I have read, that US linguists do not use term Indo-Europeans, but instead use Eurasians, as there are still a lots of IE speaking people outside India and Europe. I could just start with counting armenians, kurdish, all indo-iranyans in Iran and Afganistan, even Pakistan(but I regard it as Indian region), so term Indo-European is really bad or - terrible to describe modern and not to mention - ancient distribution of IE languages.
1. No. There really do not exist term of proto-Balts in relation to PIE. If you reacted to this, you clearly have no clue about topic.
The only proto-balts you will get will be about much much later proto-Latvian-Lithuanian baltic language, that will be called proto-Baltic. And to make matters worse it is also very misleading, because by proto it is meant as pre Latvian-Lithuanian baltic languages(not that very different, but still), that existed before Latvian-Lithuanian influx. As for your understanding of PIE, I'm aware of that and this is actually what I meant, that PIE = proto-Baltic, and if you will prove otherwise, well... we will have a Nobel prize award(of how it is possible to break science) to Brasilian
2. Proto-Greeks were not even PIE, but semitic at best. If you insist, that all pre-hellenic greeks were PIE, you have no idea about topic.
3. There is no Common PIE the way you describe it. Balts has nothing in common with germanic nonPIE lingual ancestry, because germanic language contain 30% of nonPIE lexicon and lingists are pulling hairs from their shiny heads to understand from where it comes. Also nothing in common with nonPIE greek, and neither with any other nonPIE ancestry of indo-iranian, who has heavy dravidian or even Indus valley civilisation extinct language influences. There is nothing more proto-PIE, than Baltic, because they are most archaic - to all languages, including recent development of slavic, which is not archaic as baltic is. If you can't understand what means archaic, well - Baltic languages are relic to ALL IE languages. I'm not saying, that they have not changed, but the closest to PIE you will have is any Baltic language.
4. I do not know anything about timing calculations that are made about divergence of Western and Eastern Baltic and I would like to have that data for me, if you can provide. Although - you are also not correct about understanding what are West and East balts, as the process between West and Eastern Balts is not divergence, but actually completelly opposite. I can only give you timings for divergence between modern latvian and lithuanian and it is ~1500 ya.
5. I can call Baltic anything, that can be shuffled under continuous Baltic dialect continium and where it can be proven as such. Slavic, also some other extinct language groups quite comfortably fit under this description, so it is just a matter of technical definition. From my experience we will come to this - eventually.
6. I do not care what most linguists call something, as you can't solve in these matters something by mere voting... What matters to me - if that is logical and if that actually makes sense. Don't get the wrong idea - I do actually read what linguists write(too much, actually), but as I mentioned - they have to have some sense and leave no unfinished questions to their ideas.
Me, as somebody who is studying linguistic know some things. That what you are calling "Balts" and "Baltic" is actually Balto-Slavic, since both ethnicities have origin from that. Imagine that there is group of people, let's call it "A", without identity and self-awareness. Then, one big group of people separated from "A", picked up other cultures such as Sarmatian, and meet the Romans and they described them as "Slavs". Other group stayed to live in swamps and also preserved archaic features of language, and later is called "Balts". It is fruitless would you call it "Baltic" or anything else. Baltic could be the term for many languages from this language. If you look from this perspective the Slavs at best could be called as "South Balts" but never Prussians as you said. In general, modern Balts are Eastern Balts and have nothing to do with your view of term "Balts". So, today, Slavs are Slavs, originally from proto-Slavs, and Balts are Balts originally from proto-Balts, and never in drems you shouldn't think that Slavic language developed from modern Baltic "Eastern Baltic". So, the term Balts today means Eastern Balts, and no Slavs doesn't originate from it. That what you are calling for some reason Balts should be called Balto-Slavic. Regards.
