CELTO-GERMANIC Later Prehistory and Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the North and West John T. Koch Aberystwyth Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies 2020 CELTO-GERMANIC ©John T. Koch 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. Later Prehistory and First published 2020 Post-Proto-Indo-European vocabulary All rights reserved. No part of this publication in the North and West may be reproduced in any form or by any means, without permission from the Publisher. by Digital Edition: ISBN 978–1–907029–32–5 John T. Koch A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies Aberystwyth SY23 3HH keywords: rock art, Bronze Age, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germanic https://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/2020/Celto-Germanic2020.pdf EPIGRAM Synopsis Fór svá sú orrosta hvern dag eptir annan at allir þeir er fellu This book is a study of the inherited vocabulary shared uniquely ok ǫll vápn þau er lágu á vígvelli ok svá hlifar urðu at grjóti. En by Celtic, Germanic, and the other Indo-European languages of er dagaði stóðu upp allir dauðir menn ok bǫrðusk ok ǫll vápn North and West Europe. The focus is on contact and common váru á nýt. developments in the prehistoric period. Words showing the [Snorri Sturlusson, Skáldskaparmál ~AD 1220] earmarks of loanwords datable to Roman times or the Middle Ages are excluded. Most of the remaining collection predates Grimm’s Law. This and further linguistic criteria are consistent with contexts In this manner the battle continued day after day. All who fell before ~500 BC. The evidence and analysis here lead to the following were turned to stone, together with all their weapons and explanatory hypothesis. Metal-poor Scandinavia’s sustained shields lying on the field. But at dawn of the new day, all the demand for resources led to a prolonged symbiosis with the Atlantic dead men stood up and began to fight again, while all their façade and Central Europe during the Bronze Age. Complementary weapons became like new. advantages of the Pre-Germanic North included Baltic amber and [trans. Byock 2005, 108] societies favourably situated and organized to build seagoing vessels and recruit crews for long-distance maritime expeditions. An integral dimension of this long-term network was intense contact between the Indo-European dialects that became Celtic and those that became Germanic. The Celto-Germanic vocabulary—like the motifs shared by Iberian stelae and Scandinavian rock art—illuminates this interaction, opening a window onto the European Bronze Age. Much of the word stock can be analyzed as shared across still mutually intelligible dialects rather than borrowed between separate languages. In this respect, what is revealed resembles more the last gasp of Proto-Indo-European than a forerunner of the Celtic– Germanic confrontations of the post-Roman Migration Period and Viking Age. This 2020 edition puts into the public domain some first fruits of a cross-disciplinary research project that will continue until 2023. ‘A very important book. The most interesting and convincing about the shared linguistic-archaeological-genetic splits I have seen.’ KRISTIAN KRISTIANSEN [ 3 ] Acknowledgements This book was researched and written as part of the project Rock Art, Atlantic Europe, Words & Warriors (RAW) / Hällristningar, språk och maritim interaktion i Atlantiska Europa, based at the University of Gothenburg and funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskaps rådet). I wish to thank all members of the RAW team for their help and feedback on all aspects of this work: Marta Díaz-Guardamino, Christian Horn, Bettina Schulz Paulsson, and Project Leader Johan Ling. Further thanks to Johan and also to Kristian Kristiansen for encouraging my visits and fruitful collaborations in Gothenburg since 2015. The linguistic work in this book also draws on the research of the Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages (AEMA) Project, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, which benefited greatly from the input of the other AEMA team members: Peter Bray, Kerri Cleary, Barry Cunliffe, Catriona Gibson, Neil Jakeman, and Raimund Karl. I am especially indebted to Fernando Fernández and Dagmar Wodtko for collecting Ancient Celtic linguistic evidence. Many thanks to Barry Cunliffe for discussions at early stages of this work and to Johan Ling and Jim Mallory who read full drafts of the text and offered many insightful comments and to Gwen Gruffudd for proofreading at typescript stage. I also wish to thank for their useful comments participants in the Indo-European Interfaces conference held in Uppsala in October 2020: Erik Elgh, Giulio Imberciadori, Anders Kaliff, Agnes Korn, Jenny Larsson, Peter Kahlke Olesen, and Paulus van Sluis. Remaining shortcomings and opinions expressed here are solely my responsibility. [ 4 ] CONTENTS §18. Relative chronology 2: CG, ICG, CGBS, and ANW words showing direct evidence for the Grimm 2 sound change ((*b,) *d, *g, *gw > (*p,) *t, *k, *kw) . .43 Synopsis . 