I propose instead that there were TWO main waves of language spread into Europe, both including a mixture of language influences, both connected with trade, and both much more recent than has previously been proposed.


Here is a review of what is currently given of the origins of what is called "Indo-European":

- The earliest two cultures mentioned as "Indo-European" may be simply neolithic movement north along the rivers, simpler to many others. We don't know what language(s) they spoke, ?and there are no signs of Indo-European customs? Both are very localized, no signs of spread:

(1) The Samara culture - early 5th millennium BCE at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga [River] (Syezzheye, Russia). Marija Gimbutas was the first to regard it as the Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language. [and included in her list of "Kurgan" cultures]

(2) 5300 - 4800 BCE - Lepenski Vir - Serbia, central Balkan peninsula on the banks of the Danube in Yugoslavia. "Some experts believe that the people who lived at Lepenski Vir were speakers of the original Indo-European tongue."



- The next cultures called "Indo-European" do have cultural signs (burial style, horse domestication). But their language is not necessarily Indo-European. And they are still localized:

(3) 4500-3500 BCE - The Sredny Stog culture situated just north of the Sea of Azov between the Dnieper and the Don. Inhumation was in a ground level pit, not yet capped by a tumulus (kurgan). The deceased was placed on his back with the legs flexed. Ochre was used. Phase II also knew corded ware pottery, which it may have originated, and stone battle-axes of the type later associated with expanding Indo-European cultures to the West. Most notably, it has perhaps the earliest evidence of horse domestication (in phase II, ca. 4000-3500 BC). In the context of the modified Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, this pre-kurgan archaeological culture could represent the Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.

(4) 3500 - 2500 BCE - Afanasevo culture - southern Siberia, but the culture was also widespread in western Mongolia, northern Xinjiang, and eastern and central Kazakhstan, with connections or extensions in Tajikistan and the Aral area. The economy seems to have been semi-nomadic pastoralism, with cattle, ovicaprids and horse remains being documented, along with those of wild game. The culture is mainly known from its inhumations, with the deceased buried in conic or rectangular enclosures, often in a supine position, reminiscent of the Yamna burials, but there are a number of settlements as well. Metal objects and the presence of wheeled vehicles are documented. The burials bear a remarkable resemblance to those much further west in the Yamna culture, the Sredny Stog culture, the Catacomb culture and the Poltavka culture, all of which are believed to be Indo-European in nature, particularly within the context of the Kurgan hypothesis as put forward by Marija Gimbutas and her followers. Kozshin (1970) has identified perforated horn pieces as riding bits, but this claim has been disputed.

(5) 3500-2300 BCE - Yamna/Kurgan - Pontic-Caspian (east of Black Sea) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_steppe

(6) 3200 BCE - wheeled vehicles appeared in Hungary (OB, 255) "The Corded Ware culture, alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture is an enormous European archaeological horizon that begins in the late Neolithic (Stone Age), flourished through the Copper Age and finally culminates in the early Bronze Age, developing in various areas from ca. 3200 BC/2900 BC to ca. 2300 BC/1800 BC. It represents the introduction of metal into Northern Europe, and possibly an early expansion of the Indo-European family of languages."

(7) Presence of domestic horses in the Afanasievo culture of southern Siberia by the third millennium (Mallory, 162)
It is in the Gorgan region that the domestic horse first appears in the Near East about 3000-2250 BC. (Mallory)


- Finally we have a transfer of culture (horse domestication). But not necessarily Indo-European language. But if there is spread, it is TO THE EAST.

(8) 2400 - 1900 BCE - Qijia culture - early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of western Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. Extensive domestication of horses are found at many Qijia sites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qijia_culture


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SO FAR, A CUSTOMS CLUSTER (horse domestication, burial styles) has spread from CAUCASIAN areas EAST into Siberia and as far as China. BUT THERE IS NO SIGN OF ANY MOVEMENT INTO THE MIDEAST OR EUROPE OF LANGUAGE OR OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN CUSTOMS.

