Ethnolinguistic Prehistory: The Peopling of the World from the Perspective of Language, Genes and Material Culture 2021008225, 9789004448360, 9789004448377

Table of contents :
‎Contents
‎Preface
‎Figures
‎Part 1. Historical Contexts in Which We Live
‎Chapter 1. Prehistory and the Present
‎1. European Identities
‎2. A Tablet of Unusual Composition
‎3. A Pieterskerk Skull Migrates to Switzerland
‎4. Migration and Population Replacement in Prehistoric Europe
‎Chapter 2. Evolving Scientific Views of Our Origins
‎1. Recent History Can Distort Our Perception of Prehistory
‎2. Indigenism in India
‎3. The Aryan Invasion and the Ancient Indian Fatherland
‎4. Colonial Expansion out of India and into India
‎5. The Zeal of Jihād and Reconquista Are Brought to the Subcontinent
‎6. The Continuing Saga of Colonialism
‎Chapter 3. A Fascination with Phenotypical Diversity
‎1. The Rise of Race
‎2. Enchanted by Human Phenotypical Diversity
‎3. The Slippery Slope from Physical Anthropology to Racism
‎4. A Molecular Understanding of Heredity and the Fallacy of Race
‎5. The Tenacity of Obsolete Labels and the Rise of New Fictions
‎6. Endogamy and Exclusion vs. Conquest and Élite Dominance
‎7. Decolonising East Asian Prehistory
‎Chapter 4. Chinoiserie Old and New
‎1. Spellbound by Language Typology
‎2. Racist Linguistic Typology vs. Linguistic Relativity
‎3. Ex Occidente Lux
‎4. The Creoloid Origins of Chinese
‎5. Asian Negrito Populations and the Birth of Lexicostatistics
‎6. Lexicostatistics under the Novel Guise of ‘Phylolinguistics’
‎Part 2. Episodes of Our Shared Prehistory
‎Chapter 5. Beyond the Linguistic Event Horizon
‎1. The Rapacious Species
‎2. The Colonisation of Eurasia
‎3. Mixing with the Neighbours
‎4. Walking the Dogs Back to Africa
‎5. Long Lost Cousins
‎6. Eastward through the Clement Climatic Corridor
‎7. Yet Another Wave Washes through the Subcontinent
‎8. Human Paternal Lineages as Molecular Tracers
‎9. Paternal Starburst in the Subcontinent
‎10. Subsequent South Asian Y-Chromosomal Starbursts
‎Chapter 6. Holocene Dispersals
‎1. From the Himalayan Heartland to Hyperborea
‎2. Austro-Tai Comprises Austronesian and Kradai
‎3. Older Layers of Peopling Shine through
‎4. Austroasiatic and para-Austroasiatic
‎5. Trans-Himalayan and Yangtzean
‎Chapter 7. From India to Europe and Back
‎1. Dene-Kusunda and beyond Beringia
‎2. Burushaski and Indo-European
‎3. The Discovery of the Indus Civilisation
‎4. The Dravidians and the Indus Civilisation
‎5. Nihali and Vedda
‎6. Crossing the Pacific with Coconuts and Sweet Potatoes
‎7. The Discovery of America
‎8. Meanderings in the Pacific and Indian Oceans
‎9. Ancient Culture on the Beautiful Maldives
‎10. As Bassas de Chagas
‎11. Epilogue
‎Bibliography
‎Index

Citation preview

Ethnolinguistic Prehistory

Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library Edited by Henk Blezer Alex McKay Charles Ramble

Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region Edited by George L. van Driem

volume 26

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/btsl

Ethnolinguistic Prehistory The Peopling of the World from the Perspective of Language, Genes and Material Culture

By

George van Driem

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: For centuries, Mt. Everest has been known as Lángkúr གླང་གུར་ [lāŋkūr] ‘tent of the ox’ or, more reverently, as Chòmólángmá ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ་ [ʨʰo̱ mō lāŋmā] ‘grand mistress the female ox’, as written here in Roman Tibetan, native Tibetan script and phonetic notation respectively. Roman Tibetan is a new phonological transcription which phonemically represents spoken Tibetan in Roman script, comparable to Roman Dzongkha and Roman Drenjongke. In 1849, the mountain was first sighted by surveyors of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. Three years later, in 1852, Rādhānāth Sikdār and Michael Hennessy measured the height of the mountain to be 8,848 metres, conducting their measurements whilst standing on East India Company territory just outside of the Kingdom of Nepal. In 1865, the mountain was named after Sir George Everest, head of the Trigonometrical Survey. The Nepali name Sagarmāthā सगरमाथा was coined in the 1930s by Bāburām Ācārya. The older Nepali name for the entire massif, Mahālaṅgur महालङ्गुर, contains the Tibetan name for the mountain, once in use amongst speakers of Nepali too. Tibetans long knew that Lángkúr གླང་གུར་ [lāŋkūr] was the tallest mountain in the world or the mons omnium altissimus, as recorded by Athanasius Kircher (1667: 65–66, fold-out map between pp. 46–47), based on the first-hand reports of Jesuits who travelled through the Everest region from 1661 to 1662 on their way from Tibet to Kathmandu. This photograph of the Everest massif, taken by the author on a flight from Kathmandu to Paro, is emblematic of the Himalayan perspective adopted in this book. Nepal appears in the foreground, and Tibet stretches out to the horizon behind the Everest massif. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2021008225

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 1568-6183 isbn 978-90-04-44836-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44837-7 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by George van Driem. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface ix List of Figures

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part 1 Historical Contexts in Which We Live 1 Prehistory and the Present Crossing National and Mythical Boundaries 3 1 European Identities 3 2 A Tablet of Unusual Composition 7 3 A Pieterskerk Skull Migrates to Switzerland 14 4 Migration and Population Replacement in Prehistoric Europe

