Three preliminary remarks are in order:

(A) the Slavic area corresponds to almost half of Europe. As such it is the continent’s largest, and the only one that includes three climatic zones (subarctic, continental and Mediterranean) and almost all ecological zones: arctic, tundra, coniferous forest, mixed forest, steppe-forest, steppe, semi-desertic, Mediterranean, alpine.

(C) Slavic languages have also a unique, asymmetric areal distribution: while Southern Slavic languages (Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian) form a homogeneous bloc, sharing several common features, for Northern Slavic languages it is necessary to distinguish between a Western branch (including Czech, Sorbian and Polish), and an Eastern one (including Russian, Ucrainian and Belo-Russian), as each of the two branches shares different features with Southern Slavic.

An adequate theory of Slavic ethnogenesis will have to provide a satisfactory and coherent explanation for these three fundamental aspects of Slavic: enormous extension, extraordinary homogeneity, and areal asymmetry between South and North.

The old version of the traditional theory assumed, as is known, the ‘arrival’ of the Slavs in historical times, following their alleged “great migration” in the 5th and 6th centuries of our era, from an unknown area. It claimed that this is the reason for their large extension and phenomenal homegenity. Even though this radical thesis is now maintained only by a minority (represented by Schenkerwould)

However, overwhelming evidence, which I have illustrated in detail in my books (Alinei 1996, 2000), proves that the date of the earliest attestations and the earliest mentions of historians have absolutely no relevance for the problem of dating the ‘birth’ of a language or of a people. Writing is an entirely separate phenomenon from speaking, connected as it is to the forming of highly developed stratified societies, with a dominating elite needing writing to exercise its full power, and thus to a very recent development of European history. Its appearance can thus vary from place to place. To give only three examples: (i) Baltic and Finnic languages are attested much later than Slavic, yet nobody – even among traditionalists – has ever thought that Baltic has arrived into Europe around that time; (ii) for Finnic, the Uralic Continuity Theory now universally accepted (see above) claims a Palaeolithic origin…; (iii) even more absurdly, the first attestations or the first mentions in writings of most European substandard dialects belong to modern times, yet nobody dares think they have ‘arrived’ or formed so recently. Therefore, we cannot consider the argument of the earliest attestations and earliest mentions as a serious one. We will return to this point further.

Let us now test this theory against the three points we have made at the outset: the enormous extension, the extraordinary homogeneity and the geographical asymmetry of the Slavic languages. And let us begin by the last point, which I think has gone unnoticed by traditional scholars.

Now, from a geolinguistic point of view, there is just one explanation possible for this peculiar and transparent areal configuration: Southern Slavic must form the earlier core, while the two Northern branchings must be a later development, each with its proper history and identity. No other explanation is possible, unless one challenges the very raison d’etre of IE and Proto-Slavic reconstruction, besides common sense.

(Neustupný-Neustupný 1963, 196).

The much simpler truth is that the Slavs were there from remote times. For,again, the first mention of peoples in writing depends on the birthday of writing, and not on the birthday of peoples!

In short, if such an enormous expansion of the Slavs both to the South and to the North from their alleged homeland in Middle-Eastern Europe had really taken place, the most important evidence we should expect to find would be archaeological. Which is entirely missing. Just as we miss any discussion of this point in Mallory’s book –and certainly not by accident, given the fact that Mallory is an archaeologist. I fail to see, then, how an archaeologist can advance the hypothesis of a massive expansion that involves half of Europe, and is capable of entirely changing its linguistic identity, without the slightest archaeological evidence.

Another fundamental objection to this thesis lies in the fact that, following the traditional scenario, we would have to assume that this ‘great migration’ involved also the Southern Slavic area: an absolute impossibility, as we have just seen. If there has been a ‘migration’, it must have proceded from South northwards.

A third, fundamental objection to this thesis is the contradiction between the idea of a medieval migration and the total disappearance of the presumed pre-existing languages. Not even modern mass migration and colonization, despite the enormous technological and cultural difference between the migrants and the indigenous people, have caused the total extinction of all autocthonous languages in the New World. The ideal of the extinction of all alleged pre-Indo-European languages because of a Copper Age IE migration is already hard enough to admit, given the same reason, plus the fact that research on pre-Indo-European has never produced any serious result (Alinei 1996, 2000). How can we accept such an idea for the Early Middle Ages, and for the highly civilized areas of Southern Eastern prehistoric Europe? What and where would the pre-Indo-European substrate be in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia? Unless we associate this late migration to a gigantic genocide – a phantascientific hypothesis – this hypothesis does not belong to serious scientific thinking.

7.5.2 The slight differentiation of Slavic languages and the demographic increase of Slavic people as consequences of the stability and the success of South-Eastern European Neolithic cultures

(1) The Thessalian and Southern Macedonian culture of Proto-Sesklo, followed by Sesklo and Dimini, identifiable with the Greek group;

(2) The ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Anzabegovo-Vršnik in Northern Macedonia, Starčevo in Serbia, Körös/Criş in Hungary and Romania, and Karanovo I in Bulgaria; followed later by Vinča (Serbia, Hungary and Romania), Veselinovo (Bulgaria), Dudeşti e Boian (Romania), identifiable with Southern Slavic;

(3) The Albanian ‘Painted Ware’ cultures of Vashtemi-Podgornie e Kolsh, followed by those of Čakran and the more recent Maliq, to the last of which Albanian prehistorians themselves attribute the origins of Illyrian.

The fact that these three cultural facies originally formed a unitary block, farfrom representing an objection to the identification of three different language groups, provides, rather, a further argument in its favour. Since this original block, in fact, represents the earliest neolithized area of Europe, where the impact of the new economy introduced by the Asiatic farmers must have been the greatest, the new Balkanic culture would have first submerged the pre-existing ethnolinguistic frontiers; and in a second phase, by the time the indigenous Mesolithic populations began to actively participate in the adoption of the new economy, the old ethnolinguistic frontiers would emerge again with the succcessive cultures. Which would of course reflect the original frontiers between Greeks, Slavs and Illyrians.

 

7.5.4 The Metal Ages

Also for the birth of metallurgy the Slavic Balkanic area must have played a fundamental role. And in this new context, the most ancient metallurgical cultures of Europe, that of the Balkanic area, must be seen as Southern Slavic; while Western Slavic will be the Czech metallurgical cultures, and Eastern Slavic Tripolye, which introduces metallurgy into the Altaic area. Summarizing, the linguistic Slavic area coincides first with the Painted Ware culture (excluding the Albanian one) and with its subsequent extensions to North-West and North-East, and later with the whole ‘Balkano-Carpatian Chalcolithic metallurgical Province’, to which also the Ukrainian culture of Tripolye participates.

Prodolzuva.....

 

 

 

http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf - http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf

 

 

 

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