In fact, as late as 2300 BCE, there are only local peoples with customs proposed as Indo-European in the Mideast and Europe:
THE HURRIANS, IN FACT, RECORD BEING SURROUNDED BY NON-INDO-EUROPEAN: 23rd century - Hurrians' own inscriptions and texts in north Mesopotamia which date as early as the 23rd century BC, all speak for an additional non-Indo-European presence on the eastern borders of the Indo-Europeans of Anatolia. To their south were the lands of the Semites and (formerly) Sumerians, again non-Indo-European speakers. / The natural conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that the Indo-European-speaking Anatolians were intrusive into central Anatolia and were unlikely to have emigrated from directly east or SE of this region where major non-Indo-European populations are historically attested. . . . foreign loanwords in Hittite and Luwian . . . Indo-European Anatolians had already undergone considerable assimilation to the culture of the non-Indo-European Anatolians before they appear in history. [In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth - J. P. Mallory 1989]

Finally, TRUE cultural movement occurred, but TO THE EAST:

2000–1500: Catacomb culture north of the Black Sea. The chariot is invented, leading to the split and rapid spread of Iranian and Indo-Aryan from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex over much of Central Asia, Northern India, Iran and Eastern Anatolia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

There is perfect agreement with another movement: 15,000 - 10,000 BCE: Blood Type B develops in Himalayan highlands (Asia). First appeared in India or the Urals among a mix of Caucasion and Mongolian tribes. Moved on to Eastern Europe, northern and southern China, India. [NOT INTO CENTRAL EUROPE]

I would suggest that this "Indo-European" development is an eastern-European connection with the Chinese, if anything. In fact, ca 1750 BCE: "In the taiga and forest-steppe zone, an important network of contacts stretched from the Ural mountains to the Altai, and gave rise to a common north-Eurasian metallurgical tradition based on the hollow casting of bronzes" - http://www.csen.org/koryakova2/Korya.Bronze.html. / "This was the ancestor both of the Chinese bronze-casting tradition for ritual vessels of the Shang and Chou periods, and of advanced types of hollow-cast weapons and tools (spearheads, axes) in northern Europe. A further impact . . . was the incorporation of the steppe chariot-complex in the later Shang period. / Early second millennium BC - Seima-Turbino metallurgy, from the Urals to the Altai, typical products (e.g. socketed spearheads), found as far apart as the eastern Baltic, Bessarabia, the Baikal region and China." http://www.archatlas.org/EastWest/EastWest.php

(I would suggest that this Eastern Europe - Chinese tie lasts all the way in history down to the Mongols and Genghis Khan. Except for the Tocharians, there is almost no evidence of Caucasions east of the Caucasus, as Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, and the few other travelers who visited central and east Asia reported.)

Finally, c. 1750 BC, nomadic shepherds, the Aryans, are thought to have entered India from Central Asia and the Russian steppes, and the Vedic period starts in India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_century_BC [I am investigating what the proof is of this. It seems to be just implied from changes that happened in India.]


However, there WAS another "intrusion" of Indo-European into the Mideast just about this time: the Hittites, ca 1800 BCE. And they may have spread ANOTHER mix of Indo-European with ties to Sanskrit, also locally, but this time through warfare, and the intrusion may have been critical for the spread of Indo-European into central Europe, because it was into Greece . . . but first:

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BACKING UP: Meanwhile, there WAS another huge movement of language and culture underway: along the Mediterranean seacoast and north up European rivers, as far as Spain and on into Britain, AND up the Danube or other rivers into Scandinavia - in search of TIN and COPPER. It began as early as 3000 BCE and appears to have emanated from Anatolia and Syria/Palestine. It may be perhaps as old as the Luwians, but it definitely is contemporary with the Phoenicians of Byblos. At the same time, there is influence from India, through the presence of the Hurrian (and possibly from Hattian) culture, and from trade as far back as Sumer Uruk by way of Dilmun. After centuries of mining and trading, possibly by boat, there are signs of a spread of customs along the Mediterranean coast around 2400 BCE, the Maritime Bell Beaker complex. This is followed quickly by the beginning of the Irish Bronze Age 2400 - 2200 BCE.

