Human migrations in Europe

 

Here is my personal attempt to pull European pre-history into a coherent narrative.

Between 43000 and 41000 years ago (approx.), a first wave of migrating people from the Middle East colonized all Mediterranean coasts. It was a brief interstadial event, about as warm as present-day. They spoke languages which were not related to Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Initially, they colonized most of Western Europe, up to Scandinavia. But then (± 39000 BC) the climate deteriorated and they were forced to abandon the North and to stay around the warmer Mediterranean Sea. The Ice Age would reach its full depth.

As soon as the climatic conditions allowed it (start of the pre-Younger Dryas), a new, second wave hit Europe, this time by PIE-people who had learned how to deal with the ice-cold conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum. In fact, their technology to withstand the ice-cold conditions had reached such a level that they could have colonized northwest Europe much earlier. But the scarcity of food, especially wild game, severely limited this possibility. They just occasionally wandered to the west. As soon as the climatic conditions in western Europe improved, the quantity of wild game increased considerably. PIE-people were then able to colonize northwestern Europe in larger, more substantial groups, and to remain more or less on the spot. Southern France, southern Germany, the warmest relatively empty places became overwhelmed.
These PIE-people possibly came from a region close to the Caspian Sea. They spoke the earliest form of the Indo-European language (pre-PIE). From the Caspian region, they spread in all directions. A part went west, another part went east and south e.g. Iran, India, etc.

Over the following millennia, the oldest PIE languages diversified. What were at first dialects evolved into (very) separate languages. But the language family background remained more or less intact.

Around ±7000-4500 BC, the spread of agriculture reintroduced the PIE language, especially in the less populated northern regions. The base was already there, but was now completely renewed. This was not a third wave of human migrants. It was a technological and linguistic wave.

A recurrent expansion from north of the Pyrenees and Alps to the south caused many original non-PIE tribes around the Mediterranean Sea to be gradually chased, displaced, or absorbed [1]. Languages like the non-PIE Etruscan died out (this eventually happened during the Roman republic). Only one from this period , Basque, survived until this day. The Occitan-Romance language absorbed words coming from the North. Later, the rise of the Mediterranean civilizations caused the export of a number of their words to the North.

This ebb and flow, north-south, movement of words suggests that some words in Occitan were of German (or Brythonic) origin, obtained in the South a derived and very specific meaning, and were then re-exported back to the North as such.

This suggests that a word like 'cheese' (first attested only in Latin : caseum/caseus) could be of northern or mountainous (Alpine) origin and not an original Occitan word. The fabrication of cheese requires colder storage conditions and is probably linked to a surplus of milk (meadows). It is therefore unlikely that the Romans introduced cheese making to the north of Europe. There is an original Old Norse word for it: ostr. Caseus (cas+eus) and ostr are related word via the PIE word *ieu-s, 'juice' = sauce, soup, mixed saps. The first part of caseus, 'cas' could come from (very) Old High German 'casto' = chest, storage room (8th century). Compare with the Gothic 'kas' = cask, barrel, jar. The French word 'fromage' is derived from 'forma', shaped cheese. Cas-eus = 'jarred juice' and is of probable German origin (the word at least). In the north, this word would not necessary have meant cheese (because the word cheese was reintroduced). It could have meant all food stored in casks or jars like corned (=salted) beef. All this is an indication that the making of cheese must be much older than the Roman period.

We all too easily believe that the people who spoke that language where a word was first attested were the inventors of the object or word... We all too easily believe that old languages like Latin were noble and pure... while Germanic languages are supposed to be primitive, underdeveloped and heavily contaminated with words of 'noble' origin. Or how bias forms our ideas.

In conclusion, the origin of the English language must go back to at least some 7000 years ago, and was certainly not introduced by the Anglo-Saxons.