preu_rd

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http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/preurd 1/14

To appear in J. van der Auwera & B. Kortmann,, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter [2010]

This chapter deals with the prehistory of the European languages from the

earliest arrival of modern humans in the late Stone Age until the dawn of

history, marked by the attestation of written records in Europe from the

second millennium BC onwards (see Appendix for a timeline). Its aim is to

give an overview of the main developments and to point out the main re-sults of recent research as well as to report on current discussions. One

central topic will be language contact during the period of the Neolithic

until the beginning of the Iron Age, in particular the impact of substrate

languages on the Indo-European languages and the Indo-European super-

strate in the Uralic languages. This chapter is structured as follows: Section

two deals with Europe before the Neolithic period. In section three the

Neolithic population movements are addressed in connection with the

process of agriculturalization and the languages that entered Europe during

this time. Section four discusses the linguistic effects of the Neolithic d e-

velopments, focusing in particular on the Vasconic Theory by Theo Ven-

nemann. The final section presents the linguistic map of Europe before the

arrival of the Iron Age and sums up the most important results.

According to general opinion, modern humans ( )

entered Europe during the Upper Paleolithic, around 33000 BC, living

alongside the Neanderthal man ( ), whose

last traces in southermost Spain are dated around 24000 BC. Climatically,

this time was characterized by the last glacial (about 110000 to 10000 BC),

in which periods of low temperature and repeated glaciation alternatedwith shorter periods of higher temperature, during which humans could

live in central Europe, having to retreat to more hospitable southern areas

during glaciations. The end of the Paeolithic in Europe coincides with the

Fields of Linguis-tics: Europe

Robert Mailhammer

homo sapiens sapiens

homo sapiens neanderthalensis

The prehistory of European languages

1. I nt rod u ct ion

2. Pr ehistoric Europ e until the star t of the Neolithic period (until

7000 BC)

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2

end of the last glaciation, when the whole continent became suitable for

human survival again.

2.1. Humans in Paleolithic Europe (33000 – 9500 BC)

Throughout the Paleolithic period hunter-and-gatherer groups lived in

Europe, though significant cultural traces during the glacial maximum

(around 18000 BC) have only been found south of a line stretching from

southern France in the west to southeastern Ukraine in the east, excluding

the Alps, which were covered with a thick ice sheet during the entire time.

In the south green plains existed, which provided enough substistence for

small groups of humans to live, whereas this was not the case in the tree-

less tundra further north. During the glacial maxium the ice in centralEurope reached as far as just south of Berlin. As a result, Germany was

virtually uninhabited during the time of the glacial maximum until the arr i-

val of people from the warmer south from about 12000 BC onwards when

Northern Germany was ice-free (Probst 1999: 89). In Britain only the south

and the southeast were free from ice as was the western part of the Euro-

pean mainland until as far north as Norway. In Eastern Europe, too, only

the south was habitable. As a result, until the ice began to recede, humans

survived only in the southwest (Southern France, Iberian Peninsula), the

south and the (south-) east of Europe. However, the eastern and the wes t-

ern group were largely isolated from each other until the Mesolithic era,

which has also linguistic ramifications, in the sense that the languages of

both groups were probably only distantly related (Kallio 2003: 228).

As far as can be told from the archeological finds, the widespread pre-

glacial-maximum Gravettian Culture1 (about 26000 to 21000 BC) was su-

perseded by the Magdalenian (the main western culture from 18000 to

10000 BC) and Solutrean Cultures in the west and by the Sviderian,

Ahrensburg and Hamburg Cultures in the east until the final stages of the

Paleolithic period. The traces left by these groups of hunters and gatherers

are impressive, including tools made of stone and bone, art and small se t-

tlements, yet nothing is known about the languages they spoke. People

lived in groups of 25 to 100 during this time. From 9500 BC onward the

temperature increased rapidly and so the ice sheet, which had been retreat-

ing since about 15000 BC, left Europe to be re-populated.

