In the last few days, Anthony's popular overview over Proto-Indo-European archeology has been the book on my bedside table that I used to read before I fell asleep. (Yes, I need something to occupy my mind with things that have little to nothing to do with my work in order to calm down in the evening ... and archeology books work for me ;) And in a way, it calls for reviving this blog as it stimulates a response, even though I haven't read through it fully.
First of all, it is nicely written in an easily understandable language, and can be recommended to anyone not too familiar with the field but interested in it. It does not presuppose prior knowledge but nevertheless summarizes and interprets results and developments in a non-trivial and detailed way. Basically what you would ask for from a popular science book. And accordingly, it has generally been met with positive reviews (e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Kenneally-t.html?_r=0).
Moreover, it is written by an archeologist, which complements my primarily linguistic expertise and provides a lot of insight into methods, approaches and ways of thinking that more specialized books, e.g., Hermann Parzinger's monumental "Die frühen Völker Eurasiens. Vom Neolithikum bis zum Mittelalter" (which I also happen to have on my shelf), do not provide. In that sense, it was really worth reading, and in general would recommend it. (Last but not least, because there are much worse books on the topic around.)
But being a linguist myself, I cannot escape but observing some obvious problems in the linguistic part of the book. These don't affect the general conclusions, but cast some doubt on its reliability of the argumentation. This includes hand-waving methods of dating the "life span" of proto languages (Chapter 3 is somewhat problematic in this regard), or the way he brushed aside Schmidt's Wellentheory or the linguistic arguments for an Anatolian Urheimat put forward by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (Chapter 5; in Chapter 4, he arguments on archeological grounds which seems to be slightly more solid).
And this is although I share his belief in a North-Pontic Urheimat. This partly due to plausibility considerations not unlike those presented by Anthony, such as the close relationship with Uralic languages. One detail he doesn't mention is the fact that most agricultural terms seem to originate from Semitic (see Gamkrelidze and Ivanov), but if PIE peoples were directly involved in an early stage of the Neolithic revolution, they should have developed at least some of their terminology themselves. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov actually tried to associate the material culture of Catal Hüyük with the PIE culture. Catal Hüyük is one of the oldest places where bull domestication is attested, but even Gamkrelidze and Ivanov admit that the PIE word for "tamed bull" (*tauros, as opposed the wild bull for whom different lexemes existed) is most likely a loan from Semitic. And of course, Anatolia lacks any trace of a pre-Hittite Indo-European substrate, whereas Hittite is clearly recognisable as a superstrat over non-Indo-European languages, in particular Hattic, and thus probably of foreign origin.
The reason why the Anatolian hypothesis persisted at all (actually, the association between Corded Ware ceramics and PIE immigration into Central Europe, and hence, a PIE origin in the wider cultural context of the Pit Grave culture has been generally accepted already early in the 20th century, e.g., Philipp 1937, p. 57) may be simply due to the over-emphasis that Western researchers tend to give farming societies of Anatolia and Mesopotamia as opposed to mobile societies of, say, the Eurasian steppe. Even though, for example, the horse-back nomadism of later Eurasia is a highly advanced adaptation of agricultural societies to an arid environment that facilitates the accumulation of wealth (in the form of cattle) and the subsequent development of complex structured hierarchical societies of immense military and political impact on neighboring farming societies, the steppe is usually seen as the periphery of more advanced agricultural societies. While this may be justified to a certain extend, as mobile societies are less likely to create architecture, bureaucracy and writing, it has lead to the impression that the steppe was a culturally passive area that contributed little to nothing to the continuous progress that eventually lead farming societies to develop modern states and their technologies.
Consequently, every significant development in culture (or language) is eventually associated with farming societies and only discussed with respect to them. A nice example for this view is Henning's (1978) purely speculative view that the Tocharians migrated from the PIE homeland over Mesopotamia, solely based on kling-klang etymology of tribal names and the idea that Mesopotamia simply *must* have attracted every mobile society in Eurasia. This does not seem to be too far away from popular, but unjustified, ideas from the 1930s where we find pseudo-scientific statements like "4500 BC: The probably Aryan Sumerians descend from Anatolia to Mesopotamia (Euphrat and Tigris)." (Schilling 1933, p. 13, "4500 Die vermutlich arischen Sumerer steigen, aus Kleinasien kommend, ins Zweistromland (Euphrat und Tigris) hinab", emphasis by me). Of course these people who referred to themselves as "black-headed" must have been Aryan (~PIE), where else should our magnificent ancestors have come from if not from the first civilization of earth? (The same book makes a similar statement about the ethnic background of Ancient Egypt.) And if they did not come from there directly, they at least provided the stimulus from which subsequent civilization there evolved!
