Information AboutIndo-hittite |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT INDO-HITTITE | |
| indo-european | |
| historical linguistics | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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It is generally accepted that the Anatolian branch was separated earlier, but while mainstream Indo-European linguistics holds that this may have been a matter of a couple of centuries, maybe roughly 4000 BC in the Kurgan framework, proponents of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis claim the separation may have preceded the spread of the remaining branches by several millennia, possibly as early as 7000 BC . In this context, the Proto-language before the split of Anatolian would be called ''Proto-Indo-Hittite'', and the proto-language of the remaining branches, before the next split, presumably of Tocharian , would be called '' Proto-Indo-European ''. This is a matter of terminology, though, as the hypothesis does not dispute the ultimate genetic relation of Anatolian with Indo-European, it just means to emphasize the assumed magnitude of temporal separation. A crucial question is, thus, whether the Anatolian branch split off before the beginning of the Bronze Age , or even the Chalcolithic . A Bronze Age society is usually reconstructed from PIE vocabulary, but it is unclear whether this holds for Hittite. The Bronze Age begins roughly 3300 BC in the Caucasus , precisely the area that separates the historical Anatolian speakers from the remaining branches; it is therefore possible that the Proto-Anatolians themselves were involved with the earliest development of Bronze metallurgy. In any case, while evidence that Anatolian shares common terminology of metallurgy with other branches would speak against Indo-Hittite, the opposite case does not imply evidence in favour of Into-Hittite, since even a 'moderate Indo-Hittite' split around 4000 BC would clearly predate the Bronze Age. REFERENCES
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