About Anatolian Neolithic and its vocabulary

Neolithic realia

If PIE originates in Anatolia as has been suggested before, then it should contain lexical material in relationship with Anatolian Neolithic and should share it with other Anatolian and Asianic languages.

As far as sheep are concerned the following items can be reconstructed, especially for Western IE languages:

- *H2owi ‘sheep [generic word]’. This word is shared with Caucasic Nakh *xawxar ‘lamb’ and Hurrian hawurni ‘lamb’. This word has come to apply only to the female in Modern English ewe, but this was not the case in Old English. It is possible that the Nakh word is a compound *xow-ˁaxar ‘lamb of sheep’.

- *H4eri ‘ram [word for adult male]’. This word is shared with Caucasic Nakh *ˀari ‘ram, uncastrated male’.

- *haghwnos ‘lamb’ [mainly a Western IE word]. This word is shared with Caucasic Nakh *ˁaxar ‘lamb’.

About Etruscan and the Tyrsenian languages

Tyrsenian is a closely-related language micro-family proposed by Helmut Rix (1998), that consists of the extinct Etruscan language of central Italy, the extinct Raetic language of the Alps, and the extinct Lemnian language attested in the Aegean Sea. Ever since Antiquity the origin of the Etruscans has been a matter of controversy. Are they autochthonous or did they come from somewhere else, from the Near-East or Anatolia?

A number of answers are gradually emerging. From the genetic point of view it would appear that Etruscans or more exactly Italians from Etruria do not side with ancient western Europeans like Basque people. They side in between present-day inhabitants of Turkey and Georgia as shown by a recent and revealing survey:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118713/

The paper contains a figure where (peri)-Europeans are contrasted. The article is designed to underline the specific position of Basque people. It also emphasizes that the results undermine the idea of a “Vasco-Caucasic” special relationship. Another point that the article indirectly shows is that from the genetic point of view Tuscany should be located in the vicinity of Greece, Turkey and Georgia out of Europe proper. This provides considerable support in favor of non-autochthonicity.

Genetic mapping of (peri-) Europeans

From a linguistic point of view Etruscan (and its close dialects Rhaetic and Camunic) is an evolved variety of Hurro-Urartean. Because Hurrian is better attested than Urartean it is easier to compare Etruscan with Hurrian but Etruscan shares more features with Urartean. In particular Etruscan had a strong stress which causes numerous vowels to mute out, especially initial vowels. Urartean had a strong stress on penultimate syllables and this prosodic feature also accounts for the specific developments observable in (Proto)-Armenian.

Among other words: Hurrian nibashuri ‘liver’ ~ Etruscan nethśrac ‘haruspicina’ (B-B 2002:217), netśvis ‘haruspex’ (B-B 2002:217). Phonetics is a bit confused [t(h) ~ b] but the connection is obvious. The root is itself PIE *libh- ‘liver’, whence English liver.

Liver of Piacenza