehicles are:

(5) Ug. *luw3 (luγe) ‘horse’, Mansi low, lo, luw, Khanti loγ, law etc., Hung. (dial. lo, lu, lú), accus. lovat;

Ug. *närk3 ‘saddle’, Mansi näwrä, naγr etc., Khanti nöγər, Hung. nyerëg;

Ug. *päkka ‘reins’, Mansi behch (17th cent.), Khanti päk etc., Hung. fék;

Ug. *säk3r3 ‘vehicle’, Khanti liker, ikər, Hung. szekér (UEW s.vv., cf. Róna-Tas 1999, 97).

If IE or Iranian people had been the first horse-riders, as maintained by the traditional theory, we would expect to find a large number of IE or Iranian words also in neighboring areas, instead of this conspicuous series of Turkic loanwords.

Also the presence of very ancient Turkic loanwords in Hungarian, recognized by Hungarian scholars and unrelated to horse-riding, proves the antiquity of the Turkic presence in the European area bordering Asia.

As is known, many ancient Turkic loanwords in Hungarian are related to farming (‘corn’, ‘barley’, ‘plow’, ‘wine’ etc.), stock raising (pig, calf etc.), and to very ancient customs (totemic clan names), which specialists consider prehistoric and date to the period preceding the so called Honfoglalás (‘conquest of the territory’).

7 Slavic ethnogenesis in the framework of the PCT
 (We could as well call this section
Türkic and Slavic in Mesolithic - Translator's Note)

7.2 The traditional theory of Slavic ethnogenesis

...As to the prehistoric presence of Slavs in Europe, for a long time the preferred theory was that the earliest Slavs could be identified with the so called Lusacian culture of the Middle and Final Bronze and Iron age, typical of the Polish area and forming a part of the Urn Fields area (see for ex. Neustupný-Neustupný 1963, 195).

At present most specialists agree (cp. Mallory 1989, 78) – with slight variations – on the opinion that the minimal area occupied by Slavs in the Iron or Bronze Age is that indicated for example by Bräuer (1961 I, 29): from Eastern Galice to the upper Don, through Volinia, Podolia, the area on the two shores of Middle Dneper (Kiev, Černigov), Poltava, Kursk and Orel. To the North would live the Balts, and to the North of the Balts the Finnic people. To the South there would be Scythians and from the 7th century on Sarmatians. On the Black Sea the coastal cities would be Greek and to the East of the Slavs the Scythians would extend to the Uralic Mordvins, in the area of Tambov.

For Mallory, the area would be slightly larger, i.e. between the Elbe and Middle Dneper (Mallory 1989, 78). The earliest horizon to which Mallory arrives is that of the Trzciniec culture, of the Middle Bronze (second third of the 2nd millennium), extending from the Oder to the Middle Dneper, and sharing the main features of the Corded Ware and Battle Axe Culture. In this vision he follows many Polish and Russian scholars, who give particular attention not only to the Trzciniec culture, but also to Battle Axe cultures such as those of Komarovo in the Carpathian area, and of Belugrudovo in Ucraine, on the Dneper (cp. Telegin 1994, 403-405). These cultures are considered the origin of the Lusacian one, so that we could say that in comparison with the preceding generation, present scholars have gone one step down in the archeological stratigraphy, reaching the earliest possible level permitted by the general chronology of the kurgan canonic (i.e. Iranian - Translator's Note) theory. The controversy on Trzciniec (which Gimbutas and Baltic scholars claim for themselves!)...

7.4.3 Baltic and Slavic place names

...The Baltic character of river names of the Upper Dneper would exclude the Slavic presence to the North of the Pripet. The area of maximal Slavic concentration would be that between the Oder and the Dneper area (Trubačev 1985, 206). ...

7.5 Slavic ethnogenesis in the PCT

7.5.1 Paleolithic and Mesolithic

...Different lithic industries of East-European Mesolithic can be attributed to two different human populations (e.g. Tringham 1971, 36-7), corresponding to the two basic cultures of Eastern Europe: the South-West of Eastern Europe, characterized by the microlithic industry (sometimes improperly called tardenoisian), common to the rest of Europe, and the Northern part of Eastern Europe, characterized by the Swiderian industry (e.g. Sulimirski 1970, 30 ff.). Uralic specialists, both archaeologists and linguists, see the Swiderian culture as coinciding with the definitive settlements of the Uralic groups in Northern Europe, which it seems to be given the uninterrupted continuity of this area with later cultures which have been attributed with certainty to the different Uralic groups. The other microlithic culture, common to the rest of Europe, could only be considered as corresponding to the sphere of IE influence in Mesolithic (i.e. in Mesolith Europe had only two cultures, one IE and the other Uralic - Translator's Note).

