--- In cybalist@..., "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...> wrote:
> http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/Indo2.html
>
> Some glacier melts to ponder.
I've come across this one before. The page is several years old.
Johnathon Adams is an environmental scientist. I know nothing of
Marcel Otte, and don't know what "Service de Préhistoire" means.
They are obviously unfamiliar with the usual linguistic nomenclature.
They write:
--start quote--
Migrations and conquest may likewise have carried Sanskrit
and Tocharian further eastwards shortly before early
historical times.
--end quote--
'Old Indic' is the preferred term, but this would ignore the other
half of the Indo-Iranian superstock. This sets off some alarms in my
head.
'Table 1' is a useful summary of the climate over time. My reading,
however, suggests the period from ca 5500 to 3200 BCE was considerably
warmer than present, with (in the later stages) mean sea level being
up to 5 meters higher than present.
With this in mind, my current thoughts suggest a spread of humans
across Northern Europe starting in 5500 ultimately reaching up past
the Arctic Circle. Of course, the Black Sea flood gets involved, with
refugee agriculturalists colonizing the Steppe river valleys and the
Central Danube. If we are to find the earliest IEs in the
Linearbandkermik (=LBK/Linear Band Ware) culture, 5500 is about right.
Northern Europe was as warm as it has been since the last ice age (it
subsequently became and remained cooler right up to the present; we
are probably warmer now than we have been in 5200 years).
The homeland question, I think, if resolvable, will be resolved by
climatic studies. Black Sea marine archaeology will also likely
greatly revise current thinking.