Re: [tied] Re: Convergence in the formation of IE subgroups

On 2006-05-12 16:04, mkelkar2003 wrote:

> Ballester could have used the Rig Veda as an example. The people of
> the Indian subcontinent have achieved the impossible. A text has been
> preserved like a tape recording for at least 3500 (6500 really)
> years.

A deliberately canonised text is not a spoken language. The _language_
of the people who composed the Rigveda was not preserved unchanged. As
for the date, if you use "really" in the sense "I believe" you confuse
reality with your beliefs.

> For people who consider development of writing, literacy, and iron
> tools as great "achievments", this fact is quite impossible to
> comprehend. All invasionist models,which have now been redressed in
> politically correct terminology, involve presumed superiority of one
> people over another based on tools and weapons. The success of
> European colonist after 1492 and the massive destruction of native
> cultures and languages all over the world has completely brainwashed
> most Western scholars into thinking that *such has always been the
> case.* Exceptions like Blaut (1992) are very very few.
>
> We need a radical new view, quite opposite to the Western view of
> what constitutes "development, and what exactly is meant
> by "civilization."

"Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam", eh?

Piotr