Both in Palaeolithic and in Mesolithic it is necessary to consider the consequences that the glaciations first and the deglaciation later must have had on the distribution of populations.

When the glacial cap covered North-Eastern Europe, the Northern frontier of the Uralic as well as of the Balto-Slavic groups of the North must have been somewhere in Middle Eastern Europe (see fig. 6 ); their Southern frontier, however, would have still be formed by the Black Sea, the Greek peninsula and the Adriatic. In this more restricted area, Balto-Slavs and Uralic people would have been side to side, the former in the West, the latter in the East.

 Fig. 6. Map of Uralic settlements

Click map to enlarge ==> CLICK TO REDUCE

Uralics 1300 to 9000 BC

Within the Balto-Slavic area, the Balts would have occupied the Northern part, by definition more isolated and conservative. If we then project Proto-Greeks on the Greek peninsula (given the certainty of the Greek presence in the Mycenean Greece of the 2nd millennium b.C, the numerous stratigraphies showing continuity from Neolithic to Bronze, the stability of the Greek Neolithic shown by the formation of tells, and the uninterrupted continuity, from Upper Palaeolithic to the Final Neolithic, shown by the recently discovered Franchthi stratigraphy); and if we recognize also in the tells of the Southern Slavic area a guarantee of uninterrupted continuity from Neolithic on (s. further), we must then necessarily see only the Northern frontier of the Balto-Slavic area as fluctuating, as it would be conditioned by the glacial cap and by the mobile character of Mesolithic hunting and gathering populations.

In the postglacial scenario (that of human populations following the retreat of the ice, already admitted for Uralic people), we could imagine the Balts settling on the shores of the now formed Baltic Sea, with the Slavs behind them, and the Uralic people ahead of them proceeding north-eastwards.

The Slavic postglacial area would then form a kind of triangle, the Southern corner of which would correspond to Macedonia, the western frontier of which would pass along the Italid Dalmatia, and delimit the rest of ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, ex-Czechoslovakia, and Southern Poland, and the Eastern frontier of which would delimit Bulgaria, Romania, Western Ukraine, Belorussia and parts of Middle Russia. Northern neighbors of the Slavs would be Balts and Uralic people, South-Western neighbors the Italids of Dalmatia, of the Eastern Alps and of a Po Valley much larger than now, emerging from Northern Adriatic. North-Western neighbors would be Germans, while on the Eastern side their neighbors would be Altaic and, much later parts of the Scythians.

...Prehistorians of South-Eastern Europe never miss to underline that in most cases it is possible to ascertain the continuity of Neolithic cultures from Mesolithic (see further). Moreover, they remark that for a long time the two economies could have coexisted in the same area, as Mesolithic hunters and gatherers lived on the river and the lakes shores, on sand dunes or at the foot of mountains, avoiding precisely the löss plains that were chosen by farmers (Tringham 1971, 35). The synchronism and the complementarity of the two economies enhances thus the thesis of the linguistic unity of the area, and of its continuity from Mesolithic.

7.5.2 Southern Slavic area

...The process of the neolithization of Europe began precisely in the Balkanic peninsula, first in the Aegean area and then inland, in the middle of the 7th millennium. From here, in the course of about 2500 years, the new economy spread along the Danube, to reach Eastern and Central Europe by the 5th millennium BC.

But the first, great Neolithic cultural complex of the Balkans, with all its subsequent developments, is usually subdivided in three main groups (see e.g. Lichardus and Lichardus 1985, 242, 253, 311 ff.), which can be identified, with greater or lesser ease, with as many linguistic groups:

(1) The Thessalian and Southern Macedonian culture of Proto-Sesklo, followed by Sesklo and Dimini, identifiable with the Greek group;

(2) The ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Anzabegovo-Vršnik in Northern Macedonia, Starchevo in Serbia, Körös/Crish in Hungary and Romania, and Karanovo I in Bulgaria; followed later by Vincha (Serbia, Hungary and Romania), Veselinovo (Bulgaria), Dudeshti e Boian (Romania), identifiable with Southern Slavic;

(3) The Albanian ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Vashtemi-Podgornie e Kolsh, followed by those of Chakran and the more recent Maliq, to the last of which Albanian prehistorians themselves attribute the origins of Illyrian.