Robert Mailhammer

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The prehistory of European languages 3

2.2. Mesolithic Europe: repopulation from the south (9000 – 7000 BC)

The trend towards complete occupation of the European continent had

already started in the last stages of the last ice age, and continued in the

Mesolithic period, which began in the 9th millennium BC, when the tem-

perature increased rapidly. From the south-west and, to a lesser degree

from the south-east, people moved northward as northern Europe became

more hospitable. Both movements cannot only be traced archaeologically,

but also genetically (see Villar and Prosper 2005: 397–419 for an overview

of the genetic research). Hunter-and-gatherer groups entered England in

the 9th and Ireland in the 8th millennium BC, leaving some of the most

important cultural traces of the European Mesolithic era. In central Europe,

the relics of the Magelmosian Culture in Denmark bear witness to the

northward expansion, as do the remnants of the Kunda Culture (Estonia)in eastern Europe.

In the wake of these migrations the eastern Paleolithic group probably

came into contact with the western group, so that, for example, the human

pioneers in the area east of the Baltic Sea originally belonged to both

groups and were therefore not likely to be a linguistically homogenous

group (Kallio 2003: 229). With regard to southeastern Europe, however,

archaeologists generally do not speak of a Mesolithic period: firstly, b e-

cause the area was only very sparsely populated, and secondly because the

first farmers, and with them the Neolithic period, became established in

Greece already around 7000 BC (van Andel and Runnels 1995: 481). Du r-

ing the Mesolithic period people lived as nomadic hunter-and-gatherer

groups, but in contrast to their Paleolithic ancestors they established com-

paratively large settlements for up to 100 people, consisting of wooden

huts in which they lived over several months (Probst 1999: 170).

Similar to the preceding period, though the archaeological finds clearly

permit the inference that quite a number of hunter-gatherer groups existed

in Mesolithic Europe, virtually nothing can be said about the languages that

were spoken then. It seems clear, though, that the people living in Europe

at this time were exclusively native in the sense that they were descendents

of the Paleolithic population of Europe. However, all inferences and

speculations about their languages can only be based on what can be re-

constructed from the attested situation several millennia later.

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The characteristic developments of the Neolithic period in Europe are the

spread of agriculture, stockbreeding, pottery and, later, metallurgy. This

era also witnessed the arrival of immigrant people and languages. The

various kinds of pottery found from this time are frequently used as tech-

nical terms to characterize a particular culture, such as Linear Ware,

Combed Ware, Corded Ware, etc. The Neolithic is the first period for

which inferences can be made about languages that were spoken in

Europe, though the divergent opinions on this matter bear witness to the

considerable amount of speculation that is involved in this. At this point it

is necessary to briefly reflect on the methodology used to investigate pre-

historic languages. Unless, of course, there are written records of a culturethat permit a linguistic identification, the language of a particular culture

cannot always be determined in a straightforward way. Basically, the fo l-

lowing methods have been employed (Zimmer 1990: 11–12):

a) The lexicon of a language is used to draw conclusions about the

speakers’ culture and their habitat (linguistic paleontology).

b) Loanwords are used as evidence for contact between languages

and their localization.

c) Due to their stability, toponyms can provide reliable evidence

about prehistoric stages, provided that their language(s) can be

identified.

d) Based on the known locations of languages and their speakers in

historical times, inferences are made about the relative position of

these languages in prehistoric times.

This overview confines itself to a brief treatment of linguistic paleontol-

ogy, because it is probably the most controversial method. The main point

of criticism directed against this approach is that the existence of a particu-

lar term in the lexicon of a language is a necessary but not a sufficient co n-

dition to allowing us to infer the existence of the concept or ob ject denoted

by the relevant term within the culture that is supposed to have spoken this

particular language (Zimmer 1990: 14). However, while this is obvious, it

does not automatically follow from this that linguistic paleontology is a

useless tool. It just means that it has to be applied with caution and that

every case has to be examined carefully. But the obviously close connec-tion between language and culture cannot be denied, and this can clearly

be used to examine the cultural reality of a language.