21

2 Evolving Scientific Views of Our Origins As Opposed to Political Projections upon the Prehistoric Past 26 1 Recent History Can Distort Our Perception of Prehistory 26 2 Indigenism in India 28 3 The Aryan Invasion and the Ancient Indian Fatherland 32 4 Colonial Expansion out of India and into India 38 5 The Zeal of Jihād and Reconquista Are Brought to the Subcontinent 43 6 The Continuing Saga of Colonialism 47 3 A Fascination with Phenotypical Diversity The Manifold Ways in Which We Humans Can Look Beautiful 56 1 The Rise of Race 56 2 Enchanted by Human Phenotypical Diversity 61 3 The Slippery Slope from Physical Anthropology to Racism 66 4 A Molecular Understanding of Heredity and the Fallacy of Race 68 5 The Tenacity of Obsolete Labels and the Rise of New Fictions 70 6 Endogamy and Exclusion vs. Conquest and Élite Dominance 75 7 Decolonising East Asian Prehistory 81 4 Chinoiserie Old and New Language Typology with and without Racial Prejudice 85 1 Spellbound by Language Typology 85 2 Racist Linguistic Typology vs. Linguistic Relativity 92

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contents

3 4 5 6

Ex Occidente Lux 95 The Creoloid Origins of Chinese 100 Asian Negrito Populations and the Birth of Lexicostatistics 105 Lexicostatistics under the Novel Guise of ‘Phylolinguistics’ 108

part 2 Episodes of Our Shared Prehistory 5 Beyond the Linguistic Event Horizon The sub-Himalayan Hill Tracts and Adjacent Plains Serve as a Conduit 117 1 The Rapacious Species 117 2 The Colonisation of Eurasia 122 3 Mixing with the Neighbours 125 4 Walking the Dogs Back to Africa 132 5 Long Lost Cousins 134 6 Eastward through the Clement Climatic Corridor 137 7 Yet Another Wave Washes through the Subcontinent 141 8 Human Paternal Lineages as Molecular Tracers 149 9 Paternal Starburst in the Subcontinent 154 10 Subsequent South Asian Y-Chromosomal Starbursts 159 6 Holocene Dispersals Genetic Correlates of Major Linguistic Phyla in Eastern Eurasia 1 From the Himalayan Heartland to Hyperborea 166 2 Austro-Tai Comprises Austronesian and Kradai 169 3 Older Layers of Peopling Shine through 177 4 Austroasiatic and para-Austroasiatic 183 5 Trans-Himalayan and Yangtzean 191 7 From India to Europe and Back From the Holocene to the Beginnings of Recorded History 200 1 Dene-Kusunda and beyond Beringia 200 2 Burushaski and Indo-European 204 3 The Discovery of the Indus Civilisation 209 4 The Dravidians and the Indus Civilisation 212 5 Nihali and Vedda 219 6 Crossing the Pacific with Coconuts and Sweet Potatoes 221 7 The Discovery of America 226

166

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8 9 10 11

Meanderings in the Pacific and Indian Oceans 229 Ancient Culture on the Beautiful Maldives 231 As Bassas de Chagas 238 Epilogue 244

Bibliography Index 381

249

Preface This book consists of two parts. Chapters 1 to 4 comprise the first part, which treats the present, examining how the historical context in which we live today predisposes us to adopt certain views of prehistory. The second part, comprising Chapters 5, 6 and 7, tells the tale of our shared prehistorical past, but ends with two historical flourishes, illustrating two of the multitudinous transition zones where prehistory melts into recorded history. The first part of the book addresses the historical accident of our individual national or ethnic identities and illustrates how such modern frameworks can distort our understanding of the past. Similarly, the fictitious modern construct of ‘race’ is observed to afflict both the thinking of those who practise racism and, more often than not, also those who oppose racism. Finally, we are cautioned to avoid anachronisms in our thinking, a perennial pitfall. The second part of the book provides a compact but holistic account of our ethnolinguistic prehistory. This up-to-date perspective on the peopling of the world presents a reconstruction based on language, genes and material culture. The phylogeny of language families, the chronology of branching of linguistic family trees and the historical and modern geographical distribution of language communities inform us about the spread of linguistic phyla, languages and their speakers. The global distribution and chronology of spread of Y-chromosomal haplogroups appear to correlate with the spread of language families. Yet the father tongue correlation, though ubiquitous, is far from universal. Findings based on the entire genome will in future better inform us. New findings on ancient dna have already begun to enhance our understanding of the prehistory and provenance of our biological ancestors. The archaeological study of past material cultures provides yet a third independent window onto the complex prehistory of our species. George van Driem Bern, Christmas Eve 2020