The fact that these three cultural facies originally formed a unitary block, far from representing an objection to the identification of three different language groups, provides, rather, a further argument in its favor. Since this original block, in fact, represents the earliest neolithized area of Europe, where the impact of the new economy introduced by the Asiatic farmers must have been the greatest, the new Balkanic culture would have first submerged the pre-existing ethnolinguistic frontiers; and in a second phase, by the time the indigenous Mesolithic populations began to actively participate in the adoption of the new economy, the old ethnolinguistic frontiers would emerge again with the successive cultures. Which would of course reflect the original frontiers between Greeks, Slavs and Illyrians. More over, as we shall see shortly, the original homogeneity of this Neolithic Balkanic block can also explain the formation of the so called Balkanic Sprachbund, characterized by a number of peculiar Greek, Albanian, Southern Slavic and Rumanian isoglosses, until now without any satisfactory explanation.

7.5.3 The two Northern Slavic areas: Western and Eastern

In the Northern area, which is now Slavic, Neolithic has been introduced by two different (Southern Slavic) groups of the Painted Ware culture:

(A) in the present Ukraine and Moldova, coming from the lower Danube and from the Balkans, farming groups have created the Neolithic cultures of Bug-Dnestr and successively of Tripolye (Telegin 1994, 376), which we have illustrated in an earlier section as ‘frontier Slavic cultures’, facing the Altaic ones of Crimea and to the East of the Dneper, quite different ethnically and culturally (Chernykh 1992, 37-42);

(B) in the Carpathian basin, farming has been introduced by (Southern Slavic) groups of the Körös/Criş culture, coming from Hungary and Romania (Telegin 1994, 376). The new culture that emerges in this area is that of Lengyel. From the Carpatian basin this culture spread to Southern Slovakia, lower Austria, Southern Moravia, Southern Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, Southern Germany.

7.5.4 The Metal Ages

...From the Balkanic focus area metallurgy spread to the North, i.e. to the Carpathian basin and to the Ukrainian area of Tripolye. Tripolye, in turn, introduced metallurgy among the Asiatic nomadic pastoralists, who developed it in profoundly original manners, achieving that unmistakable metallurgical production of high artistic value which is typical of them, in contrast with the much more functional and industrial-like European metallurgy.

In a context of geographical contiguity and mutual exchange, the (Altaic, as we now know) pastoral warlike cultures of Asiatic steppes, in particolar the Yamnaya or kurgan culture, in turn introduced into Eastern Europe their own fundamental innovations: horse-riding and a patriarchal and warlike ideology that also European late-Neolithic societies were now ready to adopt.

The European re-interpretation of these economic and ideological elements, which manifests itself with the Corded Ware and Battle Axe cultures, has nothing to do with the earliest appearance and early differentiation of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as Gimbutas claimed, but simply represents the emerging of new élites among already differentiated IE groups, in which pastoralism, horse-riding and patriarchal and warlike ideology are integrated in that original form of ‘mixed farming’, typical of Europe, which will eventually lead to the birth of Greek, Etruscan and Latin urban civilizations. And in this new context, the most ancient metallurgical cultures of Europe, that of the Balkanic area, must be seen as Southern Slavic; while Western Slavic will be the Czech metallurgical cultures, and Eastern Slavic Tripolye, which introduces metallurgy into the Altaic area.

Summarizing, the linguistic Slavic area coincides first with the Painted Ware culture (excluding the Albanian one) and with its subsequent extensions to North-West and North-East, and later with the whole ‘Balkano-Carpatian Chalcolithic metallurgical Province’, to which also the Ukrainian culture of Tripolye participates.

Later, not only Tripolye but the entire ‘metallurgical province’ undergo the influence of the Yamnaya/kurgan culture, the expansion of which in the whole of Eastern Europe and parts of Central Europe – one of the main aspects of the Metal Age in Europe – does not bring IE influences, but Turkic ones.