Robert Mailhammer

3. Native populations and immigran ts: Europe unt il the Bronze Age

(7000 – 2000 BC )

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the Mesolithic population of central and western Europe, a more Mediter-

ranean type. During this period the total population of Europe increased

signif icantly (Probst 1999: 228 and 252). However, in contrast to the

(spread of agriculture and poulation) and the

(spread of ideas only), recent genetic research indicates

that probably people as well as ideas diffused into Mesolithic Europe, but

that neither model taken to its extremes is likely to be correct (Haak et al.

2005).

The arrival of agriculture has frequently been connected with the arri-

val of speakers of Indo-European languages in Europe and the question of

the Indo-European homeland. Notwithstanding the criticism the concept of

an Indo-European culture and an Indo-European homeland has attracted

from both archaeologists and linguistis (see Häusler 2003 with references),

from a linguistic point of view it is clear that there must be an ancestrallanguage connecting all Indo-European languages as a top node, and it is

highly likely that there were speakers of this language at some stage.

Whether these speakers possessed a more or less uniform culture is a dif-

ferent matter altogether, but the assumption of one, even though idealized,

protolanguage is a methodological necessity from a linguistic point of

view.

Where the Indo-European protolanguage was spoken, however, has

been debated in the literature. Since the modification of Colin Renfrew’s

theory (see Renfrew 2003), the exact location of the Indo-European

is no longer an issue of tremendously high significance. The close

contact between Proto-Indo-European and Uralic, which is evidenced by

early Indo-European loanwords in Uralic (see Kallio 2003 and Koivulehto

2001 , both with references), strongly suggests that these two

protolanguages were spoken adjacent to each other.4 This, in turn, argues

in favour of a stage during which Proto -Indo-European was spoken in a

relatively small area south of the Uralic homeland. Whether or not the

speakers originally immigrated from Anatolia, as Renfrew (2003) claims,

or whether the Anatolian languages arrived in Anatolia after a breakaway

move of individual branches is secondary for the purpose of this chapter.

Whether the speakers of Proto-Indo-European were also responsible

for the spread of agriculture, which is associated with the Impressed Ware

and Linear Ware cultures, is however, doubtful. The reason for this is the

vast area this cultural complex covers. As Kallio (2003: 232) points out, thecommon Indo-European terminology for wheeled vehicles is too uniform

to assume an early extension of Proto-Indo-European across such a vast

territory without some linguistic differentiation. Moreover, the fact that

Robert Mailhammer

demic

diffusion model cultural

diff usion model

Ur-

heimat

et passim

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et passim

Vasconic

7

most of the Indo-European agricultural vocabulary seems to be restricted

to Northwestern Indo-European, with a good deal being non-Indo-

European loanwords, implies that Europe was already agricultural when

the Indo-Europeans settled there (Kallio 2003: 233).

This means that a common Indo-European protolanguage was probably

spoken roughly south of and adjacient to the Uralic homeland before it

split up. As wheeled vehicles were invented around 3500 BC (Probst 1999:

239), this suggests that Proto-Indo-European was still spoken around this

time (see also Kallio 2003: 232). Consequently, the Indo-Europeanization

of Europe is a more recent phenomenon than the rise of agriculture. It

started after 3500 BC, and is connected to different cultural co mplexes (cf.

Mallory and Adams 2006: 452), as has been suspected by archaeologists

sceptical of a uniform Indo-European culture (see e.g. Häusler 2003).

4.1. A Mesolithic substrate in Europe: Vasconic

In a series of papers (see Vennemann 2003a ), Theo Vennemann

has advanced a theory of the linguistic prehistory of Neolithic Europe. He

proposes that the Mesolithic population of Europe spoke languages of

which modern Basque is the only survivor, which he therefore named

. Basically, this assumption follows from what is known from

archaeology, namely that Europe was repopulated mainly from the south-

west after the last glacial maximum (cf. 2.2 above) and the fact that Basque

was spoken in southern France and northern Spain in antiquity (as, in fact,

today). The genetic data linking the speakers of modern Basque to the

Mesolithic process of repopulation renders material support to the theory.

