Were early Eurasian steppe cultures Altaic?

Excerpts from a very interesting debate, initializing the "IE Origins" category:

Current Anthropology, Feb 2003 v44 i1 p109(2)

More on archaeology and language. (Discussion). (response to C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Current Anthropology, vol. 43, p. 63) Mario Alinei; Richard N. Frye.

A migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians (cf., e.g., Marcel Otte's and Alexander Hausler's work) but also, and especially, among linguists (Alinei 1996-2000 n.d.; Ballester n.d; Cavazza 2001; Costa 1998; Poghirc 1992). In this framework not only Andronovo but also the whole cultural sequence that precedes it, from Srednyi Stog to the Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, and Timber Grave cultures (cf. Makkay's comment), can only be seen as expressions of an already developed Turkic branch of the Altaic population, originating in Central Asia in Paleolithic times. Among other advantages, this conclusion produces (1) a straightforward explanation of the numerous Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in Samoyed and other Uralic languages, as well as in Slavic, and (2) a convergence between a hippocentric geo-cultural scenario, on the one hand, and the continuity of the archaeological record, on the other ("The steppe tribes of horse-breeders and mobile pastoralists had already begun, in the Copper Age, to play the role which they were to continue to play for the next 5,000 to 5,500 years of human history" [Chernykh 1992:42-3]), pace Anthony and other scholars who continue to cultivate the myth of the hippocentrism of the Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Iranians.

The origin of the Iranians, in turn, must be sought in Iran itself, and their role in the steppes should be seen as an aspect of a later expansion from the south (see Khlopin 1990:177). The Bactrian Margiana complex, in my opinion correctly interpreted by Lamberg-Karlovsky as opposed to Andronovo, may well be an important aspect of the Iranians' earliest northern expansion.

Posted by Dienekes at October 3, 2003 02:57 AM | PermaLink