Moderator: Aldus Marius
Are either either of you familiar with the French historian and Indiologist Alain Danielou's theory of a loosely related Indo-Mediterranean culture existing prior to the Indo-European incursions? I gather some recent linguistic work is suggesting that Elamite, Etruscan, Pelasgian, Ligurian and other anomalous Mediterranean languages share roots with Dravidian.
The book I read was "A Concise History of India," and I'm embarrassed to admit that it was the title that led me to believe that he was an historian. I just looked him up on the web and actually he was a musician and artist (quite honored and renowned I take it) who devoted himself to bringing the Hindu culture west. Sorry about that.
Still, I have read other works suggesting trade links (certainly) and cultural links (probably) between the Indus and Mediterranean civilization prior to Indo-E, I , A and Semitic incursions.
Still, I have read other works suggesting trade links (certainly) and cultural links (probably) between the Indus and Mediterranean civilization prior to Indo-E, I , A and Semitic incursions.
Do enlighten us about this. I'm curious.
Vale,
Atticus
C. Moravius Laureatus wrote:Salvete,
I would echo my gensmate's doubts about evidence based on DNA technology...
Did you know for instance that humans and bananas share 34% of their DNA ? Can we infer that we did in the past share some common culture ?
Ambrosius Celetrus wrote:Moravius, I am aware that there much controversy about Gimbutas' conclusions about the matrifocal nature of the Neolithic Old Europeans, but have not yet run into the assertion that the Indo-Europeans (Indo-Aryans and Indo-Iranians) did not originate from a central Asian homeland. Am I misreading your post?
M Moravi Horati Piscine wrote: Multiplicity seems to be the case whether you are speaking of material cultures or language groups, and one would suspect ethnicity as well. These overlap one another. The old assumptions I do not think apply. Language alone does not equate with culture, material culture, social structure or ethnicity. You cannot assume that if a group of agriculturalists had horses that they were IE's or spoke an IE language. Or if they were agriculturalists and didn't have horses that they did not speak an IE language. By the time we can distinguish out one group from the next, it is too complex a situation to make simple assertions or rely on simple assumptions.
M Moravi Horati Piscine wrote:There are different theories about where the Indo-Europeans may have originated. Gimbustus placed them north of the Caspian Sea. Others claimed they started in Europe. Hodge had them as far south as the area around the Sinai, and another posed they started as far north as the North Pole. I am not referring to modern Syria but to ancient Syria, which extended a little further north. Renfrew placed the IE origin in what today would be central and southeastern Turkey, while Gamkrelidze and Ivanov place them further east around Armenia. I tend to agree with these views rather than the Central Asia theory. That is, the northern area of what has been called the Fertile Crescent, or the mountainous area just north of it. Anyway J. P. Mallory discusses some of the theories in his [i]In Search of the Indo-Europeans[/i}, 1989. There is probably newer theories by now, but there is no agreement on what we mean by IE, let alone where they originated.
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