Languages, genes and cultures

As you may know, in this blog I have often criticised many aspects of traditional historical linguistics, e.g. the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), including the imaginary set of laryngeals (one of my 'favourite' topics indeed) or the generally accepted chronology of IE expansion. I have written many posts criticizing these things, inspired by the work of some authors, like Mario Alinei and Xaverio Ballester, who oppose the traditional assumptions held in mainstream Indo-European (IE) studies. The good news is that now a major scholarly work, led by Francisco Villar, seems to support these ideas!

Francisco Villar is a renowned expert in Indo-European, and also in the languages of Pre-Roman Iberia. As we saw in this post, one of his theories is that the study of ancient toponyms, especially hydronyms, shows that the oldest languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula were IE. Any other type of language (Basque, Iberian) appeared later (Villar, 2000). In his last research work (Villar et al 2011), carried out in collaboration with Blanca Prósper, Carlos Jordán and María Pilar Fernández Álvarez, he continues his previous research, comparing the linguistic data with the archaeological and genetic evidence that's now available. I will comment on the results in a series of posts, starting with this one. For the moment, I'll try to summarize some of the main points.

In their research, they focus on the ancient hydronyms of Europe and southwest Asia. The choice of material is relevant: hydronyms usually retain signs of archaic linguistic layers. Analysing these toponyms, they identify a series of components that are significantly present in those areas, e.g. *aisko/isko-, *ab-, or *balso-. Not only that: they also demonstrate, using phonological and lexicological criteria, that these components are IE, with no exception.

The aim of the research is to to try to correlate this set of data with the currently available theories of IE origin and expansion into Europe. The novelty is that the authors take into account Alinei's Paleolithic Paradigm  as one of the possible scenarios. Putting together linguistic, archaeological and genetic data, they reach the conclusion that the distribution of these toponyms correlates basically with two main events: the Mesolithic population expansion from the Glacial refugia of southern Europe, and the expansion of agriculture in the Neolithic. Both events involve IE languages. This is important. If the Mesolithic populations that migrated north were already carrying IE languages with them, then  those languages were there already in the Paleolithic. In order words, the Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (PCP).

Of course, some may think: "Ok, there were IE language in Europe at that early age, but then there was another wave of IE dispersal at the bronze age which brought the IE languages as we know them today and historically". The authors admit this possibility, but also say that it is quite unlikely. As they say, and as I have insisted in this blog many times, there is no evidence of any sort of relevant population movement in the Bronze Age that could even remotely support this theory, usually known as the Kurgan theory.

As I said, I'll publish more posts getting into the details of this important research work. For example, I'll talk about their criticism of some aspects of traditional IE reconstruction, e.g. the reconstruction of PIE phonology. Let's see some excerpts (the highlighting is mine):

(p. 724-725): "Ciertas líneas de investigación han tendido a limitar el sistema vocálico indoeuropeo a dos vocales /e/ y /o/ e incluso a una sola (...). Tal reconstrucción, que no vamos a criticar aquí en detalle, desemboca en sistemas vocálicos irreales, inexistentes en las lenguas del mundo, sea cual sea la familia lingüística en la que busquemos. El testimonio de los arqueo-hidro-topónimos lleva la reconstrucción profunda del vocalismo indoeuropeo por derroteros muy diferentes. En las series vocálicas de nuestras arqueo-raíces la /e/ y la /o/ se manifiestan como variantes triviales y en parte locales de las respectivas formas básicas /i/, /u/ y /a/ (...). De ese modo, el sistema vocálico que se dibuja en el estadio cero es de tres miembros (a, i, u)".

(p. 726): "al pretender, como se ha hecho tradicionalmente, explicar la supuesta lengua común como un sistema cerrado en sí mismo, sin un origen y un devenir, se ha incurrido en simplificaciones, distorsiones e invenciones tendentes a buscar regularidades artificiales en terreno de la fonética, la morfología y la semántica".

The authors use cautious language, but this is actually a complete demolition of the many aspects of traditional PIE reconstruction, including laryngeals and other inventions.

NOTE (Apr 22, 2012): I have translated the quotes into English. See comments.

References:
- VILLAR, Francisco (2000). Indoeuropeos y No-Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana. Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
- VILLAR, F., B. PRÓSPER, C. JORDÁN, and  M.P. FERNÁNDEZ ÁLVAREZ (2011). Lenguas, genes y culturas en la prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental. Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Languages on horseback

I have just finished reading David Anthony's book The Horse, the Wheel and Language (2007), a book that I mentioned briefly in a post some time ago.

First of all, I'd like to say that David Anthony is an eminent archaeologist with vast knowledge about the prehistory of the Eurasian steppes, and more concretely about the archaeology of human societies in connection with horse domestication, an area which is vital in our understanding of Eneolithic and Bronze-age societies. He has written extensively about this issue and has also developed an innovative technique to date the use of domesticated horses by analysing bit wear in their bones. I'm sure his ideas about the subject are valuable and must be taken into account in any serious research in that field. Now, what's the problem? The problem arises when Anthony tries to fit all these data into a comprehensive explanation of the genesis and transcontinental expansion of Indo-European (IE) languages. This is when his scientific writing becomes fantasy.