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Portrait of Peter Schrijver from 1651 by Bartholomeus van der Helst, oil on canvas, 115.2×98.5cm, Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden 5 Votive zinc tablet bearing the inscription ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ / ΓΟΒΑΝΟ / ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ / ΝΑΝΤΑRΩR, discovered by Heinrich Joss on the Enge peninsula in the summer of 1984, Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern, with kind permission of the Archäologischer Dienst des Kantons Bern 12 Late Neolithic implement from Virginia justaposed to three Neolithic adzes from the hill tracts in the northeast of the Indian subcontinent 19 The Pieterskerk skull that travelled from Holland to Switzerland 20 Cover photo of Jonathan Lindström’s two-part documentary De första svenskarna 22 Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer whose remains were recovered in Gough’s cave in Somerset, as reconstructed by Adrie and Alfons Kennis in their Arnhem studio 25 Frederik Kortlandt’s (2020) Indo-European language family tree as a mythical lotus vine. The traditional orientation of east and west has been maintained. In keeping with the tradition of depicting a tree as growing upward towards the sun, north and south have been notionally reversed along the vertical dimension. Artwork by रणधीर शािण्डल्य Raṇdhīr Śāṇḍilya 37 The aftermath of European colonial expansion, reproduced with kind permission of the New Himalaya Decolonial Atlas at Cloudy Bay. Salmon pink: European colonial powers and neo-European polities that arose as excrescences of European colonial expansion. Major colonial powers were Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Russia and France. Minor powers were Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and Italy. Lavender: European polities without historical colonies outside of Europe, some of which were themselves once under imperial domination, e.g. as Ottoman or Russian possessions or vassals. Cantaloupe cream: Nation states carved out by European or neo-European powers. Honeydew melon: Countries who staved off European colonisation with varying degrees of success. Nepal, Japan, Bhutan, Siam and Afghanistan were the most successful, whilst the sovereignty of China, which bore the brunt of both European and Japanese aggression, was compromised. This map disguises the fact that Japan was a colonial power in the first half of the 20th century, and that China too is a colonial power. Except for Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica is claimed by European and neo-European nations. The boundaries on this map are representational only and purport neither to be accurate nor to imply endorsement by author or publisher. 52

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In subservience to the Chinese Communist Party, Google effaces Tibet from the map of Asia by replacing Tibetan place names with Mandarin toponyms dictated by the Chinese colonial administration. Google likewise obsequiously adopts newly fabricated Chinese claims on the historical territory of the Kingdom of Bhutan. This unpublished map, reproduced with the kind permission of the New Himalaya Decolonial Atlas at Cloudy Bay, undoes Google’s oppressive cartographic policies by putting Tibet back on the map and also rectifies the border between the Kingdom of Bhutan and Chinese-occupied Tibet. A part of the international border defined by the Kālī or Mahākālī river, as agreed in 1816 by the Treaty of Sugaulī between the Kingdom of Nepal and the East India Company, is obscured by the last two letters of the word ‘Uttarakhand’, an Indian state comprising the erstwhile Nepalese provinces of Kumaon and Garhwal, ceded to the East India Company by the same treaty. The boundaries on this map are representational only. They do not purport to be accurate and do not imply endorsement by author or publisher. 55 Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, detail from a portrait by FrançoisHubert Drouais, oil on canvas, painted 1761, Musée Buffon à Montbard 57 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, depicted in a stipple technique engraving by Werner Kobold, reproduced from volume 94 of the Neue allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1804) 62 Petrus Camper, as depicted by Tibout Regters, oil on canvas, 1760 64 Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, his hair in a top knot or uṣṇīṣa and his hands in vajra mudrā, Gandhāran sculpture, 1st or 2nd century ad, Tōkyō National Museum 77 Willebrord Snellius, alias Willebrord Snel van Royen, alias Eratosthenes Batavus, depicted in an engraving by Willem Isaaksz. van Swanenburg 83 Julius von Klaproth, alias Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783–1835) 89 Carl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) 93 François-Marie Arouet, alias Voltaire, as painted by Maurice Quentin de la Tour ca. 1736, château de Versailles 97 Maurice-Auguste-Louis-Marie Courant, professor of Oriental languages at Lyon, Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne, Album Victor Collin de Plancy, № 672 103 The original penguin or Geir-fugl ‘garefowl’, as depicted by Olaus Wormius (1655: 331). Garefowl, Pinguinis impennis or Alca impennis, did not, in fact, have a white ring around their necks. Rather, the discolouration in the live juvenile specimen from the Faroe Islands that Wormius kept in Copenhagen resulted from its having been tethered. The blinkered Cartesian view of other sentient beings that prevailed in some branches of science even until long after the

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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figures myopia of Skinnerism has mercifully begun to be replaced by a more knowledgeable and sensitive appreciation of the intelligence and feelings of other species. 121 The skull of the Neanderthal discovered in 1856 inside a cave on the south face of the Neander gorge about 30m from the Düssel river, by Hermann Schaafhausen (1858) 123 A Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon in juxtaposition, as reconstructed by Adrie and Alfons Kennis in their Arnhem studio 127 A Neanderthal from the cave of Spy in the Belgian municipality of Jemeppesur-Sambre, radiocarbon dated to ca. 34000bc (Semal et al. 2013, Fernandez-Jalvo & Andrews 2019), as reconstructed by Adrie and Alfons Kennis in their Arnhem studio 129 A rudimentary Y-chromosomal haplogroup tree based on the updated 2019– 2020 taxonomy of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy. The internal phylogeny of the basal clade A is elaborate, and the important clade BT represents but a subclade of the already subordinate branch A1c (V67). 140 Bearers of paternal clade D (CTS3946) spread eastward outside of Africa, whilst bearers of paternal lineage E (M96) remain in the West. 142 The paternal lineage C splits into the clades C1 (F3393) and C2 (M217). 144 The Y-chromosomal haplogroup C1 (F3393) split into the two paternal lineages C1a (CTS11043) and C1b (F1370), each of which in turn gave rise to two filial clades, one spreading westward and the other spreading eastward. 145 Bearers of two C1 subclades spread eastward, with lineage C1a1 (M8) reaching the Japanese archipelago and C1b2 (B477) and its subclades populating Sahul. 146 Bearers of paternal lineage C2 (M217) reach the Yellow River and disperse. 147 Paternal lineage F (M89) split into the subclades G (M201) and HIJK (F929, M578). 154 The paternal clade HIJK (F929, M578) split into the subclades H (L901, M2939) and IJK (L15, M523, PF3492, S137). 155 Paternal clade IJK (L15, S137) split into the lineages IJ (M429) and K (M9). 157 The Y-chromosomal haplogroup IJ (M429) gave rise to the paternal lineages I (M170) and J (M304). 157 The clade K (M9) split into K1, also known as clade LT (L298), and K2 (M526). Clade LT (L298) split further into the lineages L (M20) and T (M184). 160 The Y-chromosomal haplogroup K2 (M526) gave rise to the paternal lineages K2a (F549, M2335, S22380, V4208), K2b (M1221, P331, PF5911), K2c (P261), K2d (P402) and K2e (M147). 161 The man named ‘Oase 1’ from the Romanian site Peștera cu Oase, who lived

