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Title: Archaeology and Language : The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins by Colin Renfrew ISBN: 0-521-38675-6 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 26 January, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.27 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A challenging model for the spread of indo-european
Comment: Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been recognised that most languages can be grouped together with others based on their common roots.
One of these groups is that of the indo-european languages (which include the germanic, romance, celtic, slavic, baltic,
greek and indo-iranian languages).
At one time the area in which these related languages were spoken stretched from the Atlantic to the Far East
and from Scandinavia to the Indian sub-continent.
Most archaeologists and linguists have suggested: a) that the origin of the indo-european languages lies within the relatively
recent past, most probably within the steppes of southern Russia; and b) that the subsequent expansion of the language group was the
effect of waves of invading groups stemming from that area.
In this challenging and fascinating book, Professor Renfrew suggests that the time-depth of the spread and development of these
languages coincided with the spread of agriculture from its middle eastern (e.g. in this case anatolian) origins. He also presents models for the
spread of these languages which are intuitively satifying in that they do not require great hordes of people wandering around europe
for no particular reason.
If you are interested in the origins of the indo-european languages (including english, of course) this is a great place to start.
Rating: 3
Summary: provocative but unconvincing
Comment: renfrew's book appears to try to prove that there were no mass migrations into europe that carried the indo-european languages into this continent, and it appears that he is altogether uncomfortable with the idea of mass migrations altogether. well, the migrations of celts and germans were facts that were recorded by greek and roman observers, and they were movements of whole populations, not just fighting men, so if you find it uncomfortable to admit that mass migrations took place, too bad. better documented and more recent examples are the movements of slavs and turks during the last two millennia. so migrations are facts.
the second fact that renfrew appears to overlook is that the indo-european languages are too similar to one another to have differentiated at the time when farming spread from anatolia to europe.
the third fact he appears to overlook is one also found in biology and is hence relevant (language, after all, is a behavioural phenomenon of humans, who are biologically speaking mammals): you derive the species from the territory of its genus, and the most likely candidate for the territory of the genus is the area with the greatest linguistic diversity, and this in this case is eastern europe with celtic, germanic, slavic, baltic, a bit further south italic, illyrian, dacian and proto-greek. armenian is also originally a balkan-type language, so you really have hittite, tokharian and indo-iranian that cannot be shown to derive from that area. you do not have that diversity reported for anatolia.
there are other points, too, but these are the most salient i can think of. it appears to be a tortured attempt to prove that 1) there were no bloody mass-migrations into europe (what were all these tombs containing iron weapons, then?) and 2) IE originated and spread from, anatolia. in my opinion it fails in both, but thanks dr renfrew again, it is a very provocative book.
Rating: 3
Summary: reasonable if not compelling
Comment: Judging from the reviews posted so far, this appears to be a topic over which there is heated disagreement. Notwithstanding the assertions that Professor Renfew's rejection of mass migrations is nothing more than a political agenda, however, there really do seem to be reasons to doubt whether the spread of Indo-European into Europe was the result of a late immigration.
The latest genetic evidence of which I am aware includes studies both of the Y chromosome and of mitochondrial DNA, and both seem to agree in the broad picture that they paint: that modern Europeans are in the main a combination of three groups:
(1) an early paleolithic population that separated into a eastern and a western branch during the last ice age
(2) a later paleolithic group that settled in central Europe
(3) neolithic farmers, late mimmigrants from the Middle East, who spread out along the Mediterranean coast
Archaeologically, there seems to have been only one movement of importance that could plausibly be associated with the spread of Indo-European: the movement of the Danubian farmers that seems to correspond to the genetic population (2) plus smaller elements of population (3) from whom they presumably learned agriculture. Indo-European words seem to indicate a level of culture that would be appropriate for the Danubian farmers: the knowledge of grain and grape crops, livestock, metal, wheeled vehicles, and forts, but not cities, weights and measures, irrigation, or an advanced mathematical system. The Indo-European number seven, for example, is apparently borrowed from Semitic, which argues against mathematical sophistication. Judging from the apparent lack of words for them, the early Indo-Europeans do not seem to have been aware of any non-European animals except leopards, which were abundant in neighboring Anatolia. Claims have been made that they had words for monkey, elephant, and even snow leopard, buth they seem to be doubtful: the claimed words for monkey, for example, are almost certainly borrowed from Semitic.
Profressor Renfew of course advocates an Anatolian rather than a European origin for Indo-European, and it is harder to comment on specifically that aspect of his thesis. Indo-European apparently did not, as he notes, have a word for olive, nor, one might add, for fig, pomegranate, or antelope, as one might expect from a group originating in Anatolia, but it seems impossible to rule it out. Perhaps the Danubian farmers got not merely their knowledge of farming, but their language as well, from immigrants.
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Title: In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth by J. P. Mallory ISBN: 0500276161 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Genes, Peoples, and Languages by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Mark Seielstad ISBN: 0520228731 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 07 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, Sarah Thorne, Heather Mimnaugh ISBN: 0201442310 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Origin of Language : Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen ISBN: 0471159638 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Comparative Mythology by Jaan Puhvel ISBN: 0801839386 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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