From: Michal Milewski
Message: 13530
Date: 2002-04-28
----- Original Message -----
From: <x99lynx@...>
Steve,
Firstly, I'm very sorry for a mistake I made in my previous message. The
M173 marker might be (in my opinion) a "general IE marker", whereas the M17
marker (that occurs on the M173 background) would be a (hypothetical) Satem
marker. I read those papers more than a year ago, so I should not have
trusted my memory in this respect. Secondly, I would like to discuss your
points in more detail. However, I can't devote too much of my time to this
discussion, so please forgive me if you find my responses beeing short and
enigmatic.
> The problem of course is there is no clear and obvious correlation between
> these genetic distibutions and the distribution of IE languages. It's
clear
> that a good many IE speakers don't show Central Asian "affliations." This
is
> important because 1:1 is the hypothetical target correlation, and 1:1 or
even
> .5:1 doesn't even happen with most individual languages, much less the
whole
> IE group. So the real bottom line conclusion from the Y-chromosome studies
I
> know is that we are dealing with essentially non-migrational language
> transfer.
The correlation between two distantly related languages (or families of
languages) depends on the time that passed since these two languages
diverged, and the structure (way of life?) of societies that used these
languages (which is often ignorred, as Glen pointed out). What if we assume,
that the correlation between two languages that split more than
10,000 -20,000 years ago and did not have any contacts (or very minimal
contacts) since then is so low that it just cannot be statistically
significant. For example, let's say (hypotheticaly) that IE, Uralic and
Sino-Tibetan languages diverged 20,000 years ago (or even 15,000 years ago),
somewhere in Central Asia. Those three groups could be relatively small and
mobile. They could carry the language through the next 8-10 thousands of
years, and during that time the languages could quickly (and independently)
evolve. It seems possible, that no significant changes in the social
structure, no increase in the population size, and no language splits
(recordable today) within the proto-IE family accompanied those changes.
Then, about 8000-6000 BC (where? - I don't know, but this would be the only
place where the PIE was heard, and this language could be very different
from its initial stages), sudden social changes took place that allowed the
spread of the daughter IE languages.
I will get back to this story later.
I'm sending you the requested PDF file in the separate email.
Michal