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40,000 years ago, as reconstructed by Adrie and Alfons Kennis in their Arnhem studio 161 Paternal lineage K2a (F549, M2335, S22380, V4208), formerly known as NO, has been found in the Ust’-Išim man (M2308) of western Siberia and as the ancestral form K2a* (M2313) in Southeast Asia, India, and at Peștera cu Oase. The clade K2a in turn gave rise to the subclade K2a1, also known as NO1 (M214). 162 Paternal lineage K2a1, also known as NO1 (M214), split into the Y-chromosomal subclades N (M231) and O (M175). 163 Paternal lineage K2b (P331) gave rise to the K2b1 subclades S (B254) and M (P256) and the K2b2 subclades Q (M242) and R (M207). 164 Paternal lineage N (M231) and its subclades spread northward through East Asia and then in a grand sweep withershins across Hyperborean Eurasia as far as Lappland. 167 The enhanced 2012 Benares recension of Starosta’s East Asian linguistic phylum (Starosta 2005, van Driem 2014) 169 The paternal lineage O (M175) split into the subclades O2 (M122) and O1 (F265, M1354). 170 Y-chromosomal haplogroup O1 (F265, M1354) split into subclades O1b (M268) and O1a (M119), and the filial subclade O1b (M268) split further into subclades O1b2 (M176) and O1b1a1a (M95). Meanwhile, the Y chromsomal haplogroup O2 (M122) split into the lineages O2a2b1 (M134) and O2a2a1a2 (M7). 171 Geographical distribution of Austronesian. The abbreviations cmp and shwng stand for the linguistic subgroups ‘Central Malayo-Polynesian’ and ‘South Halmahera West New Guinea’ respectively. Formosan comprises nine primary branches of the language family, whilst all other groups shown represent the later geographical dispersal of a single tenth branch, Malayo-Polynesian. The language distribution maps in Plates 20, 22, 23, 26, 27 and 29 are adapted from van Driem 2015, with the gracious permission of Colin Pendry and Georg Miehe. 174 The family tree of Austronesian (Blust 2009) 176 Geographical distribution of Kradai languages. Southwestern Tai languages spread into mainland Southeast Asia in historical times. Austronesian languages of the Monic subgroup were still spoken in the Dvāravatī kingdom that flourished in what today is central Thailand until the 13th century. 178 Geographical distribution of Austroasiatic languages 184 The family tree of Austroasiatic (Diffloth 2012) 185 Two versions of the Austroasiatic linguistic intrusion that established Munda languages in India by bearers of the O1b1a1a (M95) paternal lineage 188 Geographical extent of Trans-Himalayan languages 192

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figures Geographical distribution of Trans-Himalayan subgroups, the dots representing historical centres of the 41 linguistic subgroups 193 The Fallen Leaves model, an agnostic heuristic framework showing currently recognised Trans-Himalayan linguistic subgroups 194 Geographical distribution of Hmong-Mien languages 197 Haplogroup R (M207) gave rise to the subclades R1a (M343), R1b (M420) and R2 (M479). 205 The first Indus civilisation seal from Harappa, on the right, and a stamp embossed using this steatite seal, on the left, described by Cunningham (1875) and dating from between 2600 and 1900bc, © Trustees of the British Museum 212 The Indus glyph consisting of two intersecting upright ovals which is purported to be read as muruku ‘Murukan, young man’ and two well attested glyph combinations, as glossed as by Parpola (2015: 286–291). 215 Steatite statue of the priest king from Mohenjo Daro kept at the National Museum in Karachi, measuring 17.5cm in height and 11cm in breadth. The deeply incised eye sockets once held inlay, depicting the eyes of the priest king, and the trefoils on the star garment once contained red paste. Drill holes below the ears suggest that a necklace or other ornaments once adorned the sculpture. © Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, courtesy of Department of Archaeology and Museums, Government of Pakistan 217 A head of the lord Buddha, made out of coral and measuring 46cm in width, used to be on the display at the National Museum at Māle until February 2012. During the excavations at the Buddhist monastery and stūpa on the island of ޮ , conducted under the direction of Dr. Senarat Paraṇavitāna of Toḍḍū ޫ ‫ތްއޑ‬ Pērādeṇiya University between 1958 and 1966, this sculpted limestone head was recovered together with its torso, courtesy of the National Museum, Māle. 234