There are no horses involved, no conquests, no warfare. Just trading. However, there are definite signs of a language transmission: Semitic, AND (wait for it!) "Celtic". This "Celtic" is unconnected with the true Celtic of eastern Europe. It is a misnomer for a Semitic / Sanskrit transmission. One step of this argument at a time:

MARITIME BELL BEAKER SPREAD ALONG MEDITERRANEAN COAST TO BRITAIN: "Cunliffe traces a different distribution and history for another type of beaker, called the Maritime Bell Beaker . . . he sees these as markers for an Atlantic facade trade and culture network through which metal-mining and possibly Celtic languages were introduced to the British Atlantic fringe from 4,400 years ago. [= circa 2400 BC.] He argues that the Maritime Bell Beaker form evolved in Portugal, rather than the Netherlands, from about 2,800 BC. . . . " (OB page 268)

"Maritime Bell Beakers: the style evolved in Portugal and spread by maritime trade along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts (arrows) and also to the western rather than eastern British Isles." (OB Figure 5.12b caption, near page 267)

FURTHERMORE, OPPENHEIMER QUOTES VENNEMANN THAT THERE ARE SIGNS OF A SEMITIC REMNANT IN BRITAIN:
"Vennemann . . . argues . . . that Picts were a Semitic-speaking remnant of a pre-Celtic people"). (Oppenheimer page 39-40) /
German linguist Theo Vennemann has recently suggested on place-name and other evidence that this non-Indo-European Pictish language could have been derived from Semitic as a result of Neolithic intrusions of forebears of the Phoenicians (see p. 250). (OB 83-84)

Furthermore, Oppenheimer argues that the Bell Beaker People may have moved from Portugal north up the Atlantic coast, possibly carrying the Celtic languages - on the basis of genetic similarities with Iberian peninsula: "By studying the structural effects of this linguistic type both on Insular Celtic, and subsequently on English, Vennemann deduces that it was in fact a Semitic language. 'Atlantic' would have arrived, like Phoenician another Semitic language, from farther east in the Mediterranean, with its last relict surviving in now-extinct Pictish. The interesting point about Vennemann's hypothetical Semitic language 'Atlantic' is that it provides a linguistic geographic partner to male line J2 which does characterize Semitic-speaking peoples in the eastern Mediterranean." (OB 249)

On OB pages 292-296, Oppenheimer reviews linguist opinions about general Indo-European splits, and there is a map on page 294 & 295. But in the end (page 296), his summary is: "Surprisingly, this packaging seems to fit the genetic story well. It would be difficult not to suggest LBK pots carrying Y-group lan up the Danube for Proto-Germanic languages. We could then match the spread of Cardial Ware along the Mediterranean with Ilb2 and E3b for Proto-Italic, and ultimately Maritime Bell Beakers and the same Y markers for Proto-celtic spreading along the Atlantic coast into the British Isles. But neat associations are not proof, and the Neolithic is not the only period in which such a pattern could have occurred."

And indeed, Vennemann has now revised his theory of WHEN the Semitic superstratum may have arrived in Europe:
"Punic, the Semitic language spoken in classical Carthage, is a superstratum of the Germanic languages. According to Vennemann, Carthaginians colonized the North Sea region between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC; this is evidenced by numerous Semitic loan words in the Germanic languages, as well as structural features such as strong verbs, and similarities between Norse religion and Semitic religion. This theory replaces his older theory of a superstratum of an unknown Semitic language called "Atlantic"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Vennemann :

Note that Vennemann is not just arguing that there is a superstratum of Semitic in Celtic, but in many European languages.

http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/hebrew.html - gives this illustration of that possibility:
THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE EARLY IRISH-CELTIC AND THE SECOND CENTURY, B.C., HEBREW- PHOENICIAN LANGUAGE, AS SHOWN BY THE PENULUS OF PLAUTUS:

PHOENICIAN OF PLAUTUS:
Byth lym mo thym nociothii nel ech an ti daisc machon
Ys i do iebrim thyfe lyth chy lya chon temlyph ula.

