Re: [tied] Pat's ProtoWorld Playland

Those scholars call themselves MERRITT Ruhlen and JOSEPH H. Greenberg, to be precise. Personally, I wouldn't give a farthing for their methods (mass comparison) or results (from Amerind to Proto-World). So far, they have only demonstrated that professional linguists are as capable of fooling themselves as any half-informed amateur :)

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: longgren@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 10:47 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Pat's ProtoWorld Playland

I am skeptical about Proto-World, but it is not a crackpot theory. Matt Ruhlen and Joshua Greenberg believe in it. Joshua Greenberg thinks that there was a small group of humans who came out of northeast Africa around 50,000 BC, populated the whole world and wiped out all traces of all other hominids such as Neanderthal. I think it is looney too, but it is respectable in academic circles. Pat Ryan's analysis of ancient languages such as Etruscan, Egyptian and Urartian and their possible relations is quite good. Matt Ruhlen makes a good case for Proto-World. Prehistory seems to show an entirely different picture, though. If there was a Proto-World language, it must have been from a group of peope who spread out and replaced all other languages. Respectable academics have talked about a "language mutation" around 50,000 years ago. I think they are wrong about that. I follow Ruhlen back in time at least as far as Dene-Caucasian. The most recent "explosion" was Indo-European. Indo-European was just one branch of Nostratic, which was an earlier explosion. Nostratic may have been a branch of Dene-Caucasian. This explosion sent languages all the way to Arizona; Navaho is a Dene-Caucasian language. Cavalli-Sforza believes that Amerind is associated with Nostratic. I think he is wrong, but he is more respected than some of us are. I have looked at languages like Zulu and Hawaiian. There seem to be similiarities that go beyond chance.