part 1 Historical Contexts in Which We Live

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chapter 1

Prehistory and the Present Crossing National and Mythical Boundaries

1

European Identities

At the time of the Roman empire, there was not a single person who spoke English in England. In fact, at that time there was nobody in all of the British Isles who spoke any language that was even ancestral to English. The Anglo-Saxons only came to England in the course of the 5th century ad, speaking old West Germanic dialects that subsequently evolved into the language that we recognise as English. The venerable Bede recorded this history in 731 ad (Plummer 1896). Tradition has long maintained that the work was translated from Bede’s original Latin into Old English by king Alfred, who lived from ca. 848 to 899. In 991 in his Homily on St. Gregory the Great, Ælfric, who lived from ca. 955 to ca. 1010, attributed the translation directly to Alfred (Bright 1917: 86), and the Cambridge University Library manuscript MS Kk. 3.18, a copy dating from the 11th century, indicates that king Alfred was himself the author. However, philological arguments were assessed by Henry Sweet (1876: 195) as being ‘enough to prove that the translation is only nominally Alfred’s’. Neil Ker (1957: 37) showed that the attribution in the Cambridge manuscript was a scribal enhancement added in the 16th century. Dorothy Whitelock (1962) laid out meticulous argumentation leading to the conclusion that Alfred had most probably been merely the patron who had commissioned the translation. The authorship of the Old English translation of Bede’s history will therefore remain unknown, but the historicity of the migratory events regarding the provenance of the Angles and the Saxons recounted in the Historia Ecclesiastica Brittaniarum, et maxime Gentis Anglorum are not in dispute. The linguistic ancestors of the English were migrants from the Continent who made the crossing to the British Isles in recorded historical times, displacing many of the native Celtic Britons. Somehow these historical facts have never particularly perturbed English people. At least since the 17th century, Dutch schoolchildren have been taught that their ancestors, the Batavi, migrated down the Rhine to the Low Countries from lands further upstream. In the 1st century, Lucretius described them as a migrant sept related to the Chatti, who lived on the right bank of the Rhine near what today is Cologne. In the Low Countries, the Batavi joined the littoral

© George van Driem, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448377_002

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chapter 1

and seafaring Cannenefates, who are held to have spoken a Celtic tongue on the basis of toponymical evidence, such as the Celtic name Helinium for the estuary of the Maas (Schrijver 1995a). Peter Schrijver (1609, i: 25, 26 et passim) adopted the orthography Caninefates from Lucretius, and this spelling was thereafter used for centuries in schoolbooks (Figure 1). After the Peace of Münster, playwright Joost van den Vondel (1656) drew explicit comparisons between the Eighty Years’ War waged by the Dutch republic against Habsburg Spain and the rebellion of the Batavi and the Caninefates against the Romans in the years 69 and 70ad, and in 1661 Rembrandt van Rijn famously painted the conspiracy of the Batavi against the Romans under Civilis, the one-eyed Batavian rebel leader who was at the same time a Roman citizen, now on display in Stockholm. However, on the basis of the spelling variation observed in the sole surviving manuscript of Lucretius’ work and other attestations of the ethnonym in inscriptions and military diplomas, Peter Schrijver (1995b) showed that it was the orthography Cannenefates which most faithfully reflects the original form, occurring most robustly in older attestations dating from the 1st and early 2nd century. Schrijver analyses the ethnonym as representing a Celtic-Germanic hybrid *kannīnā-faþis ‘leek-masters’ and refers to the magical and medicinal qualities ascribed to leeks in Celtic and old Germanic tradition.1 For centuries Dutch schoolchildren have been taught that the Batavi were migrants who 1 Schrijver (1995b: 20) makes reference to a perhaps comparable practice amongst the Limbu in the Phedāp of describing themselves and their ancestors as ‘beer drinking kings’ (cf. van Driem 1987: 58, 180, 210). The putative Celtic-Germanic hybrid may be translated with an alliterating modern Dutch-Sarnāmī hybrid as prei-पित, which I can well imagine saying. Despite the uncanny resemblance, no etymological relationship obtains between Canninefates and the term konijnenfretters, which is purportedly an epithet for the denizens of Dilbeek, although the suggestive similarity is probably no coincidence. The urban myth of Charles v paying an impromptu visit to Dilbeek and being served rabbit under the guise of pork on a spit reportedly originated in a sweepstakes essay written by Robert Vonck in 1957, subsequently published in De Brusselse Post (Droeven 2006). It is said that the munificent emperor spared the lives of the good people of Dilbeek but dubbed them ever after konijnenfretters. The myth is mirthfully perpetuated by the bakery Bossuyt on the Ninoofsesteenweg, who has since 1986 been making rabbit-shaped cakes named het Dilbeeks konijntje, and by the butcher Dirk de Knop at Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, who sells Dilbeekse konijnenpaté and ready-to-go konijnenhaasjes bereid met bier. The legend inspired a play in three acts, based on a legend ostensibly dating from the 16th century, a copy of which is conserved in the library of the University of Antwerpen (Lukkebone, sine dato). The author, Ko Lukkebone, is himself a fictitious character, who appeared in 1890 in an eponymous tale written by the priest Jules ‘Juul’ Leroy (1858–1939) in an issue of the first volume of the literary journal Biekorf. One might suspect the hand of the prolific writer Frans Ramon Boschvogel (1902–1994), who was much enamoured of the tales of Leroy.

prehistory and the present

figure 1

5

Portrait of Peter Schrijver from 1651 by Bartholomeus van der Helst, oil on canvas, 115.2 × 98.5 cm, Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden

had come down the Rhine from Hessia, and the ancestors of Cannenefates who preceded them may also originally have migrated from parts further east. Generations of Dutchmen have yet somehow not felt traumatised, knowing that their ancestors were ultimately not all indigenous to the Netherlands. In Switzerland, the oldest Bernese chronicle records that the duke Berchtold von Zähringen, alias Berchtold v, slew a bear in the oak forest on the hillock where now the heart of the Berner Altstadt stands. Then he founded the city of Bern around Nydegg in the year 1191, as recorded in the chronicle.

