About Proto-Germanic

[Anglesqueville]

1. Presentation
In the context of the transition from proto-GenArch to GenArch, I have felt compelled for days to open a thread around the proto-Germanic question. I will limit myself to the essentials, taking as a "leverage point" the summary made by Valter Lang of the work carried out in his 2015 text: "Formation of Proto-Finnic – an archaeological scenario from the Bronze Age / Early Iron Age". The word "archaeological" must immediately attract your attention. Lang is not a linguist, although he takes the work of the Estonian and Finnish schools of linguistics very seriously. I will therefore have, and this is essentially what the first part of my job will consist of, to develop and source the linguistic aspects of his thesis. Because the logic of my remarks here will in fact be the opposite of Lang's: first linguistic, it will allude to archaeological and genetic dimensions only for the sake of convergence. I would like to point out that I am not an absolute fan of Lang's theories, even if I maintain the impression that they represent today, overall, the best possible starting point for a synthetic presentation. I hope that the friends who opened and kept alive for a few weeks a thread devoted to the proto-Finnic question will carry their work here. The two topics are indeed inseparable.

1. A common horizon for both Pre-Proto-Saami and Pre-Proto-Finnic (if it indeed existed) can only be found in the Volga–Oka region in the Bronze Age;
2. From there two branches of cultural influences spread westwards, one through the North-Western and another through the South-Western Passage of Contacts. The former can be connected with Pre-Proto-Saami and the latter with Pre-Proto-Finnic.
3. Both movements took place in several waves lasting over many centuries. The first Pre-Proto-Saami movements perhaps started already within the Textile Ware networks, but they certainly continued in the later Bronze Age / Early Iron Age (Anan’ino influences). The Pre-Proto-Finnic speakers started to shift westwards at the end of the second millennium BC.
4. After a few centuries, these two branches of western Finno-Ugrians met again somewhere in Finland; they spoke similar languages, but those who came from the South-Western Passage had already obtained a rather strong Proto-Baltic ‘accent’.
5. On the shores of the Baltic, the Pre-Proto-Finnic newcomers met a mixed population speaking (several?) aboriginal and Proto-Germanic languages,the latter being in the dominant position.
6. In the following processes the biggest role was played by new waves of immigrants from the east; a particularly important wave was the one that brought along fortified settlements, bronze axes of the Akozino-Mälar type and early tarand-graves in the 9th–8th centuries BC. This wave also reached the western shores of the Baltic establishing in this way an axis of contacts between the bronze work centres in the Volga–Kama region and Scandinavia.
7. As a result of these processes and language contacts with Proto-Baltic,Proto-Germanic, and some Palaeo-European, Proto-Finnic emerged and it also achieved the dominant position at least in what are today coastal Estonia, SW Finland, and the Daugava valley in Latvia. <However, as more intensive and developing processes concentrated next on the coastal areas further north, it is easy to imagine the mechanisms of the separation of one portion of Proto-Finnic-population – the one that was later called South Estonian.

("Formation of Proto-Finnic – an archaeological scenario from the Bronze Age / Early Iron Age", Valter Lang 2015)

The subject of the present thread makes its first appearance in this text in 5. It will be necessary to bring some nuances and additions to it, in particular by examining what happened "on the other side", that is with pre-proto-Saami (what happened and when it happened). Let us not forget that Lang's concern here is Estonia, not Finland, nor proto-Germanic. What emerges here is this, which Lang seems to take for granted: when speakers of pre-proto-Finnic began to settle in the regions that correspond to present-day Estonia, southwestern Finland, and the Mälaren region in Sweden, they met there, among others, a population which spoke, Lang tells us, proto-Germanic. It is particularly assured for him that the people who in these regions buried their most precious representatives in monumental stone-cist graves and stone ships, were speakers of proto-Germanic. In another text, Lang writes:

The distribution of the cultural tradition emanating from the west, i.e. Scandinavia and Northern Central Europe in contemporary Estonia, Finland and Latvia began already during the Neolithic and continued during the Early Bronze Age and is archaeologically identifiable with ever increasing imported goods (flint daggers, bronze axes, etc.). Permanent monuments of a western origin began to be built in the countries of the east coast of the Baltic sea, however, from the Middle Bronze Age. In Finland, these were usually monumental stone graves or burial cairns (Finnish: hiidenkiuas) located atop higher hilltops, whereas in Estonia, somewhat smaller stone-cist graves and early Celtic fields were spread. On the lower course of River Daugava in Latvia, Reznes-type barrows and in Northern Latvia stone-cist graves similar to those found in Estonia are known. In addition, stone ships of Gotland origin are known on the east coast of the Baltic sea and the islands, and also cup stones especially from Estonia, less from Finland and the least from Latvia.
The appearance of such permanent monuments likely indicates the arrival of new groups of peoples from the south and west coasts of the Baltic sea. Taking into account historical linguistic comparisons, the newcomers must have been pre-Germanic peoples speaking pre-Proto-Germanic

On the other hand,later, there is every reason to identify the builders of the Tarand Graves with the Proto-Finnic immigrants of the southwestern route.The intersection of the distributions of these modes of burial, to which we could add the distribution of the Akozino-Mälar axes, would give us an idea precise enough of the area where pre-/proto-Germanic and proto-Finnic cultures met, and perhaps hybridized.

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That said, what are these "historical linguistic comparisons" on which Lang relies to identify those autochthonous people ("autochthonous" when proto-Finnic arrive in the zone) with Germanic-speaking people?