According to Vennemann’s theory, the Vasconic languages formed a sub-

strate layer for the languages in (Sub-)Neolithic times, leading to the fo l-

lowing main ef fects:

a) The remarkably uniform and extensive system of the Old Euro-

pean (i.e. Pre-Neolithic) hydronymy (see e.g. Krahe 1963), and

more generally, the Old European toponymy are Vasconic. This

follows directly from the assumption that the majority of Meso-

lithic Europeans spoke Vasconic languages. During the process of repopulation they named every feature of the landscape they came

across and every location they stayed at. It is well known that later

populations generally take over the old names and refrain from

4. Effects of the Neolithic expansions on th e linguistic ma p of Eu rope

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changing their substance material (though modifications, especially

additions are common). The uniformity and the extension of the

toponymic system also make it unlikely that we are dealing with a

coincidence. Moreover, Vennemann (2003a, chapter 6) shows that

the language of the Old European hydronymy is unlikely to be

Proto-Indo-European or a direct descendent, and instead points

out structural and lexical corresponcences to (Proto-)Basque.

b) A lexical substrate exists in several Indo-European languages. So

far a number words in several Western Indo-European languages

without convincing Indo-Eruopean etymologies have been ety-

mologized as going back to the Vasconic substrate.

c) Several structural properties of Western Indo-European languages

are due to Vasconic influence. Examples are the vigesimal way of

counting (basis 20 instead of 10, cf. F ‘80’), which isautochthonic in Basque and the fixed dynamic stress on the initial

syllable, found only in Germanic, Italic and Celtic, which, accord-

ing to Vennemann (2003a: 178), can perhaps also be assumed for

an earlier stage of Basque.

The criticism directed against this theory has neither been able to falsify it

nor been able to present a plausible alternative. Though it is correct that

the Mesolithic repopulation of Europe was not achieved by one genetically

homogenous group of people (Villar and Prosper 2005: 411), which im-

plies that the linguistic situation was not homogenous either, this does not

rule out the possibility that at least the western and southwestern languages

belonged “to the same linguistic stock” (Vennemann 2003a: 181). 5 The

archaeological and genetic evidence at least clearly suggest that the western

group left more substantial marks, which may well argue for their numeri-

cal and technological supremacy.

Likewise, the objections raised by some Bascologists against corre-

spondences between Basque and the Old European language reconstructed

by Vennemann show that Old European was not identical to either modern

or historical Basque (Trask’s 1995 Pre-Basque dated about 2000 years

ago). At the same time they cannot rule out that Vennemann’s Vasconic

languages are related to Modern Basque over a distance of more than ten

millennia. As far as alternative theories are concerned, the idea that the Old

European hydronymy is Indo-European is implausible for linguistic and

extralinguistic reasons and theories that operate with mysterious languagesthat may have existed and subsequently disappeared are no scientific alte r-

native. As far as properties b) and c) above are concerned, they have either

not been convincingly explained (b) or virtually completely ignored (c).

Robert Mailhammer

quatre-vingt

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Atlantic

9

To conclude, it is conceivable that a good deal of the Mesolithic popu-

lation included speakers of languages belonging to a group that is distantly

related to Modern Basque and that left its traces on the linguistic map of

Europe in the shape of the oldest place names in Europe and various other

substratal features in Western Indo-European languages. The immense

time depth and the paucity of data, however, remain a considerable chal-

lenge for any hypothesis on the linguistic situation at that time.

4.2. More on language contact in Neolithic Europe

Apart from the Mesolithic substrate termed Vasconic and the one detec t-

able in the Uralic languages, there are other situation of language contact in

Neolithic Europe with different stratifications that are worth mentioning.Starting in the northwestern edge of Europe, there is the case of Pictish,

a sparsely attested language spoken in Scotland in historical times. It has

been identified as a non-Indo-European language, though heavily Celti-

cizised (Forsyth 1997). Hypotheses about the origin of Pictish have either

suggested an ancient Mesolithic connection to the continent (e.g Kallio

2003: 232 fn 3) or a more recent Neolithic migration, as Vennemann’s

theory on the prehistory of Europe proposes. According to the second

hypothesis, the ancestors of the Picts were speakers of a Semitic language

– termed – who arrived in Western Europe across the sea and

settled in the British Isles, forming a substrate for the Celts, who arrived

many millennia later. Insular Celtic – Irish in particular – diverges in many

sturctural respects from other Celtic languages, which points to a situation

of language shift (Schrijver 2004), and these deviances find close parallels

in Semitic languages as a number of studies have shown (cf. Vennemann

2003b: 327).

