Q: Language As a Means of Tracing Human O

Will human millions of years from now, find hotwheels toys, and think we worshipped cars?

But we do.
Britian alone sacrifices 3500 people a year to the great car god, and no questions it.

Originally posted by Sharrukin The religion of these "Old European" agriculturalists revolved around the Great Earth Mother goddess, while the religions of all IE cultures revolved around the Great Skygod known in all IE languages as father "Day".  In Latin he was Deus, in Greek he was Dios (Zeus), and in Sanskrit he was Dyaus.

  Oh God! Archeologists find prehistoric dolls of fat women, and they think there was a Great Earth Mother Goddess! What next? Will human millions of years from now, find hotwheels toys, and think we worshipped cars?

Yeah, maybe they didn't actually ride these acient horses, but that doesn't mean they don't have a word callign these thing horses.  This actually supports some of what you said about how Anatolian didn't have horse but these's a common root word for horse in IE languages.  In fact, in the pre-historic French caves, there are paintings of horses too.  Just because they disappeared doesn't mean people don't remember them. 

 

The Chinese character for elephant is 象 (which is actually the pictoral representation of an elephant if you look at it sideways, in the more ancient chinese writings it is very clear it's an elephant).  However there hasn't been elephants in China since the last ice-age.  This doesn't mean the Chinese can't know what an elephant is. 

Therefore we all knew what horses were and did not have them introduced by the mythical invading Aryans.

There are 17,000 year old paintings of horses in Dusheh cave in Iran.

One should stand extremely critical (if not downright dismissive) towards the Indoeuropean theory and it's implications. Current studies, especially in the last 2 decades, show that the artificial linguistic construct of the IE theory doesn't hold much water, after close examination.

During the 19th century and well into the 20th (see Marija Gimbutas and her Kurgan theory) the IEists (or Arryanists) talked about subsequent waves of Arryan invasion into Europe (and destruction of the "Old Europe" culture) during the late 3rd millenia and the early 2nd millenia.

The archeological findings, despite the heavy manipulation and "adjustment" to fit into the IE timeframe, didn't concur. So, new theories emerged. James Mallory modified Gimbutas' theory, to expand it to the timeframe suggested by Sharukin in his previous post (the first waves of migration coming in Europe about 4000 BC). But still evidential support was nonexistent or controversial at best. Colin Renfrew suggested in his work that the IE family was never located in the Black Sea - Ukraine area, but started off from Asia Minor, and preceeded into Europe via the Balkans. That theory made much more sense evidential-wise, since the oldest findings of permanent settlements in Europe are located in the Southern Balkans (modern day Greece and Bulgaria), something that would be funny if we accepted waves coming from above the Black Sea area. The start of those waves of migration was pulled even further back: Renfrew suggests 7000 BC as the starting point for the westward move (not invasion, since archeological evidence never could support the theory of the "advanced, warlike, supreme Arryans" who came in "to crush the pastoral, peaceful OldEuropeans"  - Renfrew talks about a peaceful massive migration over a very long time period).

But the troubles for the IE theory hadn't even started. New findings and correct (read: not manipulated) interpretation and dating of older findings, seem to strike a decisive blow into the once dominant IE hypothesis, by indicating a strong case for cultural continuity in Europe since the early neolithic, and in many cases even paleolithic, period.

The most decisive blow to the faltering IE theory seems to come from recent developments in Archeogenetics: L.L. Cavalli Sforza tried to fit his evidence into the IE framework (but undermined it by pushing even further back the starting point and by showing that the "Old Europe" and the "Kurgan" people are from the same stock) but Brian Sykes did not: His (extremely detailed and in-depth) work seems to prove (?) that the vast majority, that is 80%, of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to the Paleolithic, tying in with the archeological data showing European continuity.  Gray and Atkinson have pushed even further back (9.000 BC) the timeline for the "IE split" - if there ever was such a thing.

The IE theory seems to resist it's fate, by adopting to the new data in hand: There is the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT - more on this site http://www.continuitas.com/) which suggests the IE languages actually originated in Europe and have existed there since the Paleolithic.

 

Like in polish, I don't know if a lot of Poles have noticed this, cukier(aka sugar) is actually very similar to zucker in pronounciation, but to say "sweet", we say slodkie(sw-od-ki-ey), so you know that the polish word for sugar was originally not cukier.

Sugar and sweet are of two different roots.
The English word Sugar comes from the medival French Cucre which in turn comes from the Latin Zuccarum, which would most likely be the root for the word in most European languages.
Renember, Sugar was virtualy unknown in Europe untill around 1100/1200, and even then only as a curiosity, and it didn't become widely available untill the 1400s in small quantities, and 1500s onwards in large amounts.
So it is more than likely that the Polish word is simple a local rendering of the Latin word, wether that word took a direct root, or an indirect root via an intermediary language.

Well the problem for some languages is that the words they use are sometimes borrowed from other languages, so you don't neceseraily know if there was a totally different word for the same reality before that. Like in polish, I don't know if a lot of Poles have noticed this, cukier(aka sugar) is actually very similar to zucker in pronounciation, but to say "sweet", we say slodkie(sw-od-ki-ey), so you know that the polish word for sugar was originally not cukier.

...I don't know much about this, especially the whold Indo European aspect of things.  But I do know there is something, called, at least my mom calls it this, the Mother language, consisting of basic words like Mother and Father.
Ex.  Madre(spanish), Mai (cantonese?), Mama(baby english), Uhmma(korean),  ect.  Japanese Okasan (is that right) seems to be the only one that doesn't fit this description...Maybe Japanese people are aliens!  I'm just kidding

Also I think that language is a pretty good basis on discovering the origions of different peoples, but you also have to take into consideration nations influenced by others and ect. 
Ex.  Vietnam, Korea, and Japan were greatly influenced by China in that they borrowed a lot of vocabulary, but each is definitely not a Sino Language.  Also the Korean word for horse, Mal, sounds a lot like the CHinese word for horse, Ma (is that right? I only know how to pronounce it in Korean), and the Mongol word Maru.  So the question remains, how can we know who influenced who, was it the Chinese, was it the Koreans, or was it the Mongols.  No one really knows.


Edited by Gubukjanggoon

Wasn't Catal Huryuk (sp?) in that part of Turkey?  It certainly isn't located down-river.  At any rate, the theorized homeland of the Indo-Europeans is placed at that part of Anatolia, as well.  In which case, what (if any) archaeological fragments are identified with the early Indo-Europeans?