From: erobert52@...
Message: 13822
Date: 2002-06-11
Genes *can* give us general ideas about the movement of languages -
not universally, not in every case, but generally.
Genetic data supplies us only with a picture of the genetic situation
today. We possess hardly any historical genetic data because the
technique for acquiring the data was only developed recently and
there is very, very little data from ancient specimens available.
Techniques using mtDNA and Y-chromosome DNA tell us only about
lineages which have survived, while the study of markers in general
DNA cannot supply a historical framework to explain how and when
the information came to be the way it is or where the people were at
the time. None of it, of course, supplies any information at all on
what languages people spoke. Genetic information therefore cannot
"give us general ideas about the movement of languages". Those
models have to be supplied by other disciplines, and genetic
information can only be used to support or contradict these models.
Ed.