Anthony bases his archaeological voyage on a series of linguistic facts which he accepts as irrefutable. We have talked about these things profusely in this blog (the traditional concept of proto-language, the use of linguistic paleontology, etc.) and we have seen how these ideas can easily be challenged. Anthony, however, takes them for granted. In his view, there is a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) people to be found somewhere, with its own language and even institutions. (p. 89): "that language [PIE] is a guide to the thoughts, concerns and material culture of real people who lived in a definite region between about 4500 and 2500 BC". In this respect, he follows Gimbutas' and Mallory's ideas, which we have extensively talked about (and criticised) in the blog. The novelty is that Anthony uses horse domestication and later developments as the use of chariots, as the main factors in the expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans and their languages.

In his book, Anthony analyses one by one all the prehistoric cultures of the Pontic-Caspian region. He presents them in the framework of his own preconceptions, at times establishing simple correlations between culture, people and language. Pastoralist societies become PIE societies endowed with a remarkable capacity of expanding and subduing other human groups. (p. 343): "Wealth, military power, and a more productive herding system probably brought prestige and power to the identities associated with Proto-IndoEuropean dialects after 3300 BCE. The guest-host institution extended the protections of oath-bound obligations to new social groups. An Indo-European-speaking patron could accept and integrate outsiders as clients without shaming them or assigning them permanently to submissive roles, as long as they conducted the sacrifices properly. Praise poetry at public feasts encouraged patrons to be generous, and validated the language of the songs as a vehicle for communicating with the gods who regulated everything. All these factors taken together suggest that the spread of Proto-Indo-European probably was more like a franchising operation than an invasion. Although the initial penetration of a new region (or "market" in the franchising metaphor) often involved an actual migration from the steppes and military confrontations, once it began to reproduce new patron-client agreements (franchises) its connection to the original steppe immigrants became genetically remote, whereas the myths, rituals, and institutions that maintained the system were reproduced down the generations."

Franchises, military power, migratory movements... It is obvious that all of Anthony's metaphors and hypotheses can be doubted or found completely wrong. He talks about (literally) hundreds of prehistoric societies, and maks all kinds of assumptions about their language, social customs or expansive moods. One theory leads to another, in a process that can only be described as accumulative conjecture, or plain fantasy. First it is horse domestication, then the use of chariots, with the addition of a myriad of complementary elements. Aided by these extraordinary tools, PIE people started their incredible story of success. First, with the detachment of Anatolyans, then, with the emergence of proto-Slavic, proto-Germanic and proto-Italic in central-eastern Europe as off-shoots of the Pontic steppe developments, finally the expansion of proto-Indo-Aryan in the BMAC area. Let's see an example (p. 367): "The many thousands of Yamnaya kurgans in eastern Hungary suggest a more continuous occupation of the landscape by a larger population of immigrants, one that could have acquired power and prestige partly just through its numerical weight. This regional group could have spawned both pre-Italic and pre-Celtic. Bell Beaker sites of the Csepel type around Budapest, west of the Yamnaya settlement region, are dated about 2800-2600 BCE. They could have been a bridge between Yamnaya on their east and Austria/Southern Germany to their west, through which Yamnaya dialects spread from Hungary into Austria and Bavaria, where they later developed into Proto-Celtic".

The author finishes his analysis at this point, sometime at the Bronze age, with all the IE proto-languages ready for action. Their incredible run of good luck lasts centuries, millennia. In the vast poker game of prehistory Indo-Europeans seem to have the winning hand at all times!

Obviously, Anthony is not the only researcher who has felt the temptation to offer a comprehensive explanation of IE origins and expansion. Like Mallory and Gimbutas, he does so from an archaeological perspecitve, and as I said before many of the things they said might be useful and coherent, at least at a minor, less ambitious level. A similar type of analysis, enriched with population genetics data, is to be found in other authors, such as Mario Alinei. Reading his volumes about the linguistic prehistory of Europe I often felt a bit lost in the never-ending tales of prehistoric societies that follow one another. His theories are possibly quite imperfect and need a lot of refining, and in some cases must probably be rejected, but there is an important difference between Alinei and the more traditional authors such as Anthony or Mallory: his approach offers a more logical framework to understand language events through time.

Note on illustrations: on the left, The Large Blue Horses, a painting by Franz Marc.

The Atlantic zone of Western Europe

I won't be there and it's a pity, because I'd love to. From the 9th to the 11th of June the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique (University of Brest) organizes a conference about the possible connections across the Atlantic fringe of western Europe. There are contributions from a variety of sciences: archaeology, linguistics, population genetics, and some of the participants are scientists that I have already talked about in this blog, in some cases extensively: Mario Alinei, Stephen Oppenheimer, Marcel Otte, Xaverio Ballester, John Koch, Francesco Benozzo, and some others whose research I would be very interested to know about. It is clear that some of the participants share views that are connected with the Continuity paradigm, something that can be seen very clearly just taking a look at the programme of the conference, with titles like Les Indo-Européens sont venus avec Cro-Magnon (Marcel Otte) or The Atlantic Celts: cumulative evidence from Paleolithic (Alinei- Benozzo).

