--- On Tue, 7/10/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> > > Perhaps, the dispersal of IE and Hesperic was due
> to the
> > > Black Sea Flood, if that really happened.
> > 
> > I think the archaeology and paleobiology bear this out.
> A flood of some
> > kind happened in what is essentially just barely
> pre-historic times. I
> > think what's rather up in the air is what effects it
> may have had on
> > local peoples, it's actual nature (catastrophic v.
> mild) and that sort
> > of thing.
> 
> The matter is somewhat controversial, and the flood may have
> been more gradual than what Pitman & Ryan lay out in their
> book, _Noah's Flood_.

Exactly. As I understand it, it could have even swung back and forth over
the years.

>  (Also, I am not convinced of the idea that the Biblical
> and Mesopotamian flood myths are recollections of *this*
> flood.)

I agree on this. The Sumerian and Hebrew myths don't seem to read like
stories of a rising body of water so much as a whole lot of rain coming
down.

> But at any rate, there was a large area of land - very
> fertile
> land indeed, with a favourable climate - being flooded
> within a
> few years (or at least, a few decades) where now are the Bay
> of
> Odessa and the Sea of Azov.  The natural response would
> be to
> pack up everything in a boat and travel upriver as far and
> as
> fast as possible.  

Right. Or hoof it where a convenient boat was not to be had!

> (The wheel was not yet invented, and the
> horse not yet domesticated, so boats were the best option.)

In the World, Men of that region already had both at that time (and for
quite a long while before), so those would be options. But even so, the
catastrophic nature of the event *there* would have precluded escape for
very many, by boat or any other means of travel. They would have just been
swept away.


> > the one time "Hospitable Sea" did indeed flood, catastrophically and 
> > fairly recently, after which the Punt (ancestors of the Semites and 
> > Aryans) broke up and went in their various directions.
> 
> As Dustfinger has pointed out, chances that IE and Semitic
> are related are slim. 

Oh I agree, but I didn't say they were linguistically related -- 

"Punt was a region of lush lowlands around the Hospitable Sea, away to the northeast of the great Inland Sea. Along with Atelante, Punt was one of the Archaic Empires of early human history. It was flooded and disappeared under the waters of the inflooding of the Inland Sea some 5000 years or so before the end of the previous age. After this time, the sea became called Black or Inhospitable. The survivors of this catastrophe are known to later history as the Aryans (lordly people) and the Shemans (shining people); they are well known for having created and propagated tales of their narrow escape and the harrowing ordeal that ensued."

-- Punt, you see, is (or rather *was*) a country. The Aryans and the
Shemans were just two of the ethnic groups living there at the time. There
were others, to be sure, but it's these two whose descendants have become
so prominent in the region.

> I consider an IE-Uralic relationship much
> more likely.  Also, if Semitic is related to IE, the
> whole Afro-Asiatic family is - and that family almost certainly
> radiated from somewhere in northeastern Africa.

I don't know much about the relationships of human languages much earlier
than the 10000 BC range. I suspect that something akin to this A-A family
getting its start in NE Africa would be a good analog.

Padraic