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Und won vil gewildes luff in demselben eichwalde, do wart hertzog Berchtold ze rate mit sinen reten, er wolte die stat nenen nach dem ersten tiere so in dem walde gevangen wurd. Nu wart des ersten ein ber gevangen, darumb wart die stat bern genempt; und gab do den burgeren in der stat ein wappen und schilt … In dem jare do man zalte thusent hundert nüntzig ein jar, do wart bern gestiftet von hertzog berchtold von zeringen, und wurden vil hüser gebuwen mit dem holtze, daz uf der hofstat stund. studer 1871: 8

And since much game ran through that same oak forest, so Duke Berchtold was advised by his councillors, and he wanted to name the city after the first animal that was caught in the forest. The first to be caught was a bear, which is why the city was named Bern; and so he gave the burghers in the city a coat of arms and shield … In the year 1191, Bern was founded by duke Berchtold von Zähringen, and many houses were built with the wood that stood on that spot. Conrad Justinger worked as a chancellery scribe in Bern from 1390 until his death in 1438. In compiling the chronicle at the behest of the Bernese city council, he drew upon older chronicles from Constance, Basel, Straßburg and Zürich, material in the Bernese archives and contemporary historical songs. The chronicle was completed around 1430. Today the story quoted here from Justinger’s chronicle is dismissed as a folk etymology. Yet to this day the city’s coat of arms has enshrined this legend. In heraldic terms, on an escutcheon gules, a bear passant sable, langued, armed and vilené is depicted on a bend or. The earliest written attestation of the name of the city in a surviving document dates from the 1st of December 1208 (Kocher 1952, i: 154), and the name of Bern also appears in a number of other manuscripts from the 13th century. However, the founding of the city by Berchtold v in 1191 did not transpire in an uninhabited wilderness. At the time of the construction of the Nydeggbrücke between 1840 and 1854, the fundaments of Burg Nydegg were exposed beneath the Nydeggkirche. A century later, from 1951 to 1962, archaeologists excavated Burg Nydegg and its well. This fortress was constructed by Berchtold’s father, Berchtold iv, above the sharp bend in the Aare at the end of today’s Altstadt peninsula. Textual sources indicate that the subsequent demolition of the fortress took place in 1269 (Hofer & Meyer 1991), although the commemorative plaque on a portion of the exposed ruins underneath the Nydeggkirche still reads ‘Mauerreste des Reichschlosses Nydeck zerstört mcclx’. Schoolchildren in polyglot Switzerland learn that three of the four national languages, Rhaeto-Romance, Italian and French, are Romance tongues derived

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from Latin, a legacy of the Roman empire, whereas the Germanic dialects spoken in most of the country were introduced by Alemannic tribes from the north. On an historical time scale, none of the national languages of Switzerland is native. In Roman times, much of the country was inhabited by Celtic speaking Helvetians, whereas what today is Ticino was inhabited by Celtic speaking Lepontians, who had settled the regions around Lake Como and Lake Maggiore, and Grisons was inhabited by Rhaetians, who spoke a language that was not even Indo-European.2 Albert Samuel Gatschet (1867: 46–48) therefore maintained that the name Bern must have a Celtic etymology, derived from an old Celtic form brena, to which he ascribed the meaning ‘Gebüsch’, with subsequent metathesis of the liquid. Hans Bloesch (1931: 15) proposed that the descriptions ‘Enge’ and ‘im Sack’, found in Justinger’s chronicle (Studer 1871: 7, 315, 316) describing the site of Burg Nydegg at the end of the oak-forest-clad penisula, might give a better indication of the original Celtic meaning of the toponym preserved in the name Bern. The folk etymology inspired by Justinger’s chronicle legend therefore appears to represent a later Germanic reinterpretation of a pre-Germanic toponym.

2

A Tablet of Unusual Composition

Then, in the late summer of 1984, a 40-year-old metal worker3 and amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Joss from Thun, armed with a metal detector, unearthed a zinc tablet dating from the dawn of the first millennium in the Thormebode forest on the Enge peninsula, carved out of the Bernese landscape by the river Aare. Realising the momentous nature of the find, Heinrich Joss brought the precious find to his friend, the 23-year-old Albert Kasteler, who at the time lived at Gebhartstrasse 17 in Liebefeld. Like Joss, Kasteler was both a metal worker and an amateur archaeologist, and it was in Kasteler’s house in Gemeinde Köniz where the archaeological artefact would stay for the next few months.

2 The Rhaetian language is related to Etruscan and Lemnian. The linguistic evidence supports Herodotus’ account that the linguistic ancestors of these now long lost language communities, the Tyrsenians, had migrated westward around the beginning of the first millennium bc from the northern Aegaean region to Etruria and Rhaetia (Beekes & van der Meer 1991, van der Meer 2004). 3 Metallbauschlosser.

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In 1982, Kasteler had worked at archaeological excavations, first under Hanspeter Spycher at the late Roman site of Bellach manor at the Franziskanerhof in Solothurn, then in 1983 at the Rossfeld site on the Enge peninsula. After these two excavations, Kasteler temped at Flachdachbau ag in Heimberg near Thun, where he first befriended Heinrich Joss, with whom he shared a love for history and archaeology. At the time that Joss discovered the votive inscription and handed over the zinc tablet to Kasteler in 1984, Kasteler had already resumed working for the Archäologischer Dienst of the canton of Bern, this time as a diver taking part in exploratory excavations which were being conducted on the shores and in the waters of the Bielersee under Josef Winiger. Joss and Kasteler appreciated both the historical importance of the find in view of the inscription which it bore and the unusual material composition of the artefact, made entirely out of thick, nearly pure zinc. Joss, the finder, had brought the find promptly to Kasteler because he knew that his friend worked for the Archäologischer Dienst of the canton. Soon thereafter, on a Saturday in October 1984, both men set off together to bring the votive tablet to the offices of the Archäologischer Dienst in Bern,4 where the two friends handed over the find to the deputy cantonal archaeologist5 Werner Ernst Stöckli, with whom Kasteler had arranged an appointment. From that time onward, the votive tablet has remained in the custodianship of the cantonal archaeological authorities, and the artefact has occasionally been put on display at the Bernisches Historisches Museum. In 1986, Kasteler began working at the vicus Petinesca burial ground excavation at Studen for the Archäologischer Dienst under Rudolf Zwahlen. Later that year, in November 1986, his friend Heinrich Joss, who had found the artefact, moved from Thun to Rubigen. After a year at the vicus Petinesca excavation, Kasteler implored Peter Jules Suter, then the director of the division for prehistoric archaeology of the canton of Bern,6 to recognise the importance to the field of nurturing a congenial synergy between amateur and professional archaeologists. Kasteler’s pleas not only fell upon deaf ears, but also incensed Suter so much that he promptly fired Kasteler, for Suter harboured an intense jalousie de métier against all amateur archaeologists, scouring the shires with their metal detectors. Suter threatened Kasteler with criminal charges and the imposition of stiff fines for having held an archaeological artefact in his possession, blithely ignoring the fact that the tablet had come into Kasteler’s care precisely because 4 In the canton of Bern, the Archäologischer Dienst was founded in 1970. 5 stellvertretender Kantonsarchäologe. 6 Abteilungsleiter Ur- und Frühgeschichte des Archäologischen Dienstes des Kantons Bern.