As I said, I'd really would love to be there, but I can't. Unfortunately, there is no post as 'official blogger of the event' that I could apply for! It's not just the conference, it's also the chance of going to Brittany. In any case, however, I'm planning a trip there in August, so I'll get a chance to visit places like Carnac (see picture) or the Armorican coast.

The puzzle of Romance languages (I): Sardinian

The origin of the so-called 'Romance languages' (French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, etc.) can be summarized in a short sentence that seems obvious and quite simple to understand:

..............................Romance languages are those that derive from Latin.

The truth is, however, that underneath this simple statement lies one of the most elusive enigmas in historical linguistics. The problem is the word 'Latin'. What is the exact meaning of this word? Are we talking about the written standard used by Cicero, Vergil and other classical authors, which was kept as a lingua franca in the western world for centuries? Or was there some kind of popular form of 'Latin' spoken by the majority of the population, often referred to as 'Vulgar Latin', from which the Romance languages evolved? If so, was this 'Vulgar Latin' a more or less unified language, or were there different regional versions spoken all over the Empire? How different were these variants? We must also add to this the role of other languages in this process, as substrata, adstrata or superstrata. On the whole, the nature and characteristics of' 'Vulgar Latin' is far from clear, and the more I read about the subject of Romance languages, including for example József Herman's Le Latin Vulgaire (1975), the less clear it is.

I think a good place to test theories about Romance languages is the island of Sardinia, with a vast repertoire of archaeological remains and some linguistic peculiarities that make it specially interesting.

Sardinia is located in a strategic geographic position, and the archaeological record shows the influence of the various Mediterranean material cultures from the Paleolithic onwards. In some cases, there are local developments where the external elements were reinterpreted, as can be seen in the famous Bronze-Age megalithic monuments known as Nuraghe, which are a distinctive Sardinian feature. There are thousands of nuraghe all over the island, like the one you can see on the right (Nuraghe Ponte, near Dualchi). Needless to say, these unique archeological monuments have triggered the imagination of scholars for ages. Concepts like 'Nuraghic civilization' or 'the language of the Nuraghians' have been, and still are, the focus of lively debate.

The languages traditionally spoken in Sardinia can be divided into two main areas. In the north there are some dialects (Sassarese and Gallurese) associated with Corsican. In the rest of the island, the various dialects belong to what is generally referred to as 'Sardinian'. There are also some other linguistic areas, confined to very small territories, and often associated with historical developments, for example the Catalan spoken in the area of Alghero.

The Sardinian language is generally divided into two areas: the Logudorese-Nuorese dialects, occupying the central part of the island, and Campidanese, in the southern half. These dialects are often described as 'archaic', in comparison with other Romance languages. A classical example of this 'archaic' nature is found in Nuorese, where the classical pronunciation of 'c' as [k] is retained, as can be seen in the word chento, connected with Latin centum. In all the other Romance languages, this Latin [k] is rendered with other phonetic realizations, e.g. French cent, Spanish cien and Italian cento. It must be understood, however, that terms like 'archaic' are relative in themselves, and derive from the point of view of the observer rather than from the actual data, and in fact the 'archaic' nature of Nuorese and other Sardinian dialects has been questioned by some authors. In any case, we can still use the term 'archaic' for practical reasons, with the sense of 'similar to classical Latin'.

According to the traditional view, the language from which Sardinian derived was brought there by the Romans when they conquered the island in the 3rd c. BC. The question, also traditional, remains open: What languages were spoken in Sardinia before the Romans? As can be imagined, a wide variety of possible answers have been proposed, suggesting connections with Ligurian, Iberian, Phoenician or even Etruscan. The problem is that the evidence is scarce, and must be inferred from elusive elements such as place names, which are usually (or always) open to all kinds of interpretations. It is obvious that, whatever the languages spoken in the area in pre-Roman times, the influence of the various Mediterranean elites must have played an influential role, which can be traced in the remaining evidence, but the question is still unanswered: what language(s) did the ancient Sardinians actually speak? In a recent book (2010), prof. Blasco Ferrer has reelaborated the Basco-Iberian theory for Sardinian, already proposed many decades ago, with new analyses of the toponymic material. Blasco Ferrer's ideas, and even methodology, have been strongly criticised by other authors, for example Massimo Pittau (see here). It is obvious, however, that any other theory, including Pittau's Etrusco-Lydian connection, can also be criticised. They all have a common problem: their conclusions are based on very little evidence, and this evidence is open to all kinds of interpretations.

And then we have the Continuity Theory. In the second volume of his Origini delle Lingue d'Europa (2000), Mario Alinei proposes the idea that the populations of pre-Roman Sardinia spoke languages that belonged to the Italid group, like Latin. This proposal is obviously part and parcel of the major Continuity Paradigm, a theory that the readers of this blog are already familiar with. In order to prove the theory for Sardinia, Mario Alinei offers a series of examples from the vocabulary. One of the most complete studies is the one about the word for 'plough' and its related vocabulary, an example of what he calls 'Latin words before the Romans'. Some of his conclusions about this vocabulary are worth being taken into account. In other cases, his proposals do not seem so realistic, e.g. in his analysis ofg the word 'Nuraghe' itself, which he connects with the vocabulary of kinship. According to him, the word nuraghe derives from a word similar to 'nuora', with a meaning of 'daughter-in-law' in Italid languages. Alinei uses other arguments apart from the lexicon, for example the use of the 'ipse' article in Sardinia and in the Balearic islands or some phonetic peculiarities of the Sardinian dialects compared to other Italian dialects of today. Is Alinei's theory right? It's too early to say, but I personally like his proposals. The funny thing is that, apparently, he's not the first person to propose a continuity hypothesis for Sardinian. In a post written by Gigi Sanna, I have read about an eminent Sardinian scholar, called Vittorio Angius, who made similar proposals as early as the mid 19th c. Continuity Theory avant-la-lettre? Probably. In Sanna's post it is possible to read some excerpts from Angius's original writings, in Italian.

