What preceded the Germanic language at its point of origin

[Micael]

Currently the strongest evidence, both in terms of linguistic analysis and DNA modelling of population movements, point to a likely origin of the Germanic language branch of Indo-European as being in current day southern Sweden. The jury isn’t all the way out yet, but it’s getting pretty close now.

An aspect that may be of interest then is to look at what language may have been in use in the area prior to Indo-European arriving there. This is something that has mystified scholars for a long time, there’s no real signs of another language shining through in preserved placenames, and attempts to identify a substantial substrate language within Germanic (that is to say preserved elements inherited by an earlier language), have seemingly fallen short under scrutiny by other scholars. A probable explanation for this can be found in recent DNA studies which shows that there was a very high degree of population replacement when the Indo-European speakers, in the form of the so-called Battle Axe culture, arrived in Scandinavia approximately 2,900 BC, especially with regards to the male lineages. In other words it was probably a violent takeover and especially males of the existing population were killed en masse, breaking a linguistic continuity and replacing it in full with the new Indo-European language.

There may however be a way to make an educated guess based on fairly recent work done studying another language here in the Nordics, that is to say the Sami. The Sami language is a Finno-Ugric one, related to Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian among others. Originating somewhere pretty far east in modern day Russia it is (or perhaps ”they are” since it has branches that aren’t fully mutually intelligible) spoken by the Sami people that moved into the Nordics roughly around 1,500 years ago and lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle towards the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and a bit into Russia towards the Kola peninsula. This becomes of interest when we consider the extent of the earlier mentioned Battle Axe culture in the area.

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As you can see from this map it did extend through some pretty big swaths of Sweden, Norway, and Finland; but there there are large areas up towards the north which weren’t immediately affected by this invasion. Granted these areas were sparsely populated and by hunter-gatherers due the climate and soil conditions making them fairly poorly suited for farmers, which in turn is likely the primary reason for why the farming Battle Axe people didn’t bother trying to colonize these areas, and more or less left the existing locals alone at the time.

But as I mentioned above the Sami only rolled in around 3,400 years later, so it wasn’t that population per say that was replaced, or which perhaps persisted around the edges of the Battle Axe culture’s mini-empire. The Samis were seemingly quite less blood thirsty than the earlier migrating Indo-Europeans though, something which has been presumed for a long time from studies of the Sami language since it doesn’t contain much in the way of vocabulary relating to war or fighting, nor does the oral tradition really indicate the existence of such events in the past either. One might then surmise that in the case of their migration into the Nordics, they would have more or less managed to co-exist and would have established friendly relations with the existing locals rather than taking a confrontational approach.

So whereas attempts to identify a substantially present substrate language in Germanic (or at least one that dates back to the earliest days of the language) have so far had limited success, much more success have been had when trying to do the same with the Sami language(s). Studies now indicate that a full 30% of the existing vocabulary is composed of substrate words from an unknown language, one that has no identifiable joint origin with any existing or otherwise documented extinct language. In particular words denoting place names, geographical features, animals, and reindeer herding activities are dominated by these loan words. Scholars have tentatively designated this unknown language as ”Palaeo-Laplandic”, Lapland being a region up in northern Sweden and Finland, and also suggested the term ”Palaeo-Lakelandic” to denote a closely related cousin to it that they believe was centered around the lake region of Finland.

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The reason why they believe that there were at least two cousin languages of this type is because the western and eastern Sami languages have (most of) the same loanwords but with slight and, most importantly, linguistically consistent variations. It is thus believed that the loaning of this vocabulary took place in two geographically distinct regions, from two related languages. That as much as 30% of the vocabulary was loaned from this language(s) suggest a merging of the Sami with a resident population rather than just co-existance, something which DNA studies also seem to support. In short the more numerous Sami moved in, made friends with the less numerous locals and the two groups eventually merged. Another interesting aspect here is that based on the forms the loan words have, linguists believe that the loaning happened after some distinct sound changes in Sami, placing the injection of loan words to perhaps 700-900 AD. This is remarkably late for an unattested language (and language group) to have been in existence in Europe.

As to how this relates to the main question of the post, since it seems that we had a language(s) that was spread across northern Sweden, northern/middle Finland, and probably Norway as well as late as 1,100-1,300 years ago that can’t be linked to another language, and with no archeological or DNA evidence showing any substantial migrational activities into that area between the time that the Indo-Europeans arrived in the adjacent areas, and the time that the Sami arrived, we then get a prime candidate in terms of the language that the Indo-Europeans displaced. That it was this language, or perhaps more accurately its ancestor language, that was more widely spread across Scandinavia at that time.

