After "10,500 years ago" there is a
footnote:
"[15] The physical anthropologist Krantz
(1988) provides reasoned argumentation for such a date. A similar date is
suggested by the archaeologist Renfrew (1987) in a work which has received
wide publicity; the author has an agile mind but lacks an appropriate
training in the methodology of historical linguistics for his work to constitute
a linguistically significant contribution to the debate."
Why I agree with Dixon's negative
assessment of Renfrew's linguistic arguments, I am surprised he finds
"reasoned argumentation" in Grover S. Krantz's _Geographical Development of
European Languages_. Krantz presents a dispersal scenario which is similar to
Renfrew's (and also begins in the Fertile Crescent) but relies on an extremely
mechanical version of the "wave of advance" model -- a definitely artificial
construct, applied by Krantz with dogmatic consistency. He also seems to lack
any historical linguistic training. Anyway, it's clear that 10500 years as
the upper estimate of the age of PIE is arrived at as the deepest age that can
be reconciled with the linguistic evidence for a Neolithic society and culture
in PIE times. Most linguists regard this age as definitely exaggerated, not
because glottochronology gives us a reliable "genetic clock" (it doesn't), but
because much shallower chronologies would perfectly suffice. It is hard to
imagine that for the first two or three millennia of their existence IE
communities expanded over a vast area but did not do much by way of language
change, only to start differentiating at a reasonable rate in subhistorical
times. Apart from that, there are specific arguments against an Anatolian
homeland, and any other homeland requires a later dating.
Mallory's dating (4500-2500 BC) depends on
linking PIE with the "Kurgan cultures" of the steppe. This in turn leaves too
little time for the divergence of the major IE branches, in my
opinion. People on Cybalist know that I favour a Danubian homeland and a
link with the Linear Pottery culture, with ca. 5600 BC as the "root date" (the
separation of Anatolian) and something close to 4500 BC for the latest common
ancestor of the non-Anatolian branches. 2600-2000 BC would be the formative
period of Proto-Indo-Iranian, with common Iranian and Indo-Aryan as
distinct languages after the latter date. In brief, here is my (approximate)
timeline for the history of Indic (BP = before present):
7600 BP --- PIE
6500 BP --- non-Anatolian IE
5000 BP --- Proto-Satem
4600 BP --- Proto-Indo-Iranian
4000 BC --- Proto-Indo-Aryan
3700-3200 BP --- Rigvedic
Indo-Aryan
3200-2500 BP --- late Old
Indo-Aryan
2500-900 BP --- Middle
Indo-Aryan
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2001 11:03 PM
Subject: [pieml] Dating PIE
Cross-posted on Cybalist.
From Dixon, R.M.W., 1997,
The rise and fall of languages, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, pp.
47-49:
"What has always filled me with wonder is the assurance with which
many historical linguists assign a date to their reconstructed
proto-
language...We are told that proto-Indo-European was spoken about
6,000 years ago. What is known with a fair degree of certainty is the
time between proto-Indo-Aryan and the modern Indo-Aryan languages --
something in the order of 1,000 years. But how can anyone tell that
the
development from proto-Indo-European to proto-Indo-Aryan took
another 3,000
years?...Languages are known to change at different
rates. There is no way
of knowing how long it took to go from the
presumed homogeneity of
proto-Indo-European to the linguistic
diversity of proto-Indo-Iranian,
proto-Celtic, proto-Germanic, etc.
The changes could have been spoken rapid
to slow. We simply don't
know...Why couldn't proto-Indo-European have been
spoken about 10,500
year ago?...The received opinion of a date of around
6000 BP for
proto-Indo-European...is an ingrained one. I have found this a
difficult matter to get specialists to even discuss. Yet it does seem
to
be a house of cards."
Would members like to discuss this and to guess on
the time between
PIE and R.gveda or Sanskrit?
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