So definitely, an island full of archeological and linguistic mysteries, and also full of beauty. No doubt about it: one of my plans for the new year 2011 is to visit Sardinia. By the way, I wish a happy new year to all my readers!

Influential articles

A couple of weeks ago I read some blog posts (e.g. here and here) that celebrated the 20th anniversary of Pinker and Bloom's 1990 article Natural language and natural selection, generally considered the starting point for the revival in the studies of language origins. Sometimes the discussions in this area derive into theoretical controversies that seem to lead nowhere, as could be expected in a relatively new scientific discipline. The debates are usually conducted by American scholars who are imbued in Chomskyan linguistics, with its collection of useless notions such as UG (Universal Grammar) and its tendency towards 18th century-style categorizations. However, in the milieu of this renewed field of study, there are also people making interesting proposals. One of them is, precisely, Steven Pinker (see photo on the left). I have read some of his books, e.g. The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought, in which he has put together notions of psychology and linguistics in a most intelligent and coherent way. Even though I may not agree with some of the things he has said, I think his proposals are a step forward in the direction of getting a clearer view of language.

What makes an article influential? I suppose the main factor is time. A couple of decades is enough time to assess the degree of importance of a given writing, which can even be measured in numbers of citations, etc. Normally it is books, not journal papers, that become a landmark in the humanities, so we could say the Pinker and Bloom's article is rather exceptional in this respect. But there are other examples of articles that have been influential in linguistics, or that may have a potential for it. Let's see one of them.

In 1999, Jonathan Adams and Marcel Otte published a paper whose title poses an interesting question: Did Indo-European languages spread before farming? , a question that is not often asked in the field of Indo-European linguistics. According to the authors (p. 77): "No one seems to have given the idea more than a passing thought". That was at least until Mario Alinei and his proposals for a Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (PCP). In fact, Marcel Otte (picture on the right) is nowadays a member of the multidisciplinary PCP workgroup. One of the things that the authors of the article say is that there is no clear indication in the archaeological record of Europe of any massive process of language substitution of the kind that would have caused the supposed spread of IE in the Neolithic of Bronze ages. For them, the key to understanding the distribution of people and languages in prehistoric Europe lies in the climatic conditions of the post-Ice-Age period. Later developments during the Neolithic and Bronze/Iron Ages, some of them quite relevant, produced the final outlines. In the article, the authors offer a series of hypotheses for future research, opening a completely new line of thought. Let's remember, on the other hand, that Marcel Otte is actually one of the most prestigious prehistorians in contemporary times, comparable to other figures like Renfrew or Zvelebil, and I think what he has written about the prehistory of European languages should be taken into account. In short, a couple of influential articles on linguistics, or at least with a potential to be influential, written by authors who are not linguists themselves. What is this, a sign of the times?

The spread of agriculture and languages

Being a vegetarian, I have mixed feelings about the concept of agriculture. On the one hand, I feel fine with this way of life: it has helped me have a more balanced diet and a more natural approach to life in general. On the other hand, however, vegetarianism is ultimately a product of the agricultural revolution, a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of mankind. Our species was shaped in the context of hunter-gatherer societies where technological innovations took a very long time to be developed or perfected. The long-lasting balance between humans and their environment came to an end with the advent of agriculture and pastoralism: human populations became more sedentary and the surplus in production led to a complete change in the way humans related to one another. The rest of the story is well known: exploitation of resources, overcrowding, famine, war, slavery and many other elements (including some positive effects) that have shaped the world ever since (you can read this article by Jared Diamond for a complete view on this topic). The Neolithic revolution, starting in the Fertile Crescent at about 9,500 BC, is the real turning point for humanity, even for the fate of Homo Sapiens. It would be impossible to go back to pre-Neolithic times and advocate for a hunter-gatherer existence, like some people have proposed, e.g. John Zerzan and the followers of anarcho-primitivism. We are just too imbued with agriculture, we can only try to do things better for once.

It's obvious that the emergence of agriculture must have made a considerable impact on the languages of prehistoric people. First, as a source of new vocabulary and linguistic structures for the new social reality; second, as a new scenario for the spread of languages and the appearance of stratified variants. Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to know the languages that the first farmers spoke, as there is no direct evidence of them. However, the analysis of indirect sources (linguistic, archaeological, genetic, etc.) has allowed linguists to come up with some interesting results. Associating the spread of a given group of languages with the spread of agriculture is a strong argument, and it has been used in the various areas where agriculture was independently developed: the Near East, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, etc. As far as I know, there isn't a generally agreed pattern of how agriculture and language may have expanded in parallel. Authors such as Colin Renfrew, in the context of the processual approach, have made interesting proposals about the combined process of agriculture-language spread, but it seems there's still much to be done in this field of study.