Does this help us a great deal? Perhaps not in one sense as it’ll be tricky, or bordering on impossible, to attempt some more detailed reconstruction of it despite the loan words in Sami. But based on what we’ve now deduced we can at least make a qualified guess that the language in use in the area where Germanic was to take form was entirely unrelated to Indo-European languages, and confirm that there doesn’t appear to be any traces of this language in Proto-Germanic, thus reinforcing the conclusion that there was no substantial substrate influence on Proto-Germanic by eliminating the most likely source candidate for such an injection. Plus we could likely say that we’ve partially solved one small pre-historic mystery, and I do like that thought. Thanks for reading!

[Zen9]

There was some indication that the Nordwestblock showed similarities with Aquitanian.
But that's believed to be much later and an influence on West Germanic to Inguaevonic (North Sea Germanic).

But this is quite interesting in adding to the number of pre-indo-european languages. Of which only Basque survives.

Thank you for the piece!

[jemhouston]

Thanks for posting

[Sukhoiman]

Good to read, and thanks Micael!

Yes I am reminded somewhat (past euro-neolithic lang survival candidates like Basque) of how an austro-asiatic substrate survives to some degree in the Dravidian languages (that of course flourish today unlike their neolithic counterparts in scandinavia)....but that substrate is not found (at least the same way or same degree) in Indo-aryan languages (given way these were stratified in Sanskrit 1.0 and 2.0 after arriving). Some proposals also posit that Dravidian itself may have come out of austroasiatic "para-proto-austroasiatic" or vice versa....as we have no clear definite evidence past a point to say they were distinct always.

i.e timing of human waves and settlement/trade inertias in the relevant time blocks (vs assimilation/extinction) between language groups/origins.

There are also some surviving remote austroasiatic languages in the subcontinent itself (munda et al.) I guess the peninsula being physically larger than Scandinavia played some role in not coming under extinction.

Funnily enough one of the linguistics archaeology experts that's done the most work on it happens to be Finnish...Asko Parpola.

Zvelebil, a Czech, also did a ton of deep study on the topic.

[Micael]

There was some indication that the Nordwestblock showed similarities with Aquitanian.
But that's believed to be much later and an influence on West Germanic to Inguaevonic (North Sea Germanic).

But this is quite interesting in adding to the number of pre-indo-european languages. Of which only Basque survives.

Thank you for the piece!

Yes indeed, on the whole the understanding of pre-indo-european language situation in Europe is still quite muddled. Since Basque is the only distinct survivor there has been people that argued that everyone across Europe must have spoken a variant of Basque at one point, something which I personally think is less likely, and which for instance the identification of the language that this thread concerns seems to counter-prove. I suspect that we had several different language groups active in Europe prior to the entry of Indo-European and later smaller groups such as Finno-Ugrian. The more of these we can identify (which is very difficult in itself), the more clues we can get about how relations between people in pre-historic Europe might have looked. One might suspect that cultural exchanges and trade may have been easier between peoples who spoked mutually intelligible tounges than between those who did not, and draw some conclusions from that.

[Micael]

Good to read, and thanks Micael!

Yes I am reminded somewhat (past euro-neolithic lang survival candidates like Basque) of how an austro-asiatic substrate survives to some degree in the Dravidian languages (that of course flourish today unlike their neolithic counterparts in scandinavia)....but that substrate is not found (at least the same way or same degree) in Indo-aryan languages (given way these were stratified in Sanskrit 1.0 and 2.0 after arriving). Some proposals also posit that Dravidian itself may have come out of austroasiatic "para-proto-austroasiatic" or vice versa....as we have no clear definite evidence past a point to say they were distinct always.

i.e timing of human waves and settlement/trade inertias in the relevant time blocks (vs assimilation/extinction) between language groups/origins.

There are also some surviving remote austroasiatic languages in the subcontinent itself (munda et al.) I guess the peninsula being physically larger than Scandinavia played some role in not coming under extinction.

Funnily enough one of the linguistics archaeology experts that's done the most work on it happens to be Finnish...Asko Parpola.

Zvelebil, a Czech, also did a ton of deep study on the topic.

Yes it’s interesting to compare how things turned out with regards to languages in different places. I would suspect that both a larger peninsula and a larger population played a part in it. A smaller peninsula means that it is easier for one group to spread rapidly and achieve dominance including the imposition of their language, and the smaller population can mean that said population becomes more fragile and exposed to external elements. Especially if they have a pretty loose societal structure perhaps without a central leadership caste that can lead and mobilise the people. In other words having a built in power vacuum that can easily be exploited.