As opposed to the traditional view, nomadic, herding societies were, however, extremely successful in establishing a political (and eventually, linguistic) hegemony over farming societies. Historical examples include several waves of immigration of Semitic peoples into Mesopotamia, where the languages of established agricultural societies (Sumerian in the 3rd m. BC, Akkadian in the 1st m. BC, Aramaic in the 1st m. AD) were replaced by languages brought in by nomad invaders (Akkadian in the 3rd m. BC, Aramaic in the 1st m. BC, Arabic in the 1st m. AD). Similar effects may have led to the consolidation of Hungarian in Europe (originally spoken by an Uralic elite in a mixed ethnical environment including Germanic, Slavic, Iranian and Romance) or Turkish in Anatolia (where it replaced Greek) and in the urban centres of Central Asia (where it replaced Iranian). Not in all cases, however, political dominance turned into language spread. Despite being dominated by a Turkish-speaking elite, the Bulgarians kept their Slavic language. The linguistic impact of the Indo-Aryan rulers of Mitanni on their Hurrian subjects was limited to terms for horse training, theonyms and proper names. China seems to be particularly resistant in this respect. Despite being regularly threatened and occasionally overrun by nomadic tribes (which were the origins of the Qing and Yuan dynasties as well as the mythological origin of the Zhou dynasty), it developed an astonishing cultural and linguistic homogeneity and continuity. Something similar can be said about Ancient Egypt under the 15th, 22nd and 23rd dynasty. Now, a key insight I got from Anthony's book is what factors may facilitate or block language change under these circumstances, which he plausibly explained through a clientel system.
So, despite some minor deficits, the book aims and manages to give a coherent interpretation on the linguistic, archeological, and anthropologic problem to define, to identify and to trace Proto-Indo-European (PIE) cultures through time and space, and it's fun to read ;)
BTW: A nice quote from p.125f : "In Soviet archeology and in current Slavic or post-Soviet terminology the word Neolithic is applied to prehistoric societies that made pottery but had not yet discovered how to make metal. The invention of ceramics defined the beginning of the Neolithic. ... But Western archaeologists defined the Neolithic differently. In Western archaeology, societies can only be called Neolithic if they had economies based on food production -- herding or farming or both. ... [C]apitalist archaeologists made the mode of production central to their definition of the Neolithic, and Marxist archaeologists ignored it." I always had the impression that archeology is potentially subversive, because it has the potential to question established myths of national or cultural identity. But now it seems it's not just the science, it's the scientists, as well.
References
D. Anthony (2007), The horse, the wheel and language. How bronze-age riders from the Eurarian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton University Press.
Gamkrelidze, T., V. Ivanov (1995), Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. Mouton de Gruyter.
Henning, W.B. (1978), The first Indo-Europeans in history. In: Ulmen, G.L. (ed.), Society and History. Essays in honor of Karl August Wittfogel. The Hague, Netherlands, p. 215-239.
Philipp, H. (1937), Vor- und Frühgeschichte des Nordens und des Mittelmeerraumes, E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1937
Schilling, H. (1933), Weltgeschichte. Ereignisse und Daten von der Eiszeit bis heute. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin.
First of all, it is nicely written in an easily understandable language, and can be recommended to anyone not too familiar with the field but interested in it. It does not presuppose prior knowledge but nevertheless summarizes and interprets results and developments in a non-trivial and detailed way. Basically what you would ask for from a popular science book. And accordingly, it has generally been met with positive reviews (e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Kenneally-t.html?_r=0).
Moreover, it is written by an archeologist, which complements my primarily linguistic expertise and provides a lot of insight into methods, approaches and ways of thinking that more specialized books, e.g., Hermann Parzinger's monumental "Die frühen Völker Eurasiens. Vom Neolithikum bis zum Mittelalter" (which I also happen to have on my shelf), do not provide. In that sense, it was really worth reading, and in general would recommend it. (Last but not least, because there are much worse books on the topic around.)
But being a linguist myself, I cannot escape but observing some obvious problems in the linguistic part of the book. These don't affect the general conclusions, but cast some doubt on its reliability of the argumentation. This includes hand-waving methods of dating the "life span" of proto languages (Chapter 3 is somewhat problematic in this regard), or the way he brushed aside Schmidt's Wellentheory or the linguistic arguments for an Anatolian Urheimat put forward by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (Chapter 5; in Chapter 4, he arguments on archeological grounds which seems to be slightly more solid).
And this is although I share his belief in a North-Pontic Urheimat. This partly due to plausibility considerations not unlike those presented by Anthony, such as the close relationship with Uralic languages. One detail he doesn't mention is the fact that most agricultural terms seem to originate from Semitic (see Gamkrelidze and Ivanov), but if PIE peoples were directly involved in an early stage of the Neolithic revolution, they should have developed at least some of their terminology themselves. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov actually tried to associate the material culture of Catal Hüyük with the PIE culture. Catal Hüyük is one of the oldest places where bull domestication is attested, but even Gamkrelidze and Ivanov admit that the PIE word for "tamed bull" (*tauros, as opposed the wild bull for whom different lexemes existed) is most likely a loan from Semitic. And of course, Anatolia lacks any trace of a pre-Hittite Indo-European substrate, whereas Hittite is clearly recognisable as a superstrat over non-Indo-European languages, in particular Hattic, and thus probably of foreign origin.