What about the Indo-Europeans? The expansion of IE languages has traditionally been seen as occurring some millennia after the expansion of agriculture. In this blog I have variously criticized this traditional view, which is based on a series of assumption which are quite dubious. I have presented some alternative views, including Renfrew's Anatolian Hypothesis (see here), which links the spread of IE with the spread of agriculture from the Anatolian Peninsula. Needless to say, Renfrew's theory has been strongly criticised by mainstream Indo-Europeanists, who stick to their intra-linguistic approach. I find the Anatolian Hypothesis quite interesting, and I'm sure that the spread of agriculture and pastoralism must have made a crucial impact on the languages of the IE area, as anywhere else in the world, but there are some problems associated with this theory that are not easy to solve. It is true that Renfrew's hypothesis offers a plausible scenario for the spread of IE languages in Europe, but for the events in the other areas (Iran, India, Central Asia) a different, possibly more complex explanation is required. Was agriculture a local development in the Indus Valley or was it imported from another place? The former option looks more likely. And one more, and essential, question: what kind of language did the first Indus Valley farmers speak?

We tend to think that new languages, e.g. the ones brought by the first farmers or by any other migratory or expansionist group, is basically different from the language of the original population, and that the new situation triggers a process of language substitution whereby the old language simply disappears. But it doesn't have to be this way. Maybe the languages associated with the Neolithic expansion were not so different from the ones spoken by European Mesolithic populations. And something similar could be said about the Indus Valley. What we would have here is a common IE background and a double process of language expansion (or re-expansion) associated with agriculture. This is just a hypothesis, of course, but I think it makes at least some sense.

Note: the map (see above) has been taken from this page.

Language continuity in Europe (III): Ireland

Who brought Celtic languages to Ireland? And when? - It seems that there is no easy answer to these questions.

In general, islands are a good place to study population and language evolution, because they offer a more limited range of variation and better chances for establishing the chronology of events than in continental land. The British Isles are not an exception. In fact, there’s a detail that makes this area even more interesting for the researcher: due to their location in the northern Atlantic, the British Isles have been greatly affected by major climatic changes, especially glaciations. It is supposed, for example, that by the time of the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), i.e. the coldest period of the last ice age (about 22,000 to 17,000 years BP), the British Island became a frozen desert, with no possibilities for human life. The re-population of the British Isles started from zero when the ice started to recede.

In the comments to a recent post in this blog we had an interesting discussion about the Celts. One of the commentators, Ian, suggested a book about this topic: Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British (see below for full bibliographic details). I had never heard about this book before, and I found it interesting so I ordered it on the Internet and a week later I had it in my hands. Reading it was just a matter of days. No doubt about it, this is the ‘21st-century’ at work! Speed and availability. Ideal for inquiring minds.

In his book, Stephen Oppenheimer offers a detailed analysis of the history of human populations in the British Isles. Being a geneticist, he focuses primarily on the genetic material of these populations, combining it with other sorts of evidence, e.g. from archaeology or history texts. His research is quite comprehensive: he analyses and discusses the results obtained by previous authors, e.g. Sykes and Richards, and offers new, generally more accurate explanations for the history of British gene clusters. I had never seen such a complete and detailed account of western European genetic history, and, not having yet read any review of this book by other geneticists, I am not in a position to say if all the details of Oppenheimer’s theory are acceptable or not. In any case, I have the impression that the overall picture offered in this book is coherent and logical, and is bound to become a reference point in any future study of western European prehistory. Now, what is this ‘overall picture’? It is difficult to summarize Oppenheimer’s book in just one post, and I suppose I’ll be talking about it in future occasions. There is an article by Oppenheimer (published in Prospect), where you can find some of the main points in his theory.

The re-colonization of the British Isles took several steps, starting about 16,000 years ago after the LGM. The first colonizers came from the Franco-Spanish refuge, an area in northern Iberia and southwestern France where human life had not been interrupted by the ice. This Iberian gene flow is by far the most important element in the genetic components of the populations in the British Isles, especially in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and other western areas. At about 12,300 BP there was another glacial period, called Younger Dryas, which also had an impact on this area. It is thought, however, that human population did not disappear from the British Isles in the Younger Dryas, even though there was a significant demographic drop. The Younger Dryas was much shorter than the LGM: by 11,000 BP the climate started to become much milder, like the one we have today. This period, known as Mesolithic, saw a new process of colonization from the continent, which two main lines: from Iberia and from northwestern Europe. This double migration path is actually a recurrent pattern in the prehistory of the British Isles, which is repeated in later times (Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age). According to Oppenheimer, this pattern of migration set the basis for the separation between Celtic and Germanic areas in the British Isles. In other words, the boundaries between these two areas are not the consequence of recent historical events, like the Anglo-Saxon invasion, but were established in a process that started in the Late Upper Paleolithic, after the LGM. Basically speaking, what we have here is a pattern of continuity of human populations. The genetic input from the earlier times (Paleolithic or Mesolithic) is the most relevant component in the genetic material found in populations of that area today. The contribution of later migrations, e.g. in the Neolithic, is considerably lower, which means that the expansion of agriculture and metallurgy was not the consequence of massive migration, but a local development. This is especially true in the case of Ireland, as we will see.