In fact, all Balkanic cultures – Karanovo 6-Gulmeniţa in Bulgaria and Romania (famous for its tells); Salcuţa, Gradesnica-Krivodol, Vinča-Pločnik 2 and Bubanj-Hum 1 in central Balkans; Sopot-Lengyel and Lasinja between Slovenia and Hungary (Lichardus and Lichardus 1985, 367); followed by Cernavoda 3, 2 and Ezero in Bulgaria, and by Cotofeni, Baden, Kostolac e Vučedol in the Eastern, Central and North-Western Balkans, and in the Carpathian basin (idem, 394), although they were differentiated enough to represent Slavic ‘dialects’, towards the end of Chalcolithic they were united again owing to the general influence of the Yamnaya/kurgan steppe culture (idem, 384, 398, 405), shown by the new common features: pit graves and mounds (kurgan), horse raising and horse riding, patriarchal ideology, formation of an aristocratic elite of warriors, battle axes, corded decorations. Cultural traits that have their linguistic parallel in the enormous number of Turkic loanwords in horse terminology and in other semantic spheres, as we shall see shortly.

7.5.5 The problem of the Thracians: a new hypothesis

...The Thracian power is just one of the many manifestations of the new stratified societies and of the new elites of a military and superegional type which characterize Chalcolithic and Bronze, and the formation of which was triggered by the incursions of the kurgan groups and their successors, coming from the Asiatic steppes.

In the new PCT vision, this twofold result produces the following commentary:

(A) we must keep in consideration that the immediate neighbors of the Thracians ancestors – whoever they were – were these intrusive kurgan groups;

(B) in the light of the equation of the kurgan people with the Turkic group, the existence of the Turkic Thrace of historical times, the Turkic original character of the Bulgarians, and the so many aspects of the close relationship between Anatolia, the Agean Sea and the Balkans become much more relevant than we have suspected until now (see chapter III of Alinei 2000).

A single example: the typical shape of the sica, the national weapon of the Thracians (a knife with a curved blade and a sharp point, similar to a zanna di cinghiale (cp. Plinius H.N. XII 1: “apri dentium sicas”, and see the illustration in Rich 1869), used by Thracian gladiators in Rome, is typical of centro-Asiatic metallurgy.

Another commentary is triggered by Hoddinott’s conclusion, which identifies the earliest sure manifestation of the Thracians in the Bronze Age Carpatian culture of Otomani-Wietenberg (in Transylvania, Hungary, Eastern Slovakia). According to the most recent research, this culture represents a continuation of the Baden and Vučedol cultures, and through the latter, is connected to the steppe cultures (see above and cp. for example DP s.v. Vučedol). In the light of the preceding remarks, then, on one hand we could conclude that

also Thracians underwent the same Turkic influences as most other Southern Slavic languages;

on the other – as both Baden and Vučedol in the framework of the PCT can be read as Slavophone cultures,

we could advance the hypothesis that the Thacianas were a Slavic group, which would have been subject to stronger Turkic influences than the other Slavic languages, and eventually extinguished.

A final remark: Herodotus, as is known, describes the Thracians as the most numerous people after the Indians. Mallory comments that it is a “sad irony” they “have left no modern descendant of their language” (Mallory 1989, 72). But is it really so? First of all, if it is hard to admit that a numerous people might completely extinguish, it is even less likely that this pre-existing people would have left no traces in the archaeological record. And since, as we have seen, the demographic explosion of the Slavs must be placed in Neolithic, we could then advance the hypothesis that Thracians was the name that Herodotus gave to the Slavs, owing to the fact the Thracians were one of the most powerful and representative elites of Slavic speaking Eastern Europe, seen with Herodotus’ inevitably colonialist eyes. In a first approximation, then, the Thracians would appear to be a Southern Slavic geo-variational group, out of which came a Bronze age elite, first dominating then extinguished.

This hypothesis could be further developed and refined in the light of the results of research on the Thracian language which, with the caution due to the scarcity of materials, can be so summarized:

(1) Thracian is an IE satem language, like Baltic and Slavic;

(2) as discovered by Trubačev (see above), Thracian place names show a surprising similarity with the Baltic ones;

(3) in some cases, however, Thracian affinities seem stronger with Slavic...