3 §19. Celtic linguistic chronology. .45 Acknowledgements . 4 §20. Relative chronology 3: synchronizing the Celtic and Germanic sequences of sound changes . .46 INTRODUCTION (§§1–37) . 9 §21. Dating Italo-Celtic . .48 §22. The dialect position of Germanic and a possible explanation . .48 §1. Context, subject matter, and method. 9 §23. When did Indo-Iranian separate from the languages of Europe?. .50 §2. A research project. 10 §24. Alteuropäisch . 53 §3. On the RAW Project’s linguistic dimension . 12 §25. North-west Indo-European (NW), Italo-Celtic/Germanic (ICG), §4. Celto-Germanisms and rock art: a ‘Proto-Viking’ model . 12 Celto-Germanic (CG), and chronology . .54 §5. A new cross-disciplinary approach to later prehistory . 13 §26. Dating by linguistic criteria: some general and specific considerations 54 §6. Some Indo-European background . .14 §7. Iron Age contact, Bronze Age contact, or both? . 16 §§27–34. Patterns in the CG, ICG, CGBS, and ANW vocabulary . .56 §8. Borrowing, mutually intelligible dialects, or lingua franca? . 20 §27. 56 §9. Dialects, languages, and mutual intelligibility in Bronze Age §28. .. 65 Western Eurasia . .22 §29. Chronological implications of the subsets of words . .66 §10. Tree models and linguistic continua. 23 §30. The hypothesis and some implications . .67 §11. Revising the Steppe Hypothesis in the light of the ‘Archaeogenetic §31. .. 68 Revolution’. .27 §32. Words and warriors . 68 §12. Post-Anatolian Indo-European and the position of Tocharian . 29 §33. Celto-Germanic compounds . 72 §13. Italo-Celto-Germanicisms (ICGs) and Balto-Slavic/ §34. The non-Indo-European element . 72 Celto-Germanicisms (BSCGs) . .30 §35. The attestation pattern of the CG words and its implications . 75 §14. Germanic linguistic chronology . .34 §36. The evidence and the hypothetical time frame . 76 §15. Pre-Germanic and Proto-Germanic: definitions and possible dates . 36 §37. Conclusions . 77 §16. From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: what happened in Pre-Germanic? . .38 THE CORPUS (§§38–50) . 82 §17. Relative chronology 1: CG, ICG, CGBS, and ANW words showing direct evidence for the Grimm 1 sound change §38. Principal secondary works used in compiling the entries — Palaeohispanic comparanda . 82 (*p, *t, *k, *kw > *f, *þ, *h, *hw) . .41 §39. Water and motion over/through water . 83 §40. Weapons and warfare . 89 [ 5 ] §41. Horse and wheeled vehicle . 105 Figure 5. Anatolian, Post-Anatolian Indo-European, and some cultures §42. Exchange and metallurgy . 108 and migrations up to ~2500 BC. 29 Figure 6. The Indo-European family tree published by August Schleicher in §43. Ideology and social organization . 111 1861 anticipated groupings universally accepted (Balto-Slavic and Indo- §44. Material culture and subsistence economy . 126 Iranian) or widely accepted (Italo-Celtic) today. At the time, Anatolian §45. Language and oral tradition . .136 and Tocharian were not yet discovered. 31 §46. Beliefs and the supernatural . .139 Figure7. Bad trees? If we recognize no common ancestral languages between Proto-Indo-European and the 10 primary branches, that §47. Health and healing . 144 implies either the impossible situation of the proto-language §48. Anatomy . 145 undergoing a ten-way split or a series in which each branch split §49. Natural world . 147 off as a unique new language from a residual core, in no agreed- upon order after Anatolian first and possibly Tocharian second. .32 §50. Miscellaneous, no definite social domain . 154 Figure 8. Table summarizing approximate date ranges for reconstructed Indo- §51. Some rejected entries . 159 European languages in Western Europe. 50 Figure 9. Migrations, cultures, and proto-languages after ~2500 BC. 51 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 161 Figure 10. First-order subgroupings of Indo-European (Figure 4), showing the overlying positions of the Post-Proto-Indo-European Bibliographical abbreviations . 161 commonalities . 54 Figure 11. Totals of a. CG, b. ICG, c. CGBS, d. ANW, and e. CG+ words in the Corpus. 65 INDEX . 177 Figures 12–13. Comparison of total numbers of vocabulary, words with meanings relatable to Bronze Age rock art iconography, and those Abbreviations used in the Index . 177 relatable to further aspects of to Bronze Age life. .71 Figure 14. Comparison of numbers of CG words occurring in fully attested pre-modern Germanic and Celtic languages. .75 Figure 15. Post-Tocharian Indo-European in the North and West: dialect chains and separating languages . 78 Figure 16. Summary: Prehistoric cultural complexes as probable.