  Van Marle et al. (2005) showed that circumstellar absorption lines in early
Type Ib/c supernova and gamma-ray burst afterglow spectra may reveal the
progenitor evolution of the exploding Wolf-Rayet star. While the quoted paper
deals with Wolf-Rayet stars which evolved through a red supergiant stage, we
investigate here the initially more massive Wolf-Rayet stars which are thought
to evolve through a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) stage. We perform hydrodynamic
simulations of the evolution of the circumstellar medium around a 60 Msol star,
from the main sequence through the LBV and Wolf-Rayet stages, up to core
collapse. We then compute the column density of the circumstellar matter as a
function of radial velocity, time and angle. This allows a comparison with the
number and blue-shifts, of absorption components in the spectra of LBVs,
Wolf-Rayet stars, Type Ib/c supernovae and gamma-ray burst afterglows. Our
simulation for the post-LBV stage shows the formation of various absorption
components, which are, however, rather short lived; they dissipate on time
scales shorter than 50,000yr. As the LBV stage is thought to occur at the
beginning of core helium burning, the remaining Wolf-Rayet life time is
expected to be one order of magnitude larger. When interpreting the absorption
components in the afterglow spectrum of GRB-021004 as circumstellar, it can be
concluded that the progenitor of this source did most likely not evolve through
an LBV stage. However, a close binary with late common-envelope phase (Case C)
may produce a circumstellar medium that closely resembles the LBV to Wolf-Rayet
evolution, but with a much shorter Wolf-Rayet period.