It is not clear if Ireland was re-colonized by humans immediately after the LGM, but there are some indications pointing in this direction. There is clear evidence, however, of human migration into Ireland during the Mesolithic, mainly from Iberia. On the left you can see a map from Oppenheimer’s web-page, with the distribution of one of the gene clusters from Iberia, following a typical pattern. The impact of later migrations into Ireland is generally considered low, in comparison with eastern Britain, which was under the influence of migrations from northwestern Europe. According to Oppenheimer, intrusive lines in the Neolithic account for 6-9 % of all Irish genes. This doesn’t mean that Ireland was isolated from the rest of the world in prehistory; in fact there were strong links between Ireland and other Atlantic European areas, as shown by Cunliffe and other authors who talk about the ‘Atlantic Façade’. But it is clear that the Neolithic and other later prehistoric periods did not involve a relevant population input in Ireland. Now, let’s go back to the initial question of this blog: Who brought Celtic languages to Ireland? And when? – There are several possibilities: in the Mesolithic, as the Continuity Theory proposes; in the Neolithic (Colin Renfrew’s theory); or in the Iron Age, as some people still think. - At this point, Oppenheimer asks a couple of interesting questions (p. 246): “how could a new language arrive during the Neolithic without people? (...) Was 6% invasion enough to change culture and language?” For him, the possibility of a Paleolithic or Mesolithic origin of Celtic languages in Ireland is “unlikely” (p. 222), but not impossible. It is clear that the door is open for new research on the languages and populations of the British Isles, and of Ireland in particular, with new perspectives and new tools that were not available just a few decades ago. And it is also becoming quite obvious that the Central-European theory of Celtic origins, which puts them in connection with the Halstatt or the La Tène Iron-Age cultures of the first millennium BC, is quite unacceptable.

References:
- Oppenheimer, Stephen (2007). Origins of the British. London: Constable and Robinson [first edition, hardcover: 2006, London: Constable and Robinson].

Origins of the Celts

There is no doubt that the Celts occupy a central position in the history and prehistory of Europe. They spread through an extensive territory and their language and traditions have survived until today. Now, who were the Celts? Where did they come from? Several theories have been put forward to answer these questions. I will focus on two of them: the ‘traditional’ ones (e.g. Marija Gimbutas’ theory), and the recent proposals made by Mario Alinei and the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT).

- It has traditionally been thought that the Celts emerged as a differentiated IE group in Central Europein the Late Bronze Age, i.e. at around 1,000 BC. Later, in connection with the expansion of the Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, the Celts reached other European areas, where they settled.

- In the context of the PCT, the original territory of the Celts basically coincides with the areas where Celtic groups and languages were present at the beginning oh history, and in some cases even today: the British Isles, Belgium, and the Atlantic areas of France and Iberia (Portugal, Galicia, Cantabrian regions). Celtic languages were spoken in these areas from the Late Paleolithic or Mesolithic, and there was no relevant discontinuity until the times of the Romans. The expansion of Celtic elements, associated with metallurgy and other technical developments, took a west-east direction, and was carried out by intrusive elites rather than through massive migration.

What theory do I prefer? The answer is clear: I prefer the one proposed by the PCT. This will come as no surprise to the readers who are already familiar with this blog, as I have very often talked about the PCT in its various aspects and proposals. If you are new in Language Continuity, I think it’s a good idea to take a look at the posts under the “Continuity Theory” Label on the right, because this way you can have a better view on this. I won’t go into the details of the theory now, but at least I’ll try to give some reasons why I think its proposals about the Celts are reasonable.

First of all, and most importantly, I think that it is a question of common sense. According to the traditional view, the Celts emerged somewhere in Central Europe and then expanded from there to other areas, with the incredible result that they actually disappeared from their original homeland! This is really unheard of, or at least highly unusual. Following the traditional explanation, an area like Ireland, which is so clearly and deeply ‘Celtic’, is just a later settlement of those Celts who originated in Central Europe, where they had gathered a great amount of strength to start their European expansion. How is it possible that this ‘powerful’ Celtic core in Central Europe just vanished from history, whereas the Celtic element remained vigourously in the supposed ‘new’ areas? Does it make any sense to propose a framework where prehistoric peoples move from one place to another at incredible speed, or where entire populations decide to abandon their language and adopt a new one for reasons that are hard to believe, as if the supposed pre-IE populations were just dreaming of becoming IE? Obviously, this explanation is constrained by the traditional chronology of IE, which sees the origin of PIE (proto-Indo-European) at about 4,000 BC. This leaves a very short stretch of time to offer a plausible explanation of the Celtic ‘mystery’, and fosters the invention of unrealistic stories like the ones mentioned above. The PCT, with its new chronology for PIE, is not limited by such constraints.