7.6.3 Lexical concordances between contiguous areas: isoglosses or loanwords? Mesolithic examples

...Prehistorians (see e.g. Kozłowski and Otte 1994, 51-53, 101, Nuñez 1997, 94-95) have underlined the impossibility of contacts between Western and Eastern Europe in the last Glacial, owing to the proglacial basins between the icecap in the North and the Alps in the South. This remark obliges us to place the numerous concordances between Balto-Slavic and Germanic in the Post-Glacial period, i.e. in the Mesolithic. ...

...The diversity of the tar name in three different areas of Europe proves, as we have already noted above, that in Mesolithic the main IE differentiation had already taken place. ...

7.6.6 Metal Ages: loanwords and innovations

(Only Türkic-related excerpts are cited completely. A little attention given to Türkic languages in regards to the etymological problems would allow avoiding some obvious bloomers - Translator's Note)

 (1) ‘metallic mineral’: Serb. Cr. Slovn. rúda etc, exclusively Slavic semantic development from the PIE word for ‘red’ must be associated with the earliest metallurgy developed in the Slavic area.

(2) the three groups of Slavic horse names, represented by Russ. kobýla ‘mare’ (cp. Lat. caballus, in my opinion a probable loanword from Slavic), kómon’ ‘horse’ and kon’ ‘idem’, of obscure (obscure, yeah - Translator's Note) origin (see the different hypotheses in Vasmer), are certainly associated with the introduction of horse domestication and horse riding from the Asiatic steppes (Serednyi Stog and Yamnaya cultures);

(3) the Slavic name of the new wheel plough Serb. Cr. plug, etc, of probable Celtic origin;

(4) The Slavic word family represented by OSlav. skotu, Goth. skatts ‘money’, OHG. skaz ‘money, wealth’, Germ. Schatz ‘treasure’, OFris. sket ‘money’ and ‘cattle’. The greater antiquity of stock raising in Eastern Europe would support the hypothesis of a loanword from Slavic, already advanced by several scholars, with a passage from ‘cattle’ to ‘wealth’;

(5) ‘beer, hydromel and other alcoholic drinks except for wine’: OSlav. olu, Lith. alùs, Latv. alus, OPruss. alu ‘hydromel’; OIcel. ogl, Dan. øl, Swed. öl, OEngl. ealu, Engl. ale (except for England/Ireland, all these were replaced with Türkic borrowing "beer" - Translator's Note);

(6) the Germanic family of *kuningaz ‘king’ (cp. Engl. king, Germ. König, Neth. koning etc.) has expanded (besides the Uralic area: Finn. Est. kuningas ‘king’) also to the Balto-Slavic area, where it has acquired different meanings: Russ. knjaz’ ‘prince, groom’, Ukr. knjaz’, OSlav. kunê(d)zi ‘head, king’, Bulg. knez ‘mayor’, Serb. Cr. Slovn. knêz ‘prince’, Slovk. knaz ‘priest’, Pol. ksiadz, Sorb. knez ‘lord’, Lith. kùnigas ‘priest’, Latv. kungs ‘lord’ (Vasmer). This loanword might also be attributed to the influence of the TRB culture, responsible for many innovations, technical as well as social and ideological (but first "king" is attested in the 3rd c. AD in Central Asian coins and in Turanian script - Translator's Note);

(7) ‘evil witch’: Russ. (baba) jagá, Ukr. BRu. (baba)-jahá, Ukr. jazi-(bába) ‘witch, hairy caterpillar’, jáŸa ‘witch’, Bulg. ezá ‘torment, torture’, Serb. Cr. jéza ‘chill’, Slovn. jéza ‘anger’, OCzech jìzì ‘lamia’, Czech jezinka ‘Waldfrau’, ‘evil woman’, Pol. jêdza ‘fury, witch’. Notice the probable origin from PIE (Vasmer), and the exclusion of Baltic. Religion historians place the birth of evil magical beings specialized in the context of stratified societies (Sorry, it is just a straightforward "Old Lady" in every Türkic language, which fact Vasmer should, but would not recognize at all costs - Translator's Note).