However, cases have also been made for other lost contact languages in

pre-Indo-European Europe, which may have arrived together with agricul-

ture at the beginning of the Neolithic period, and which may have left their

traces in some Indo-European languages (see Schrijver 2001). In some

cases these may even have been Indo-European languages, as Kallio (2003:

231) suggests for various loanword strata in Uralic languages, and as has

been suggested in the literature for Greek (see Strunk 2003 with refe r-

ences).6

Other cases in point are the non-Indo-European languages on theIberian Peninsula. Basque was addressed in the previous section; however,

not much is known about the others, Tartessian and Iberian. The Iberians

left written records, which have not yet been understood. What seems

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clear, is that Iberian is not directly related to Basque (Trask 1995), but the

relations of Tartessian are almost completely unclear. It is also unknown

when these languages arrived on the Iberian Peninsula, though there is

some indication that they arrived during Neolithic times. At any rate, both

languages were already there when the Indo-Europeans (Celts and later the

Greeks) and Semites (Phoencians and Carthagenians) arrived. The lan-

guage commonly referred to as Celtiberian bears testimony of the Iberian

substratal influence on Celtic.

It has been suspected that Tartessian and Iberian originally belonged to

the so-called Aegean language complex, originating in Asia Minor. For

other extinct languages of Europe this has been proven, namely for Etrus-

can and its relatives Raetian and Lemnian (cf. Steinbauer 1999,

Schumacher 2004). However, one of the greatest linguistic puzzle of the

Neolithic period is that of the Minoan language, which has remained unaf-filiated so far.

The two biggest language families in Europe, Uralic and Indo-

European, have been in contact from the beginning. The continuing con-

tacts between northern Indo-European languages, Germanic and Baltic,

and Uralic languages, Finnic and Saamic, manifested themselves in shared

structural features and a layer of superstrate loanwords in some Uralic

languages as well as in substrate features in Balto-Slavic (cf. Kallio 2003:

230 with references).

At the end of the Neolithic period the Indo-European languages were

spreading across the continent. By the end of the Bronze Age in the middle

of the last millennium BC, we find all languages in their historical loc a-

tions. As mentioned in 3.2 above, the Indo-European languages are proba-

bly represented archaelogically by more than one cultural complex.

Though their speakers did not bring acrigulture to Europe, they continued

to shape this continent decisively. However, we must not forget that lan-

guage contact situations continued to occur after the Neolithic period. In-

vestigating these can shed some light on hitherto unexplained phenomena.

One case in point is the influence Semitic languages have exercised

since the Bronze Age, in particular the Phoenecians and the Carthagenians(often aptly called ). There is clear indication for this influ-

ence in the archaeological remains from the Mediterranean area, the Ibe-

rian Peninsula and also the British Isles. Consequently, linguistic ramifica-

Robert Mailhammer

Orientalization

5. Languages in Eur ope in the Bronze Age and beyond (2000 – 500)

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The prehistory of European languages 11

tions should be expected, some of which Theo Vennemann has explored

(see Vennemann 2003b) in an expansion of his Vasconic Theory (cf. 4.1

above). The results show the considerable explanatory potential of this line

of research. Such studies demonstrate how difficult the linguistic investi-

gation of the prehistoric era can be, but also how powerful linguistic tools

are in this area of research.