EARLY IRISH-CELTIC:
Beth liom' mo thime nociaithe, niel ach an ti dairie mae coinne
Is i de leabhraim tafach leith, chi lis con teampluibh ulla.

So the Beaker people could well have carried Semitic / Phoenician / Celtic language roots with them.

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I propose a different timing than either of Vennemann's theories, at a date in-between them: that the Semitic superstratum of "Celtic" / Semitic / Phoenician arrived with the Bell Beaker movement, ca 2400 BCE, which was based on a trading movement from the Middle East. In fact, that match is perfect:

"The distributions of so-called Maritime Bell Beakers, a distinct form of pottery traded along the Atlantic and western Mediterranean coasts of France, Britain, Spain and northern Italy in the early third millennium BC (see Chapter 5 and Figure 5.12b) are remarkably coincident with the map of inscriptional evidence for celtic languages over two thousand years later. More specifically, when tin later came to be used to make bronze, it was mined from the same key metal-rich locations of the Atlantic coast (western Spain, Brittany, Cornwall, north Wales and southern Ireland) that made up the later tin trading networks of the first millennium BC discussed earlier (see pp. 40-1)." (OB 103)

Two languages which seem to have as much influence from Celtic as from later Indo-European occur in the Maritime Bell Beaker area: Ligurian (along the Italian coast near the border with France, where until very recently Occitanian was still spoken; and Lusitanian along the Iberian coast, bordering the area where Celtiberian was spoken. Map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_language

Furthermore:
Cunliffe notes that 'the earliest [Irish] metallurgy seems to be coeval with the appearance of the earliest beakers'. (OB 103)
In fact, 2000 - 1500 - precious metals joined the Neolithic trade routes, with items such as gold lunulae (ornaments in the shape of a crescent moon) moving from Ireland to Cornwall and Brittany. (OB, 273 - quoting Cunliffe)

Isn't it interesting that this timing finally fits quite well with traditional Irish history?
1934 - Fir Bolg arrive in Ireland - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_High_Kings_of_Ireland
Fir Bolg were "short and dark". Established kingship and a system of justice - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythological_Cycle

"Around 1900 BC the Tuatha De Danann, skilled artisans, replaced the Firbolgs and supplied another series of nine kings, who ruled until 1700 BC." (OB) (These are NEW DATES, differing from the traditional.) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_High_Kings_of_Ireland / Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_Dé_Danann

Just to throw additional controversy into this theory, I will add an unproven theory from Robert Graves ((White Goddess):
"The Tuatha de Danaan had been driven northward from Greece as a result of an invasion from Syria and eventually reached Ireland by way of Denmark, to which they gave their own name ('The Kingdom of the Danaans') and North Britain."

Outlandish? Maybe, but compare this: In Medieval literature the region of Scythia is sometimes alluded to as the ultimate Norse homeland in the Danish and Icelandic sagas. - Oppenheimer (OB) (More of this argument for a Middle Eastern origin to Scandinavian Bronze Age culture.)

In fact, the SCANDINAVIAN bronze age is thought to have started just about the same time, 1800 BCE - http://www.britam.org/Questions/QuesPhoenicians.html

1800 BC: Beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age in the period system devised by Oscar Montelius. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_century_BC

And how they got there? Up the Danube, where they were able to connect with other rivers i.e. the Rhine, that flow into the Baltic:
2300-1600 Unetice Bronze Age culture - Bohemia, Czech Republic, southern & central Germany, western Poland [= movement north along rivers]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unetice_culture

Thus the movement may have arrived in Britain from the North. Whether or not this is true, my proposal still holds. Both movements could have originated in the Mideast.

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CONCLUSION: Semitic/Sanskrit connections could have appeared in what is now mis-named "Celtic" (Gaelic or Irish, Scotch, Welsh) without any involvement of the Indo-European Kurgan cultures, by simple trade with the Middle East.

