The case of Euphratic

[Maliclavelli]

The Case for Euphratic
Gordon Whittaker
University of Göttingen, Germany
(Presented by Academy Member Th. V. Gamkrelidze)
ABSTRACT. It will be argued that the cuneiform writing system, the Sumerian and Akkadian lexicon, and the place names of Southern Mesopotamia preserve traces of an early Indo-European language, indeed the earliest by more than a millennium. Furthermore, this evidence is detailed and consistent enough to reconstruct a number of features of the proposed Indo-European language, Euphratic, and to sketch an outline of Euphratean cultural pat-terns.
 



Very interesting paper. Of course I was never convinced that Sumerian URUDU wasn’t an Indo-European word etc. etc. My theory of course isn’t the yours. I think that the origin of Sumerian scripture is the Vinca writing, some millennia older, and before the Camun one. I think having demonstrated that not only Middle Eastern R1b1b2a has come from Italy through the Balkans, but also mtDNA HV4 has arrived to Mesopotamia from Italy or at least from Europe etc etc.

[rms2]

The Case for Euphratic
Gordon Whittaker
University of Göttingen, Germany
(Presented by Academy Member Th. V. Gamkrelidze)
ABSTRACT. It will be argued that the cuneiform writing system, the Sumerian and Akkadian lexicon, and the place names of Southern Mesopotamia preserve traces of an early Indo-European language, indeed the earliest by more than a millennium. Furthermore, this evidence is detailed and consistent enough to reconstruct a number of features of the proposed Indo-European language, Euphratic, and to sketch an outline of Euphratean cultural pat-terns.
 



Very interesting paper. Of course I was never convinced that Sumerian URUDU wasn’t an Indo-European word etc. etc. My theory of course isn’t the yours. I think that the origin of Sumerian scripture is the Vinca writing, some millennia older, and before the Camun one. I think having demonstrated that not only Middle Eastern R1b1b2a has come from Italy through the Balkans, but also mtDNA HV4 has arrived to Mesopotamia from Italy or at least from Europe etc etc.

That is interesting, especially since the presenter is Gamkrelidze. Does this mean he has revised his view that PIE arose in eastern Anatolia or Armenia? Or does he believe Euphratic spread from there to Mesopotamia?

[Maliclavelli]

Rich, I think that Gamkrelidze and pretty all the others are thinking that this theory is a proof in favour of their theories, i.e. an origin of IE in that region of Asia, South of Caucasus. I, of course, think that it isn’t expected, not only because I have theorized from many years the origin of some haplogroups found there from Western Europe and specifically Italy: R1b1b2 is controversial but by chance I demonstrated just on this forum, replying to Humanist, that mt HV4, thought of Middle Eastern origin, is clearly European (I said Italian, or Russian the other possibility).
Also the conviction that writing was invented in Mesopotamia isn’t expected after the finding of the Vinča writing, more ancient of some thousand years.
About the linguistic question raised by the paper I can say that I (in a paper of a thirty years ago, not published, but it was read by the linguist of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa University Romano Lazzeroni, and also the great Italian linguist Vittore Pisani read it: I always have a response of his) had hypothesized a link between IE and Chinese (and Sino-Tibetan languages).
I linked Chinese liu “6” and IE *swek-s “6” if we reconstruct Sino Tibetan *dru-g and IE *dhłVkhł-. IE *s wasn’t for me primitive, but development of *dh-. See Sumerian gud “ox, bull” from IE *gwou-s “bovine”. Here I don’t raise the problem of the link IE/Sino-Tibetan within a monogenesis theory of the language, neither the link of the Sumerian with Sino-Tibetan languages, nor the Na-dené-Sino-Tibetan macrofamily etc. and where these contacts could have happened and in which times.
It is meaningful besides that:
1)   the reconstructed IE is a centum language
2)   many links are with Latin or the same Italian (“Note that in Indo-European languages the weasel is sometimes similarly named, as, for example, in Italian donnola ‘weasel’, lit. ‘little lady’” (page 160)
Then even though it is more believable a link of this ancient form of IE with Western Asia, it isn’t impossible that this language has come from Balkans and before from Central Europe or the Alpine zone of Italy.