7.6.7 The Balkanic Sprachbund in the light of the PCT

...The Balkanic Sprachbund is an ensemble of genetically different languages (namely Rumanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, often Greek, and sometimes also Hungarian and Southern Italian), belonging to five different linguistic groups, which, in spite of their differences, share many important linguistic features. Emanuele Banfi (1985) has recently illustrated its history and various aspects. The discovery of this anomalous linguistic similarity was made by linguists such as A. Schleicher, Fr. Miklosich, H. Schuchardt, H. Pedersen, P. Skok and others, but the scientific notion of Sprachbund or ‘linguistic league’, in the sense of a complex of isoglosses shared by contiguous but genetically different languages, is more recent, as it was advanced by the founders of linguistic structuralism, the Russian N.S. Trubeckoy and the Russian-American R. Jakobson.

Not all isoglosses are present in all five languages, and a few extend to Southern Italian; others, especially lexical, cover the whole Carpatian basin and extend to Ukraine (Banfi 1985, 113). The main so called ‘Balkanisms’ are:

in phonetics and phonology (i) the presence of a neutral vowel (which spreads to Southern Italy);

in morphology: (ii) coincidence of genitive and dative, (iii) future with ‘will’, (iv) analytical comparison, (v) numerals from 11 to 19 with ‘on’ and ‘ten’ (extended to Hungarian), (vi) preservation of vocative;

in syntax: (vii) loss of infinitive, (viii) postposed article and (ix) duplication of object;

in lexicon (x) a great number of common loanwords from Greek, Latin, Slavic, Turkish (and Turkic) and Albanian;

in iconymy or motivations (xi) a great number of common idioms.

...The PCT ... adds a much greater depth to the traditional stratigraphy, allowing, in certain cases, the solution of otherwise unsolvable problems. I will examine, as examples of a new interpretation of the Balkanic Sprachbund, the problem of the postposed article and of some lexical isoglosses.

Postposed article (i.e. agglutinated article in IE languages, observed in areas possibly impacted by Türkic language in pre-historic times, but also during the documented historic times - Translator's Note)

In the Balkanic area, the postposed article – a very peculiar phenomenon – appears in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Rumanian and Albanian. In order to identify its origin, we must first of all recall that in Europe the areas characterized by the postposed article are three: the one of the Balkans, the Scandinavian and the Basque. In the last one, there is no doubt that the phenomenon is independent (Unless it is dependent if Basques are migrants from Uralic/Altaic-influenced zone, see above 5.2 - Translator's Note). Also in the Scandinavian area, it probably represents a local innovation, which has not involved the other, continental and insular, Germanic languages (But again it is a zone of documented Uralic and Türkic influence - Translator's Note). In the Balkans it is shared by languages belonging to (parts of) different groups: Slavic, Illyrian and Neolatin.

Since the remaining Slavic languages not only do not have the postposed article, but they do not even have the article altogether, postposition of the article, as an innovation, can hardly be attributed to the Slavic languages that do show it. Neolatin languages, unlike Latin, do have the article, but always the preposed one, so Rumanian cannot be its origin either. Illiryan – which is the ancestor of Albanian – has been the language of a powerful elite that dominated the Balkanic area and beyond, and as such could very well be the cause of the spread of this phenomenon beyond its focus area. But apart from the fact that it is very poorly documented, it cannot have had this role since its lexicon is very poorly represented in the ‘common Balkanic lexicon’ characteristic of the Balkanic Spracbund (Banfi 1985, 106 ff.).

From the dominating language(s) of a Sprachbund we would expect a major lexical contribution. (If for some mysterious reasons the impact of the obvious Uralic/Altaic influence is ignored, then - Translator's Note) the only remaining hypothesis is (much less likely - Translator's Note) the active role for this innovation has been that of an unknown language, spoken by the immigrating farmers of the Middle East who introduced Neolithic into the area, and who would have had a unifying influence on the languages of the Balkans, precisely as happened later to Byzantium (Banfi). The postposed article, in other words, would have been spread along with that so called ‘Balkanic original lexicon’ (Banfi 1985, 83-85), for which scholars have not been able to find adequate etymologies, and that within the PCT, rather than ‘originary lexicon’, would represent the lexicon of a peri-IE adstratum language.

Lexicon

The greatest support to the thesis of an early Neolithic origin of the Balkanic Sprachbund, however, comes from the examination of its lexicon, the only language component that, with the proper methods, can be dated with sufficient precision (Alinei 1996).