There is plenty of evidence for the Semitic/Sanskrit connection with British "Celtic" and Phoenician:

Commonality of "Celts" of Ireland and Semitic/Phoenician:
THE HEBREW - CELTIC CONNECTION - http://www.ensignmessage.com/archives/hebrew.html Phoenician Origin of the Celts - The Phoenicians and the Celts may have originated in the Indus Valley, and also the Knossus Civilization of Crete, circa 2600 BC, plus perhaps the Sumerians, who came by sea to Sumer around 3800 BC. Or... perhaps the Phoenician, but NOT the original "Celts" were from the Indus Valley, and today's Celts are actually a mixture of the Phoenicians plus a "pre-Celtic" group. http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/geoghist/histories/Oldcivilization/phoenicia/origin/originlanguage/celts.html

Commonality of "Celts" of Ireland and Hindu India:
- Women of the Celts - Jean Markale (the whole book)

- The Celtic Realms: The History and the Culture of the Celtic Peoples from Pre-History to the Norman Invasion - by Myles Dillon & Nora Chadwick 1967 - Gives many correspondances between Irish, Greek, Hindu.

- Oppenheimer in "The Origins of the British" clears up mistake about the origins of the Celts made by Venceslas Kruta in his book Celts (2004) based on Roman writings:
Simon James: The Atlantic Celts - unravels a modern myth created in the early 18th century by a Welsh antiquarian, Edward Lhuyd. The term 'Celtic' had never been applied to inhabitants of the British Isles until the time of Lhuyd . . . The connection, or further conflation, of Atlantic Celts with the Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tene cultures has no basis in direct linguistic evidence . . .

Diodorus Siculus, writing in Greek rather earlier than Strabo, states: "distinction . . . people who dwell in the interior above Massalia [Marseilles], those on the slopes of the Alps and those on this [northern] side of the Pyrenees mountains are called Celts (Keltoi), whereas the peoples who are established above this land of Celtica in the parts which stretch to the north, both along the ocean and along the Hercynian Mountain [today's Massif Central], and all the peoples who come after these, as far as Scythia, are known as Gauls (Galatai); the Romans, however, include all these nations under a single name . . . Gauls (Galatai) . . . = Celtic heartland . . . [not . . . southern Germany, but ]. . . Narbonne: a small area around Marseilles, north of the Pyrenees, west of the Alps and south of the Massif Central, and probably east of Aquitaine.

Numerically, the centre of gravity and greatest diversity of forms for Continental celtic place-names were in France south of the Seine, Spain and northern Italy, as predicted by the distribution of early celtic inscriptions. There were very few celtic place-names much east of the Rhine or north of the Danube. There is similar paucity of celtic place-names in the southern Balkins, Romania and Hungary, to the south-east. 15 [David Parsons and Patrick Sims-Williams: Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place-names of Europe, 2000 & Sims-Williams: Ancient Celtic Place-Names in Europe and Asia Mino, Publications of the Philological Society, Vol. 39, 2006]

Commonality of Phoenicians with India: http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/geoghist/histories/Oldcivilization/phoenicia/rigveda/rigveda.html

There is a further connection of Sumer/Semite/Phoenician/Hebrew with India and Southeast Asia through the metals trade based on similarities in the words for copper, tin, and bronze. More here.

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To return to earlier in this presentation, to finish the argument:
There WAS another "intrusion" of Indo-European into the Mideast just about this time: the Hittites, ca 1800 BCE. And they may have spread ANOTHER mix of Indo-European with ties to Sanskrit, also locally, but this time through warfare, still locally (only in Anatolia) but that intrusion may have been the critical one for the spread of Indo-European into central Europe, because it was into Greece.

