Re: Latvian Language Older Than Lithuanian?


"Eugene Holman" <holman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:holman-3005061312350001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <1148961652.350854.209850@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
lorad474@xxxxxx wrote:

Maybe.. Anyway. it's something that I have been looking at for a number
of years... initially because of geographic location. Then because
Meyers also thought so.

Problem. The Indo-European speaking agriculturalists who are the ancestors
of the Balts entered the sparsely populated Baltic region from the south
east, mostly from what is now Belarus. The older population of this vast
area, Finno-Ugric speakers, had lived by foraging, so the
agriculture-based alternative introduced by the Balts meant a cultural
revolution in the area. The Balts intermarried with the Finno-Ugric
speakers, and the degree to which they were assimilated is reflected in
today's realities:

<deletions>

You still have a lot to learn about the historical study of language.

\EH

An interestig topic.

But, all the recent digs have shown a relatively uniterrrupted settlement of
the Baltic region since the last Ice Age.
The first settler seeming to come from the SW, as in Denmark. This is
followed by other incursions ( but with additions to
but not displacements of the resident population) from the SE and later SW.
Based mostly on pottery fragments, and tool remains the change
from hunter gatherer to agricultural does not seem to show any radical
population shift or supplanting.
To my knowledge, the achaeological evidence seems to show that the
Finno-Ugrians were a later incursive rather than a aboriginal population in
the region.
Although the famous Tacitus quote is not very clear, it does not really show
any clear evidence of a recognizably Finno -Ugric culture.
The many Fin.-Ugr. place names scatterd in Lithuanian and Latvia no more
prove that the Finns were there first than the many French names in Indiana
and the rest of the US Midwest prove that the French are the aboriginal
nation. It is posiible for people like the French Fur Traders to leave
evidence of their prescence
with only a tiny, scattered and intermittent prescence.

Interestingly, the archaeological evidence shows that even going back
several thousand years BC, there has always been a dividing
line between the inhabitants N of the Dauguva and S. The Narva culture
(roughly present territory of Latvia and Estonia)
which is seen as closely related to the Nemunas culture (roughly Lithuania
and parts of Belarus and Prussia)
always had subtle differences in the pottery designs, and tool making.
Possibly due to differencs in life-styles such as more
swampy or forest covered in one region, less fishing, more hunting,
differences in soil types, such as more clay or sand?
And this is even before signs of incursions of "foreign" populations as
shown by sudden abundance of different Pottery Styles (Corded Ware
vs. Stem Ware - or whatever the technical terms are). Or perhaps differences
in religions? Earth Goddes vs Goddess Laima (Fortune). No way to know.

It is possible that the hunter-gatherer substrate that the Indo-European
ancestors of the Balts found were neither Finn-Ugr nor Balt but Maria
Gimbutiene's Old Europeans. After a period of Baltic "nation bulding" there
followed a period of incursions of both Slavic and Finno-Ugric (not in that
order) populations into Baltic populated teritories. And in the swampy
wooded conditions there was not a very thick line between farming and
hunting/gathering. The farming was not as good and the fishing was not so
bad that one way subsistence was that overwhelmingly superior to the other.
( I mention that famous Dzuku saying - Jei ne grybai, jei ne uogos, Dzuku
mergos butu nuogos. - as one indication that farming often needed to be
supplemented to survive in this region)

I believe a case can be made just as strongly that Latvians are Balts who
have been Finnicized. And as proof offer up the fact that the Finn-Ugr.
influence is stronger as one gets closer to the Estonian border!

Or a third argument that the Latvians are neither the conquered nor the
conquering, but a (relatively) peaceful meld of co-existing populations of
Balts and Finnics.

It would be interesting to be able to compare the process by which the
native Baltic populations/cultures of Western Russia and Belarus were
supplanted
by Slavic ones to the process that occurred between Balts and Estonians in
Latvia. I wonder if it would shed any evidence to any of the theories
above.

Perhaps Eugene Holman is the only one with enough knowledge to attempt this
on this list. But I think it would be an interesting mind game for
linguists to
attempt to create what Latvian might have looked like in all three
instances.
A) Latvian as spoken by Finnics who were Balticized. (Ests who speak bad
Lithuanian as was described above in jest)
B) Latvian as spoken by Balts who were Finno-Ugrized(?) - Lithuanians who
speak bad Estonian(:-)?
C) Latvian spoken as a sort of pidgen or creole of equal parts of both
Finno-Ugric and Baltic speakers. Both Liths and Ests speaking badly(?)

How or even would Latvian look differently in all 3 cases?

Could we arrive at Modern Latvian from all three starting points? ( I
personally suspect that the real case involved all 3 types of influences in
various measure and at different times to differing extent .
-Kovas


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