--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> willemvermeer wrote:
> >
> > Sorry for sounding pompous, but if what we want is construct a
> > credible picture of the history of the languages of the Balkan,
the
> > first thing we have to keep in mind alongside the linguistic facts
> > are the dynamics of Balkan demographics.
> >
>
> how do you mean this "dynamic demographics"?
What I mean is what you get if large tracts of excellent farmland are
periodically left alone because of outside disturbances (Indo-
Europeans, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Hungarians, Ottomans etc.), as has
happened so often on the Balkans. When quiet conditions return,
people eager for land descend from the mountains and take up farming,
with spectacular results for their numbers. Then, if new disturbances
occur and conditions become unbearable again, people vanish, and of
those few that survive, most do so by taking up mountain pastoralism.
Willem