Yes, the Hittites may have jostled their Anatolian neighbors around enough that some of them moved on to nearby Greece, which up to that point had been settled by Middle Eastern-originating settlers from the Cyclades and Crete. [Speakers of the Hittite, Euwian and other Anatolian languages made relatively small migrations within the homeland, and their languages died there with them. (Scientific American - March 1990)]

I see no evidence of Greeks coming from anywhere else, and indeed DNA is now showing that their origin is Africa:
"Greeks are found to have a substantial HLA gene flow from sub-Saharan Ethiopian and Black people [3,20]. This is why Greeks are Mediterranean outliers in all kind of analyses [19-21,28]. This African genetic and cultural input was documented by Herodotus [33] who states that the daughters of Danaus (who were black) came from Egypt in great numbers to settle in Greece. Also, ancient Greeks believed that their religion and culture came from Egypt [33]. An explanation of the Egypt-to-Greece migration may be that a densely populated Sahara (before 5000 BC) may have contained an admixture of Negroid and Caucasoid populations, and some of the Negroid populations may have migrated by chance or unknown causes towards present day Greece [19,34-36].
This could have occurred when hyperarid Saharan condition become established and large-scale migration occurred in all directions out from the desert. In this
case, the most ancient Greek Pelasgian substratum would come from a Negroid stock. A more likely explanation is that at an undetermined time during Egyptian
pharaonic times a Black dynasty with their followers were expelled and went towards Greece where they settled [20, 30].
Once an African input to the ancient Greek genetic pool is established, it remains to be determined what the cultural importance of this input is for constructing the
classical Hellenistic culture. The reason why a sub-Saharan admixture is not seen in Crete is unclear but may be related to the influential and strong Minoan
empire, which hindered foreigners establishment if the African invasion occurred in Minoan times [19, 20]."
http://kinoko.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~duraid/stolen_science/The_Origin_of_Palestinians_and_Their_Genetic_Relatedness_With_Other_Mediterranean_Populations.pdf

There need not have been wars or violence. There was still room for settlers in central Greece, as the earlier settlers mostly settled on the coast, then moved gradually toward the center. But the influx is critical, because that would be all that was needed for a newer language influx - still Semitic, but with new ties to the Indo-European movement that had indeed supposedly moven EAST from the Mideast into Iran and all the way to India, so it would have been in contact with India and Sanskrit. And this small move could have given birth eventually to classical Greece, and then to Rome, which was the culture that forcibly imposed its language and culture on a still-matrifocal Europe.

And that is all that was necessary to see the language patterns we see today.
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Mixed Vasconic and Semitic:
1800? - ANATOLIAN > Luwian, Hittite, Palaic > Lycian + Lydian
Hurrian, Scythian, Medes, Urartu
Hebrew
Ligurian language — "possibly not Indo-European; possibly close to or part of Celtic."
Lusitanian language — "possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, or Ligurian, or Italic."
Celtiberian - similarities to Basque
Aquitanian
Minoan, Achaean

Phoenician-Semitic-mis-named-Celtic proto-mix that overlaid the previous Vasconic:
1800? - CELTIC > Irish > Breton, Welsh, Cornish

Indo-European:
1500 - IRANIAN > Avestan, Persian, Pashto, Pamir, Kurdish
1500 - INDIC > Sanskrit > Pali > Gujerati, Marathi, Panjabi, Hindi, Hindustani, Bengali, Singhalese
1000 - [GRAECO-ARYAN] (GREEK)
500 - [DACO-]THRACIAN, PHRYGIAN
500 AD - [GRAECO-] ARMENIAN, TOCHARIAN, [BALTO-]SLAVIC > Russian + Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat + Czech + Polish
1000 AD - BALTIC > Latvian, Lithuanian
1 AD - GERMANIC > Old Norse > Swedish, Danish + Icelandic, Norwegian
     > Old English > English
     > Low German > Dutch, Flemish, Frisian
     > Old High German > German
1500 AD - ITALIC/VENETIC/MESSPIC/ILLYRIAN > Latin > Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian + Albanian
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Sorry, Colin Renfrew, Maria Gimbutas, and the rest of the academic world. This is the only way everything fits properly. It's time to weed out all the hypotheses that have been promulgated since the 1800s and start basing connections on a new chronology.

Proposed by Judith Goldsmith, Independent Scholar, December 2009