Dating PIE's Ancestors (Piotr vs Renfrew)

I WROTE
<<Renfrew often enough does not even admit the existence of a language called
proto-indo-european. So it is inaccurate to say that he places such a
language in the Fertile Crescent.>>

PIOTR REPLIED:(Sunday, March 16, 2003 7:45 AM)
<<Steve, Where does he deny it?>>

I said he doesn't admit it. And he says so expressly in A&L.
E.g., running through the index from “Archaeology & Language” the paperback
edition (1988):

p. 18 - “One important question is the extent to which it is legitimate to
reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European language, drawing upon the cognate forms of
the words in various Indo-European languages that are formed.”

p. 35 - “Nearly all scholars who have considered the Indo-European problem
have felt able to propose a specific place of origin, a homeland for those
speakers of a Proto-Indo-European language, postulated as ancestral to these
languages... One exception was the Russian scholar, N. S. Trubetskoy, who
questioned the whole notion of an ancestral Indo-European language...”

p. 108 - “Trubetskoy criticized severely the dangerous assumptions which led
to the construction of a supposed Proto-Indo-European language.” Et seq.

What's more, when he does use "Proto-Indo-European" in A&L, he DOES NOT even
limit it to Anatolia. For example:

p. 161 - “Secondly, it is not clear from this model to what extent the
language of the first farmers in Greece was modified during the wave of
advance. On the one hand one might imagine that there was little change
initially, so that a somewhat similiar Proto-Indo-European language might
have been spoken from Greece right through to Scandinavia with only
dialectical variations at the outset. The differentiation into the various
Indo-European branches would then have been a subsequent process.”

And when Renfrew states his conclusion in A&L, he certainly doesn't use PIE:
p.288 -- "“It seems likely then that the first Indo-European languages came
to Europe from Anatolia around 6000BC, together with the first domesticated
animals and plants, and that they were in fact spoken by the first farmers of
Europe.” A favorable interpretation might of course translate "first
Indo-European languages" as pre-PIE languages -- just as pre-Celtic might be
loosely called a Celtic language.

Renfrew is not consistent of course and I'm not sure that he clearly
understood or understands that "proto-indo-european" refers to a rather
specific point in reconstructed linguistic development, rather than just a
generic term for "an ancestor" of IE languages.

BUT some linguists of course can be just as guilty (or more so) of crossing
the same line when they start talking about such extra-linguistic ideas as
"Indo-European Culture" or worse, "the culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans".

For those linguists, criticizing Renfrew is like the pot calling the kettle
black.

PIOTR ALSO WRITES:
<<He uses the term "Proto-Indo-European" often enough without qualifying it
in any way, and some of his dispersal scenarios (see_Archaeology and
Language_, subchapter 8.5) make it clear that he treats Anatolia as _the_ PIE
homeland rather than a pre-PIE pre-homeland.>>

I'm sorry but I don't see that in the chapter you've cited. He definitely
doesn't commit to any of the hypotheses he offers in that chapter. And when
he does use the word "proto-indo-european", it's clear he is using it the
same way he spoke of PIE as reaching from Greece to Scandinavia in the quote
above.

p. 205 - [speaking of the eastern spread of IE] “Hypothesis A suggests that
zone of early farmers speaking Proto-Indo-European extended east to northern
Iran and even to Tukemenia at the outset.... Hypthesis B... instead suggests
that the crucial development for the eastern area was the development of
nomad pastoralism... Even if we accept Hypothesis A, it is still likely that
the first steppe nomads did indeed speak Indo-European languages, and that
their adaption to the steppes first took place in the Ukraine.”

PIOTR ALSO WRITES:
<<To quote Renfrew himself ("Nostratic as a Linguistic Macrofamily", 1999):
"... the
Proto-Indo-European homeland would be located in Central Anatolia, around 7000
BC". I plead innocent of twisting his words.>>

Well, central Anatolia is certainly not the Fertile Crescent, which is what
you first mentioned.

And the accusation is not twisting his words, it is avoidance of what Renfrew
as a non-linguist is saying. Is the "homeland" of English in England or where
the Saxons and Angles first spoke something like Old English?

The fact is that any surmise about where the actual living language that was
closest to reconstructed PIE was spoken may not be terribly significant
historically. What SPREAD the IE languages may have been some attribute of
the speakers or the language that happened before or after the relatively
brief time that real PIE may have existed. The actual situation of PIE
speakers may have been insignificant to the spread of IE.

What Renfrew is obviously talking about (not as a linguist would) is what
carried the language group and caused it to spread originally.

I'm not sure why so many linguists dislike the idea that Indo-European
languages spread when humans first began producing food, instead of gathering
it. Renfrew is of course guilty of confusing the whole thing with genetics
and wave theories and such. And of not being careful in his use of terms.

But the idea is clearly a powerful one in explaining the early spread of a
language group well beyond any single ethnic, genetic or cultural boundary.

Is there a better explanation of why non-IE speakers would want to learn to
speak an IE language? Is there a better explanation of why IE speakers would
increase in numbers generationally? If the original IE speakers had the
first cows and the pigs, the grain and the first beer, the first pottery and
the first food surpluses (and yes domesticated horses too), well it would
certainly be worthwhile learning to talk to them, wouldn't it? Economics is
a fundamental reason to learn a new language.

Renfrew has said many things. But if nothing else he helped breakthrough a
long load of ethnic mythology and provided a good, sound, basic human
economic and social reason for why the IE languages spread. There's nothing
in Mallory or the old conventional theories that even comes close.

Steve Long