Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas de Aynesworth
The problem with the alphabetical argument is that if one were say, use this criteria for the understanding of any movement of peoples, then one would end up with a vision of the world in which the Greeks migrated from Phoenicia (given that both Linear A and B descend from Phoenician), the Etruscan people coming from Greece (that the Etruscan alphabet seems to have been developed from Linear B) and worse yet, the Germans are in fact Etruscans (as the case for the German Futhark being a development of the Etruscanized Linear B script has been concisely made).
So no, an alphabet in Iberia descended from Phoenician script does not convince or even surprise me. Given that the Phoenicians were well seated in Carthage by the time in question (1st c. BC) and that the Carthaginians controlled a swathe of the Iberian Peninsula, it is quite obvious as to why the Iberian script developed as it did. Another thing to note, if the Iberians migrated from Caucasian Iberia a few thousand years ago, then it would be quite a stretch to use an alphabet used by the Phoenicians that apparently influenced the Iberian alphabet when the earliest use of Phoenician comes from around the 1st millennia BC, after the alleged sojourn you envision.
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So you have no problem understanding that there were Greek colonies along the Mediterranean coastline of what is now Spain; yet you think it is a bit far fetched that the Iberians of the Caucasus were the ancestors of the Iberians that inhabited parts of Spain?
Kind of strange that two tribes found on opposite ends of a continent would both be called by the same name and yet have no connection to each other, don't you think? Especially when everyone else around them was migrating from nearby areas in Eastern Europe (Cimmerians, Geats, Gallic tribes, etc.) and resettling in nearby areas of Western Europe.