Apart from these general considerations, there are also significant data, from a variety of sources, pointing in the direction of a continuity of Celtic elements in the Atlantic ‘façade’ of Europe. If we analyse the evidence from archaeology or population genetics, there is nothing suggesting any kind of relevant discontinuity caused by the arrival of exogenous elements. A very clear exposition of this theory can be found in a recent article by Mario Alinei and Francesco Benozzo (2008): Megalithism as a manifestation of an Atlantic Celtic primacy in Meso-Neolithic Europe (you can also find it in Italian, here, and in Portuguese, here). In this article, which I strongly recommend, the authors offer an innovative analysis of megalithism in the framework of the Continuity Theory. The oldest megaliths (5th millennium BC) were erected in Brittany, on the French Atlantic coast, and in the following centuries they spread to other Atlantic areas, especially those connected with the Celts, and later to other areas, e.g. in the Mediterranean. Menhirs and dolmens can be found in the Isle of Man, in Galicia and in any other corner of the Celtic world; they all seem to echo the maritime context which gave birth to the Celts in prehistory. It is curious, for example, that the higher distribution of megaliths in Britain corresponds to the Celtic speaking areas of the north and west, especially in Wales and Scotland, whereas in central and eastern parts of England megaliths are much less common. On the other hand, the magico-religious and linguistic elements associated with megaliths suggest an uninterrupted continuity which has even reached modern times.

Maybe some of the details of the theory need to be discussed or refined, but I think there is evidence to suggest that the people who built the first megaliths in western Europe were speakers of Celtic languages.

NOTE: the pictures have been taken from the Alinei-Benozzo article mentioned above.
- First picture: Dolmen at Forkhill, County Armagh, Ireland.
- Second picture: A megalith at Ysbyty Cynfyn, Wales.

Francesco Benozzo. La Tradizione Smarrita.

I have just read an excellent book, written by Francesco Benozzo, an Italian scholar of Celtic studies. Its title is La Tradizione Smarrita (Roma: Viella, 2007), which could be translated as The Lost Tradition. In this book the author analyses the earliest forms of literature in Western Romance languages (Occitan troubadour poetry, chansons de geste, etc.), linking them with an oral tradition which goes back to the times of the Celts, well before the Roman conquest. According to the author, there are many formal and thematic parallelisms between these two traditions. On the other hand, the medieval “troubadour”, and also some imagery which is found in early Romance literature, can be seen as the remnants of a much earlier period, when the poet-sorcerers, or shamans, and their ritual, played an important role in Western European society. The book offers a great amount of evidence to support the author’s thesis: text and linguistic analysis, anthropological data, historical sources. All in all, La Tradizione Smarrita is recommendable for anyone interested in the history of Western European literature and the origins of Celtic mythology.

Francesco Benozzo is a member of the Continuity Theory (CT) workgroup, and he has applied the CT approach to his research on compared literature, anthropology and Celtic studies, as can be seen in his book La Tradizione Smarrita, and also in other writings (you can find some of his articles here). He has also translated a series of old Celtic texts into Italian and edited some modern literary works, apart from creating his own. But this is not all. When I entered his web-page for the first time I discovered yet another interesting thing about Benozzo: he is a musician, an expert in the Celtic harp. He regularly gives concerts, where he plays the harp and sings in old Welsh and other languages, and has also recorded several albums (you can take a look at his web-page for some samples of his music and further information about his discography).

Ancestral zoonyms

The names of animals (or zoonyms) provide us with all kinds of clues about our ancestors, especially if we study them in connection with anthropological data. And it also works the other way round: etymological studies benefit from anthropology. An excellent example of this type of research is Xaverio Ballester’s Zoónimos Ancestrales (Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2006). In his book, Ballester analyses a series of zoonyms and reaches interesting (sometimes surprising) conclusions. In many cases, the animals have names related to kinship: they were called “mothers” or “grandparents”. An example of this is the Spanish word comadreja (English weasel), from the word for mother (madre in Spanish). There are many more examples, but normally they are not so easy to recognize. In other cases we see the effect of a taboo applied to a given animal, and the substitution of the original name for another (an example of this type of linguistic phenomenon can be seen in this post: The name of the bear). In general, all these terms, coined in a given culture and conditioned by its ideology (religious thoughts, mythology, etc.), are an important indication of the possible chronology of a dialect's vocabulary. Some zoonyms, for example, are only understandable in the context of a hunter-gatherer society (like the ones in Paleolithic Europe or in some areas of the world today); others originated in the notional world of the farmer, or the shepherd. Ballester's zoonyms are an open door to our remote past. They are indeed ancestral. Another interesting aspect of this book is the fact that, applying this combination of etymology and anthropology, Ballester is also able to refute some generally established assumptions about animals in antiquity, e.g. the ones about horses in connection with Indo-Europeans. I personally think that his chapter about horses will become a classic in historical linguistics. On the whole, Zoónimos Ancestrales is a highly interesting and readable book. I strongly recommend it.









A weasel.


