[tied] Re: Europeans descend from Basques...

From: richardwordingham
Message: 13904
Date: 2002-06-20

--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> John:
> >Sorry Glen, the Mediterranean during the neolithic was not a well,
> >sucking in peoples. Rather it was a fountain out of which area
they came.
>
> Certainly, it was a fountain, but it was also a well. It's like
> modern day coastal cities versus prairie towns. There might have
> first been a movement of people from the Middle-East c.6500 BCE
> thereby supplying some genes, followed by a spread of culture,
> products and technology outward into Eastern Europe for millenia
> later, but no significant spread of Middle-Eastern languages. In
> this sense, we might concur with you that the area was at this
> point a "cultural fountain".
>
> During the cultural spread, there would certainly have been
> people attracted to the trade and riches (a demic gravity well).
> Thus, after a demic movement from the Middle-East, there would be
> an attraction of people from other places in Eastern Europe and
> Western Asia. Lo and behold, the population density increases too.

Are you suggesting a process whereby hunter-gatherers move in to
take up farming in the vicinity of other farmers, thereby leaving
vacant territory for other bands to move into?

We've seen statements in this forum that early farming sucks
people in (rather like early urbanisation. Early cities grew by
recruitment rather than by reproduction). How long is it
before farmers primarily expand their numbers organically rather
than by recruitment? (I didn't see this question answered in this
forum.)

Is the archaeological evidence consistent with this process? I.e. do
we see technological diffusion rather than ethnic culture moving?

> We all understand that by approximately 4000 BCE, Indo-European
> languages and the people who spoke them (by then, a genetic
> mixture of people from the Middle-East and local populations)
> were moving into Europe in significant numbers. This event is
> the source of your demic and genetic "fountain" and a secondary
> cultural fountain as well.
>
> Now, your strategy would be to make things as simplistic as Barney
> the Dinosaur and have the linguistics, culture and population move
> together in unison all the time. Unfortunately, reality seldom
> works that way. There are differing reasons for spread for each
> of the different aspects we are discussing. Language was not
> coming from the Middle-East, population and culture was. We may
> note a similar situation with Mexico where culture is coming from
> the US, but Spanish is still alive and well. (In fact, there has
> even been playful conjecture in the US that Spanish will take over
> English in the near future.)
>
>
> - gLeN

Whatever the outcome in the USA and Mexico, this will not be an
example of language moving one way and people and culture the other.
Let us review reasonably well-recorded language displacements:

Language, culture and people: English to Australia, NZ, USA
Language & culture, not people: Latin to rest of Roman Empire
Turkish to Turkey
Hungarian to Hungary
Language & people, not culture: Akkadian to Sumeria
Language, culture & a large minority: English to England

Language, not people & culture: Arabic to Coptic villages (in Egypt).
But, viewed as Arabic to Egypt, is this a fair categorisation?
I suspect Arabic to the Arab world is generally a case of 'language
& culture, not people', but I may be wrong.

Language, but culture?: Detribalised mission villages in the Amazon.
Can anyone comment on the category here? My recollection is
that the local lingua franca (not necessarily Romance) is adopted.

Language, not people, same culture: Change from Dene (*not*
as in Na Dene) to a neighbouring distantly related language
in New Guinea. The villagers had fled (c. 1870) after
breaching a taboo in an initiation ceremony. They trickled
back to their home territory, but adopted the neighbouring,
locally dominant language. 'Elite dominance' was not involved.

Migration without language displacement:

People & culture, not language: Israel
People, not language & culture: Most small refugee groups, e.g.
Protestant refugees in England

People & culture without language may be a matter of degrees.
How does one reckon Jews, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world?
The cultural differences seem small. Analysing other groups
that maintain barriers to integration also seems difficult.

I don't think it is worth listing cases where immigrants and the
previous population had very similar cultures, e.g. Normans in
England.

Do any of these support the notion of (pre-)IE moving in the
opposite direction to people and culture? I do not think they do.

- Richard