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he worked for the Archäologischer Dienst, and that Heinrich Joss, the finder, together with Kasteler had relatively promptly handed this artefact over to the deputy cantonal archaeologist in Bern. Thanks to Heinrich Joss, Kasteler soon secured a steady job at Flachdachbau ag in Heimberg in 1987. Kasteler’s zeal for archaeology did not diminish, however. A year later he managed to line up a new job under Hanspeter Spycher, the cantonal archaeologist of Solothurn. Before Kasteler could join his new work at the excavation site, he was hit by a car in Belp shortly after 5 o’clock in the morning whilst riding to work on his Vespa from Bern to Thun on the 19th of April 1988. Kasteler was rendered partially invalid. Only after a whole year in a wheelchair and several months on crutches was he able to resume part-time work. Joss called his friend Kasteler in the Inselspital after Kasteler had awoken from the operation, which lasted ten hours, and this telephone call was the last that Kasteler ever heard from Joss, for Kasteler was soon transferred to the Berner Höhenklinik Montana Grand in the canton of Valais. That same year, on the 12th of September 1988, Heinrich Joss died at the age of 44 in an unrelated accident.7 In November of that year, after Kasteler’s crippling accident and Joss’ fatal mishap, Rudolf Fellmann, associate professor for provincial Roman archaeology in Bern,8 first heard about the existence of the zinc tablet in a talk given in Basel by Stefanie Martin-Kilcher, who described the zinc tablet as ‘ein Fluchtäfelchen aus Blei (Tabella defixionis)’, a curse tablet made of lead (Martin-Kilcher 1988: 34). Rudolf Fellmann began to devote his time to the study of the inscription and recognised that the zinc artefact was no curse tablet, but a votive tablet with a Celtic inscription. In 1989, Fellmann sent his colleague Hans Grütter, the Bernese cantonal archaeologist, to seek out Albert Kasteler at his uncle’s metal works9 to make inquiries about the precise circumstances of the find. When Kasteler pointed out that Heinrich Joss was the actual discoverer of the tablet, Grütter sprang the news on Kasteler that his friend Joss had died in an accident the year before. After receiving this news, Kasteler shared with Grütter what he had learnt from his friend about the circumstances of the find, and Kasteler showed Grütter the precise spot, and he retold Joss’ description of the discovery. Grütter had the tablet submitted to metallurgical investigation by electron microscopy at the University of Bern. The finding that the tablet consisted of nearly pure zinc led both Grütter and Fellmann to suspect a modern forgery by 7 Heinrich Joss was born at Thun on the 18th of February 1944 and died a bachelor. 8 ausserordentlicher Professor für provinzialrömische Archäologie. 9 Spenglerei.

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the two metal workers. In his farewell lecture held in June 1990 on the occasion of his retirement, Rudolf Fellmann described the result of the metal analysis as ‘niederschmetternd’. The unusual composition of the thick tablet challenged received archaeological wisdom, according to which zinc was not worked in its pure form until 1820. Ultimately, however, this find would lead to a complete revision of our understanding of metal working in antiquity. The unusual nature of the inscription, which consisted of regular perforations gouged into the thick metal, merely exacerbated the suspicion which Grütter and Fellmann harboured against Joss and Kasteler. Only after Grütter and Fellmann had entertained the hypothesis of a modern forgery for a year did laboratories in Bern, Basel and Bochum authenticate the antiquity of the artefact and exonerate the suspected forgers. A newspaper article stated that, although the two metal workers were no longer suspected of having perpetrated a forgery, the finder and his friend, derided as ‘eine Gruppe von Hobbyarchöologen’ [sic], were reported to have broken the votive tablet into three pieces with the blow of pickaxe or pick whilst digging it up,10 and alleged to have turned in the artefact only after hanging on to the find for two years (msu 1990).11 In reality, the two men had conscientiously handed over their find after two months. Moreover, the analysis by the Institute for Archaeometallurgy in Bochum had demonstrated that the breakage was old, and that the layer of patina was of equal antiquity and thickness all over the outer surface of the tablet, including the insides of the fractured edges and insides of the perforation holes. Kasteler’s statement that the tablet was already broken when Heinrich Joss carefully unearthed the artefact was finally accorded credence. Fellmann (1991: 270) described the discovery as a ‘Raubgrabung unter Verwendung eines Metalldetektors durch eine Gruppe von Amateuren’, which he qualified as ‘ärgerlich’. Raubgrabung or the plundering of archaeological sites takes place all around the world and is far worse than just ‘ärgerlich’. The current Swiss civil law book does not speak of ‘Raubgrabungen’, however. In article 724, the finding of objects of scientific value is regulated. Artefacts are the property of the canton, and excavations may indeed not be conducted without the permission of the canton. Land owners on whose property archaeological sites are discovered are obliged to permit excavation but are also entitled to fitting compensation. Finders of treasure are likewise entitled to compensation not in excess of the value 10 11

‘beim Ausgraben durch einen Hieb mit einem Pickel oder eine Hacke in drei Teile zerbrochen’. ‘Erst zwei Jahre später lieferte es einer der Finder beim Archäologischen Dienst ab.’