33,000 BC 24,000 18,000 9,500 9,000

Homo Sapiens Neanderthal last glacial end of begin of

enters Europe man extinct maximum Ice Age Mesolithic

7,000 4500 3500 2000 500

agriculture agriculture development IE daughter end of

spreads to in Central of the wheel; languages Bronze Age

Greece Europe Proto-Indo-

Proto-Uralic European

Appe nd ix: T imeline

Upper P a leolith ic M esolith ic

Neolith ic Br onze Age

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12

1. From an archaeological point of view, there is a terminological difference

between the terms and . The former refers to a complex phe-nomenon consisting of tools, economy, art, settlements, burial rites and an-

thropological chararteristics, whereas for groups not all of these elements can

be described. In this narrow sense, the pre-Neolithic cultures are rather like

groups, and it is only from the Neolithic onwards that archaeologists speak of

cultures (Probst 1999: 227).

2. For a survey of other theories see Kallio (2003).

3. For arguments against an autonomous development of agriculture in Europe,

at least not to the extent of the Linear Ware Culture see Probst (1999: 250).

Also the genetic facts reported in the main text are counter-arguments to such

a view.

4. Note that these lexical correspondences clearly point to language contact and

not to a genetic relationship in the sense of the Nostratic Theory. As Ko ivule-hto (2001: 257) points out, the phonetic matches are far too exact to be due

to a genetic relationship.

5. It is apparent that genetic and cultural homogeneity do not permit the infer-

ence of linguistic homogeneity. The genetic study by Calderon et al. (1998)

concludes that the speakers of Basque arrived on the Iberian Peninsula only in

Neolithic times. However, given the poor linguistic relations between Cauca-

sian languages and Basque (cf. Trask 1995: 81–86) it has to be assumed that

Basque is the last survivor of the Mesolithic languages of Europe (see Trask

1995: 91 and 1997: 8). Note also that the eastern and the western group ulti-

mately go back to the same wave of Paleolithic immigration from Africa.

Hence, their languages are actually likely to be ultimately related.

6. Lusitian has been shown to have been an Indo-European language (Mallory

and Adams 2006: 37). This has also been demonstrated for Ligurian, which is

related to Continental Celtic Lepontic, the earliest attested Celtic language

(cf. Mallory and Adams 1997: 233).

Robert Mailhammer

culture group

Notes

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2004 Festlandkeltisch und Französisch, Niederländisch, Hochdeutsch. In

, Peter Schrijver and Peter-Arnold

Mumm (eds.), 1–20. Bremen: Hempen.Schumacher, Stefan

2004 . 2nd expanded ed. Innsbruck: Institut für

Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.

Steinbauer, Dieter

1999 . St. Katharinen: Skripta Mercatu-

rae.

Strunk, Klaus

2003 ‘Vorgriechisch’/‘Pelasgisch’: Neue Erwägungen zu einer älteren

Substrathypothese. In , Alfred

Bammesberger and Theo Vennemann (eds.), 85–98. Heidelberg: Carl

Winter.

Trask, Robert L.1995 Origin and Relatives of the Basque Language: Review of the evi-

dence. In , José Ignacio

Hualde, Joseba A. Lakarra and Robert L. Trask (eds.), 65–99, Am-

sterdam/Philadelphia: John Ben jamins.

1997 . London/New York: Routledge.

van Andel, Tjeerd H. and Curtis N. Runnels

1995 The earliest farmers in Europe. 69: 481–500.

Vennemann, Th.

2003a , ed. by Patrizia Noel Aziz

Hanna. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter

2003 b Languages in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps. In

, Alfred Bammesberger and Theo Vennemann

(eds.), 319–332. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Villar, Francisco and Blanca M. Prosper

2005 . Salamanca:

Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Zimmer, Stefan

1990

. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprach-

wissenschaft.

Robert Mailhammer

Sprachtod und Sprachgeburt

Die rätischen Inschriften

Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen

Languages in Prehistoric Europe

Towards a History of the Basque Language

The history of Basque

Antiquity

Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica

Languages in

Prehistoric Europe

Vascos, Celtas e Indoeuropeos. Genes y Lenguas

Ursprache, Urvolk und Indogermanisierung. Zur Methode der

Indogermanischen Altertumskunde

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