Seen in this light, Greek terms for notions such as ‘tile’, ‘glass’, ‘window’ – keramida, poteri and parathuron –, diffused as they are in the whole of the Balkanic area (Alb. qeramidhe, Bulg. keramida garamida, Serb. cheramida, Rum. caramida, besides Turk. k’eramit, perhaps to be connected with the original language; (Türkic "qarĉa" -"to harden", listed in the Ancient Türkic Dictionary p.425, both semantically, and phonetically inf. "karĉamak" is a perfect match for the source for "keramik", including the Gr. keramida, and, with its agglutinated derivatives, should be an obvious choice in search for the origins of the word. Pokorny considered Gr. keramos and Lat. carbo as versions of the IE root "ker-" "to burn", without giving the Türkic match - Translator's Note) ...

The two Turkic terms for the notions of the ‘shepherd’ and of ‘head of the shepherds’ – çoban (from Pers. (i.e into Pers. - Translator's Note) šuban), and bash – are diffused, respectively, in the Balkans and in the Balkano-Carpatian area: Serb. and Croat. çoban, MGr. tsopánis, Alb. çobán and Rum. cioban; Alb. baç, DRum. Megl. baci, Arum. baciu, bagiu, Serb. and Croat. bach, Hung. bacs, bacsa, bacsó (Skok s.v. bach), Pol. baca ‘Tatra mountain shepherd’, head of the young shepherds’, reg. Czec. bacha ‘shepherd’. The traditional explanation of an Ottoman influence for these Turkic loanwords is difficult to admit. Very rarely colonial masters of historical nations have introduced changes that reach the lower social strata which, on the contrary, they had all reasons to segregate and to isolate from progress. Traditional figures such as the shepherd, the mountain shepherd, the head of the shepherds, are totally alien to their direct interests. On the contrary, such loanwords would be more easily understandable if connected to the introduction of specialized stock raising in the Balkans, by the kurgan culture of the IV millennium or by their later successors (quite obvious and contradicting the preamble "Middle Eastern Neolithics" above - Translator's Note). ...

A more recent layer of the lexicon common to the Balkanic languages can be found in Latin loanwords, ... in Italy and in Corsica filiano belong to two diagnostic terminological systems for the social relationship internationally known as comparazgo. The pair <filiano/filiana> appears only in two variants: the one ...associated to the pair <padrino/padrina> for ‘godfather and god-mother’, and therefore typically ‘patriarchal’, and datable to the Bronze Age; and the other that I have called ‘Etruscan’ (for the areal distribution in high Latium and in Corsica), combined with the pair <compare comare> for god-parents, datable to the Iron Age. Of the two systems, it is probably the Etruscan which spread to the Balkans, during the Etruscan ‘orientalizzante’ period: for precisely the pair <compare/comare> for the ‘god-parents’ appears in Alb. kumbár/kumbáre, in Bulg. kum/kumá, Serb. and Cr. kum/kúma and Rum. cumatru/cumatra (Both Vasmer and Brükner mention and discard the Türkic semantic equivalents, which are at least as close as any alternative, and in some cases are real close: Kuma = "concubine, young wife, maid". The post-Christian semantics of "god-parents" would be unlikely in the Neolithic times  - Translator's Note).

In more general terms, many Latin loanwords in Albanian and in Southern Slavic languages must be reinterpreted as due to a pre-Roman Latin influence, that is as reflections of the very close and well-studied contacts between the Italian peninsula and the Balkans in prehistory.

In short, the PCT permits to explain the forming of the Balkanic Sprachbund much less in terms of the traditional historical contexts (which, however, are not denied), than in those of prehistoric ones, from the first neolithization of Europe, which took place in the Balkans, to the introduction of metallurgy, in which the Balkans, again, played the primary role, to the Bronze and Iron age, in which the influences of other, contiguous dominating elites must have alternated in the spread of their innovations within the Balkanic area.

Conclusion

To conclude, the PCT appears to be not only an obligatory working hypothesis as an explanation for the ethnolinguistic development of Europe (and parts of Asia), but also to provide a set of new methods and reading keys which, once applied to the linguistic and archaeological record, prove to be far superior to both the traditional and to Renfrew’s theory.

REFERENCES

Additional Literature

Karalkin P.I., 1978. The most ancient method of milking cattle // Ethnography of the Altai and Western Sibir peoples. Novosibirsk.
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