I have also read a review of Xaverio Ballester's book: José Manuel Pedrosa, ¿Lenguas y mitos indoeuropeos? ¿Indoeuroafricanos? ¿Paleolíticos? ¿Neolíticos?, in Culturas Populares, revista electrónica 5, 2007. J.M. Pedrosa is an expert in literature and anthropology, and in his review, which is favourable in general, he shows some mistrust towards the methods of reconstruction used by linguists. He makes a considerably accurate description of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory and compares it to the traditional approach, based on the comparative method. In both of them, he sees the same problem: linguists tend to narrow down the scope of their study to a given geographic area or group of genetically related languages, and do not see the wider picture of global, intercontinental connections, like the ones the anthropologists have discovered by comparing the folklore of the various continents. I must say that this criticism is partly true, but I think the comparison between the traditional IE model and the Continuity Theory (CT; I also call it the Hybridization/Continuity Model) is a bit unbalanced. The comparative method is a couple of hundred years old, and it is possible to judge its achievements and shortcomings from many perspectives. However, the CT has only just started to be developed. Many of its proposals need to be debated, discussed and tested. One of the main elements of the CT is, precisely, the idea that most of the traditional constraints of historical linguistics, both chronological and geographic, must be abandoned or redefined, a real leit-motiv in Mario Alinei’s writings. In this sense, the proposals made in the context of the CT are not so different from Pedrosas’s approach. But it must be said that, even though authors such as Alinei and Ballester do not see language as a collection of rules or a field for systematic reconstruction, and are keen to include data from other disciplines, the process of language contact or diffusion is not the same as the transmission of folktales across human societies. They have things in common, and, as I said before, the study of the anthropological material is essential for the historical linguist, but there are important, essential differences between these processes.

A kite, another animal mentioned in Ballester's book.

Pedrosa also points out the fact that in many cases, the linguists who use anthropological data in their studies show some inaccuracies in their analyses, sometimes because they apply concepts which are obsolete, or dated. Obviously, it is impossible to be an expert in everything, and I find it very useful that an anthropologist revises some aspects of what the non-anthropologists write about this discipline. This is part of the normal process of a multidisciplinary approach. Pedrosas’s criticism refers to linguists in general, and some of his remarks are interesting, especially his emphasis on the idea that long-range, intercontinental connections must be taken into account. But this argument can easily be reversed: very often, it is anthropologists (or archaeologists, geneticists, or non-historical linguists, etc.) who use obsolete linguistic concepts. Pedrosa is an example of a non-linguist who is at least trying to have an updated knowledge of the newest proposals in historical linguistics, and that is very positive.

I will end this post with a quotation from Pedrosas’s review: (p. 14): “Zoónimos ancestrales me parece un libro comprometido, arriesgado, valiente, provocador, que rebate de modo convincente algunos de los puntos más obviamente débiles de las teorías indoeuropeístas convencionales (…), que contribuye a poner en cuestión viejos mitos científicos o quizás pseudocientíficos, sobredimensionados y sobreexplotados (los del ‘indoeuropeísmo neoliticista acuñado a partir del XVIII), que era y es preciso revisar, y que abre caminos y escruta horizontes que en el futuro comprenderemos no del todo (eso desde luego) pero sí mejor”.

NOTE: Pictures taken from Fotonatura.org.
Credits: picture of the weasel, author: Vicente Díaz Martín; picture of the kite, author: Juan Pablo Fuentes Serrano.

Last Edit: 20th October, 2008

The expansion of Arabic

abic So far, this blog has focused mainly on European languages, but it is clear that the Continuity/Hybridization Model (another name for the Continuity Theory) can be applied to other groups of languages. Today’s post is about a non-European, and also non-Indo-European language: Arabic, which belongs to the Semitic group (Afro-Asiatic family).

Arabic dialects are spoken today in many areas of the Near East and Northern Africa, as we can see in the following map:

(Source: Wikipedia. Click here for a larger image and further details)

This linguistic situation is a direct consequence of a historical fact: the emergence of the Islamic Empire, which originated in Arabia in the 7th c. AD and quickly expanded to many other territories, carrying with it both Islam and Arabic. The next image shows the extension of this empire at different stages:

(Source: Wikipedia. Click here for a larger image and further details).

Both maps look quite similar but we can spot some significant differences between them. We only find Arabic dialects in places where Semitic languages, or at least other Afro-Asiatic languages, were already spoken before the conquest (e.g. northern Africa, Mesopotamia, Arabia). On the contrary, there are some areas of the Empire where no Arabic dialects have survived, e.g. Persia, Kurdistan, south-eastern Anatolia and the Iberian Peninsula. The languages spoken in these areas before the arrival of the Arabs, and the languages spoken there today are not Semitic or Afro-Asiatic; they belong to other groups (mainly Indo-European). Historical events such as military conquest, and the dominance of an intrusive elite over extensive territories, do not seem to affect the basic pattern of continuity, at least at the language-group level. If we apply this type of analysis to other processes of expansion the conclusions are very similar, as we have seen, for example, in a series of posts about language distribution in the Roman Empire (you can read them here: What the Romans spoke; Language continuity in Europe (II): Switzerland; Romance Languages before the Romans). In the context of ancient times, the language of the conquerors (associated with social prestige and political power, and also with religion) is always a very influential factor, but there is not a generalized process of language substitution. What we find instead is a process of language hybridization. If the language of the conquered has a high degree of affinity with the language of the conquerors, i.e. if they belong to the same language group, it is much more likely that the final result will be a dialect of the new language. In the absence of this kinship, the normal scenario is the continuity of the pre-existing dialects. In fact, language continuity is always present: Afro-Asiatic dialects were spoken in northern Africa and the Near-East before the Roman conquest, and are still spoken today, in the form of Arab dialects created through a process of hybridization.

Last Edit: 13th October 2008.