H. Bathó Edit – Kertész Róbert – Tolnay Gábor – Vadász István szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 12. (2001)

The Jászság Border and the Indoeuropean Prehistory: Archaeological Realities and Their Linguistic Interpretation

Pottery units can be clearly distinguished from the Körös culture, as well as from each other. An unoccupied, roughly 30-40 km wide zone lay between the easternmost distribution of the Western (Central European) Linear Pottery east of the Danube - in the Gödöllő foothills northeast of Budapest - and the Alföld Linear Pottery in the Tápió and Zagyva valleys. The Jászság bordér thus lay between the newly arrived Körös groups and the Alföld Linear Pottery groups, the latter identifiable with the aboriginal popuiation who no doubt spoke an early Indo-European dialect. Since the Central European Linear Pottery popuiation can be regarded as the ancestor of the northwestern dialect group of early Indo-Europeans, it seems a reasonable conclusion that the Körös—Starcevo groups bordering it on the south and southeast spoke an ancestor of the Balkanic Indo-European dialects, including the partly independent dialect spoken by the ancestors of the Proto-Greeks. This archaeological model offers an answer to the problem outlined in the above, namely of whether there had been any close vicinity between the ancestors of the Proto-Greeks and the Proto-Germans. The answer is positive since the ancestors of the Proto-Greeks lived directly southeast of the Jászság bordér: the southernmost bordér of the northwest dialectal group, in the Tisza valley. The Bodrogkeresztúr culture had evolved not north of the Jászság bordér (i.e. on the territory of the northwestern dialect group), but in the Tisza valley, evén though the culture was later alsó distributed in this western region. The ancestors of the Proto-Greeks thus occupied a transitional position between what were later to become the northwestern and Balkanic dialects. The northwestern dialects were represented by the Linear Pottery groups, while the Balkanic ones most likely by the Körös-Starcevo-Karanovo groups. This model corresponds to the nature of Germano-Hellenic isoglosses since they contain hardly any cultural or technical terms relating to society and its institutions, or any terms relating to the environment or to implements used - they are mostly words denoting bodily movements, feelings or actions, and a few body parts. In other words, it is a basic (very early) vocabulary, presumably inherited from the common Indo-European stock and maintained independently in the two languages. The explanation is simple: the speakers of these two proto-dialects, occupying adjacent territories in very remote times, had migrated in different directions - Germán moved north, Greek moved south. As a result, their technical terms, institutions and environment differed, as did the implements they used since one came intő contact with the non-Indo-European Mesolithic popuiation of the far north, the other with the Semitic and other peoples of the Mediterranean who had already created their civilization. This model can, in a sense, be seen as the resurrection of the Dimini-Wanderung theory, although it should be borne in mind that the archaeological cultures appearing in the originál Dimini-Wanderung theory - the Bükk and Tisza cultures - had never migrated as far south as the Bodrogkeresztúr culture did. At the same time, the Bodrogkeresztúr culture can be regarded as the genetic successor of the two cultures former figuring in the Dimini-Wanderung theory. 78