junk
Piotr, I completely agree with you. In fact, I have the
feeling that the authors are mostly describing the situation in Europe after the
first farmers came into Europe, not after the IEs came into Europe.
Cavalli-Sforza (eg, 1997 Proc.Nat.Ac.Sci.94:7719-24) thinks that the European
genes are mostly due, in this order, to components that have the center of
origin in: the Middle East (28%), Lapland (22%), Ukrain (11%), Ionic area (7%)
and W-Pyrenees (5%). IMO these centers seem to coincide with the first farmers,
Uralic (original Eur.population?), PIE, Greek influences, Bask (original
Eur.population?). IOW the genetic influence of the IEs in Europe seems to be
limited, but the linguistic influence of course is nearly 100%.
One thing I found interesting in the paper was:
"...the picture of diversity in IE languages was created by the survival of
locally differing non-IE elements modifying the imposed IE speech patterns. What
had originally been great non-IE linguistic diversity -- comparable to that in
New Guinea today -- was brought into a kind of convergence by the imposition of
an IE pattern." IOW they seem to think that the pre-IE substrata were
largely responsable for the differences between Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek
etc.
Marc
I do not quite understand what
the authors mean by 'correcting for the possible effects of continuous local
gene flow', if the loci are in the Y chromosome. Horizontal gene transfer
between males, or what? I also wonder if the study was sufficiently
controlled, e.g. by including non-IE-speaking Europeans (Finns, Hungarians,
Basques, etc.). The interpretation of genetic evidence may involve some
circular argumentation or wishful thinking. If the 'separation time' one
gets, e.g., for Turks and Germans turns out to be of the order of 5000
years, any investigator's first thought will be: 'Oops, there's something
wrong either with my methods or with my assumptions.' When he gets the same
time for Iranians and Irishmen, he'll think, 'Heureka, so it all happened in
the Bronze Age, didn't it?' and feel very confident about his results
because they confirm his expectations. And who are 'the most distant
IE-speaking populations'? Don't Black Americans count as IE-speakers?
Piotr