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of the artefacts discovered, but the ownership of cultural artefacts resides with the canton.12 Journalists, who exercised less restraint than Fellmann had, wrote pieces in the Berner Zeitung and Der Bund, belittling the deceased finder and his friend and insinuating that they were incapable of fathoming the significance of what they had discovered. Fortunately, in keeping with the suggestions put forward by Kasteler at the time, highly fruitful collaborations did subsequently develop at important archaeological sites such as Morgarten in the canton of Zug between the experienced metal locator13 Romano Agola and the cantonal archaeologist Stefan Hochuli, but such synergy was not to arise in Bern for some time despite Heinrich Joss’ momentous discovery. Kasteler reports that, in the wake of the negative publicity in 1990 and 1991, amateur archaeologists in Bern warily kept their finds away from professional archaeologists for fear of being maligned or bearing the brunt of recriminations. In contrast to the attitude of Grütter and Suter, Werner Ernst Stöckli, professor of prehistorical and early historical archaeology at the University of Bern from 1985 until his retirement in 2012, not only permitted Kasteler, who was not registered as a student, to sit in on his lectures for three semesters, but Stöckli also supported amateur archaeologists and strongly advocated cordial collaboration between professionals and amateurs (Stöckli 2000). Just such wholesome working relationships have now become more common in Switzerland, and in this regard the Swiss practice has begun to set an example for the world. After his retirement, Rudolf Fellmann (1991, 1999, 2000, 2004) published a number of studies on the zinc tablet. Excavations near the site of the find uncovered a Roman vicus and a Celtic oppidum, which led some to fancy that the settlement archaeologically recovered on the Enge peninsula in the north of Bern might have been one of the dozen oppida of the Helvetians mentioned by Julius Caesar. The votive zinc tablet discovered by Heinrich Joss in 1984 bears the Celtic inscription ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ / ΓΟΒΑΝΟ / ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ / ΝΑΝΤΑRΩR, written primarily in Greek letters (Figure 2). Fellmann (1991: 272) proposed that the word ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ, contained in the inscription, represented a toponym, for which he extrapolated the form *Brenodurum. To the element ⟨breno⟩ Fellmann imputed the meaning ‘Landschaft mit vielen Wasserläufen und Sumpf, dichter Wald mit Gestrüpp und Wildnis auf grosser Fläche’ (1991: 272) or ‘Gelände zwischen Felsen, das von Wald oder Gestrüpp bedeckt ist’ (1999: 148). Inferring on the basis of these suppositions, 12 13

Schweizerisches Zivilgesetzbuch vom 10. Dezember 1907 (Stand am 1. Juli 2020), Art. 724 B. Erwerbsarten. III. Fund, 5. Wissenschaftliche Gegenstände. Metallorter.

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figure 2

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Votive zinc tablet bearing the inscription ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ / ΓΟΒΑΝΟ / ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ / ΝΑΝΤΑRΩR, discovered by Heinrich Joss on the Enge peninsula in the summer of 1984, Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern, with kind permission of the Archäologischer Dienst des Kantons Bern

Fellmann proposed that the purported toponym ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ could have meant ‘Burg in der buschwaldbedeckten, unzugänglichen Flussschleifenlandschaft’ (1991: 272) or ‘Festung in der mit Buschwald bestandenen Einöde’ (1999: 148– 149). Felix Müller (1991: 525) translated the purported toponym as ‘stanziamento sull’ansa del fiume’, and asserted that the root contained in the toponym had been preserved not only in the name of Bern, but also in the first portion of the name of Bremgarten, just across the river a bit downstream from the Engehalbinsel. Fellmann (1999: 134, 152) maintained that the form *Brenodurum was analogous in composition to Salodurum [> Solothurn] and Vitudurum [> Winterthur], which likewise contain a latinised version of the Celtic morpheme *dŭrōn ‘oppidum’, common in toponyms. Fellmann cautiously stressed, however, the significance of the fact that no such toponym had actually survived in Bern. Wulf Müller (2002) related the element ⟨breno⟩ in ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ to the Middle Irish forms bern, berna ‘Kluft, Schlitz’, cited by Pokorny (1958, i: 134). Müller’s

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etymology was accepted by the compilers of the Lexikon der schweizerischen Gemeindenamen (Cattin et al. 2005), in which this derivation has now been enshrined, and the form *Brenodurum postulated by Fellmann was, of course, adopted by fellow archaeologists (e.g. Baeriswyl et al. 2016). For the inscription as a whole Fellmann proposed various tentative translations from the Celtic, finally settling on ‘À Gobanos, qui passe par son char par la terre, les habitants de *Brenodurum et de la vallée de l’ Aar’ (2000: 164). The text of the inscription was also studied by Wolfgang Meid (1996), Karin Stüber (2005) and Pierre-Yves Lambert (2007), but their translations and etymological proposals have been rejected on the basis of Celtologically informed arguments by Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel (2020), whose reading and translation adhere closely to the literal text of the inscription. She identifies the form Brenedōr < *Breno-d-ōs as an ethnonym denoting the dalesmen inhabiting the Engehalbinsel, formally ‘der thematische Nominativ Plural eines detoponymischen Derivativs’. Based on her analysis of the attested form, de Bernardo Stempel considers three possible Celtic etymologies for ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ: (1) The attested form *Brenodōr [