The reason why the Anatolian hypothesis persisted at all (actually, the association between Corded Ware ceramics and PIE immigration into Central Europe, and hence, a PIE origin in the wider cultural context of the Pit Grave culture has been generally accepted already early in the 20th century, e.g., Philipp 1937, p. 57) may be simply due to the over-emphasis that Western researchers tend to give farming societies of Anatolia and Mesopotamia as opposed to mobile societies of, say, the Eurasian steppe. Even though, for example, the horse-back nomadism of later Eurasia is a highly advanced adaptation of agricultural societies to an arid environment that facilitates the accumulation of wealth (in the form of cattle) and the subsequent development of complex structured hierarchical societies of immense military and political impact on neighboring farming societies, the steppe is usually seen as the periphery of more advanced agricultural societies. While this may be justified to a certain extend, as mobile societies are less likely to create architecture, bureaucracy and writing, it has lead to the impression that the steppe was a culturally passive area that contributed little to nothing to the continuous progress that eventually lead farming societies to develop modern states and their technologies.
Consequently, every significant development in culture (or language) is eventually associated with farming societies and only discussed with respect to them. A nice example for this view is Henning's (1978) purely speculative view that the Tocharians migrated from the PIE homeland over Mesopotamia, solely based on kling-klang etymology of tribal names and the idea that Mesopotamia simply *must* have attracted every mobile society in Eurasia. This does not seem to be too far away from popular, but unjustified, ideas from the 1930s where we find pseudo-scientific statements like "4500 BC: The probably Aryan Sumerians descend from Anatolia to Mesopotamia (Euphrat and Tigris)." (Schilling 1933, p. 13, "4500 Die vermutlich arischen Sumerer steigen, aus Kleinasien kommend, ins Zweistromland (Euphrat und Tigris) hinab", emphasis by me). Of course these people who referred to themselves as "black-headed" must have been Aryan (~PIE), where else should our magnificent ancestors have come from if not from the first civilization of earth? (The same book makes a similar statement about the ethnic background of Ancient Egypt.) And if they did not come from there directly, they at least provided the stimulus from which subsequent civilization there evolved!
As opposed to the traditional view, nomadic, herding societies were, however, extremely successful in establishing a political (and eventually, linguistic) hegemony over farming societies. Historical examples include several waves of immigration of Semitic peoples into Mesopotamia, where the languages of established agricultural societies (Sumerian in the 3rd m. BC, Akkadian in the 1st m. BC, Aramaic in the 1st m. AD) were replaced by languages brought in by nomad invaders (Akkadian in the 3rd m. BC, Aramaic in the 1st m. BC, Arabic in the 1st m. AD). Similar effects may have led to the consolidation of Hungarian in Europe (originally spoken by an Uralic elite in a mixed ethnical environment including Germanic, Slavic, Iranian and Romance) or Turkish in Anatolia (where it replaced Greek) and in the urban centres of Central Asia (where it replaced Iranian). Not in all cases, however, political dominance turned into language spread. Despite being dominated by a Turkish-speaking elite, the Bulgarians kept their Slavic language. The linguistic impact of the Indo-Aryan rulers of Mitanni on their Hurrian subjects was limited to terms for horse training, theonyms and proper names. China seems to be particularly resistant in this respect. Despite being regularly threatened and occasionally overrun by nomadic tribes (which were the origins of the Qing and Yuan dynasties as well as the mythological origin of the Zhou dynasty), it developed an astonishing cultural and linguistic homogeneity and continuity. Something similar can be said about Ancient Egypt under the 15th, 22nd and 23rd dynasty. Now, a key insight I got from Anthony's book is what factors may facilitate or block language change under these circumstances, which he plausibly explained through a clientel system.
So, despite some minor deficits, the book aims and manages to give a coherent interpretation on the linguistic, archeological, and anthropologic problem to define, to identify and to trace Proto-Indo-European (PIE) cultures through time and space, and it's fun to read ;)
BTW: A nice quote from p.125f : "In Soviet archeology and in current Slavic or post-Soviet terminology the word Neolithic is applied to prehistoric societies that made pottery but had not yet discovered how to make metal. The invention of ceramics defined the beginning of the Neolithic. ... But Western archaeologists defined the Neolithic differently. In Western archaeology, societies can only be called Neolithic if they had economies based on food production -- herding or farming or both. ... [C]apitalist archaeologists made the mode of production central to their definition of the Neolithic, and Marxist archaeologists ignored it." I always had the impression that archeology is potentially subversive, because it has the potential to question established myths of national or cultural identity. But now it seems it's not just the science, it's the scientists, as well.
References
D. Anthony (2007), The horse, the wheel and language. How bronze-age riders from the Eurarian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton University Press.
Gamkrelidze, T., V. Ivanov (1995), Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. Mouton de Gruyter.
Henning, W.B. (1978), The first Indo-Europeans in history. In: Ulmen, G.L. (ed.), Society and History. Essays in honor of Karl August Wittfogel. The Hague, Netherlands, p. 215-239.
Philipp, H. (1937), Vor- und Frühgeschichte des Nordens und des Mittelmeerraumes, E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1937
Schilling, H. (1933), Weltgeschichte. Ereignisse und Daten von der Eiszeit bis heute. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin.
