Re: [tied] Does Koenraad Elst Meet Hock´s Challenge?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2002 20:14:46 -0000, "Richard Wordingham
> <richard.wordingham@...>" <richard.wordingham@...>
> wrote:
>
> >Incidentally, why do the Anatolians need to have 'stayed behind in

the

> >Balkans', rather than having stayed behind in Western Anatolia?
>
> Attractive though it is to let the Anatolian group stay behind in
> Anatolia rather than somewhere in the Balkans, especially given that
> the Balkan Neolithic came from Anatolia in the first place (the
> technology certainly, the people maybe), it does create an

impossible

> timeline problem. If Renfrew is right, and the homeland is in
> Anatolia, the date of PIE must slip back at least two millennia
> further into the past (to at least 7500 or 8000 BC), which is
> stretching it too far.

I wonder if that really is too far. How is the dating done? I can't
help thinking that having a large dialect continuum, with no
significant foreign incursions, and perhaps no war, might slow down
the divergence of PIE. (What does happen to dialect continuums? Do
they just split apart into languages of their own accord? The
dialects can certaily evolve in parallel for a long time, and I
believe changes can sweep through them.) One thing that has bothered
me is that although reconstructed PIE is rich in roots, it seems very
short of actual words. I suspect that would be one of the biggest
problems in writing 'Teach Yourself Proto-Indo-European'. Translated
fables have a very small cast of animals - horse, sheep, dog and wolf
seem to be the prime actors.

Richard.