Gerry here: I asked the following question and your answer wasn't what
I was looking for.
> And where in
> Africa do you draw the goat, sheep, wheat and barley line?
A: Do you mean, how this complex spread through Africa?
Gerry: Let me rephrase it again. If you are relating goat, sheep,
wheat and barely to a mid-east population then there has to be a
boundary line in Africa above which is goat, sheep, wheat, and barley
and below which are "typical African stuffs". Where do you
geographically draw this line?
You then state:
<It's possible to speculate that the Tasian culture could be the switch
<point of Egyptian and Cushitic groups.
Gerry here: Now your agrument is based on a traditional archaeological
presentation with which most archaeologists are in agreement. However,
if we attempt to seek the opposite argument (that is tipping yours onto
its head) we come up with the "diffusionist" agrument which I might add
is always unpopular and tends to bristle folks in academe. The
diffusionists would say that your traditional argument is wrong because
"Tasian folks or Badarian people travelled in very small groups and were
NOT part of a "wave" that moved in unison. Some archaeologists like
Stephen Williams claim that these diffusionists are practicing
"fantastic archaeology" likened to myths about the lost ontinents of
Atlantis and Mu and has squelshed speculation about Norse, Semitic, and
Celtic letters carved in stones throughout the US. Even Brian Fagan
(from here in CA) states that diffusionism is exasperating and refers to
diffusionism as "crank literature".
Now that we have deliniated the argument, how do we resolve it? Is it
possible to incorporate a diffusionist argument into a traditional
(structural) argument? Is it possible to utilize Ian Hodder's "Critical
Hermeneutics" (an attempt to attain a simultaneous fusion AND separation
of the present and the past) to bridge diffusionism with structuralism?
Well, Alexander, what do you think? And if anyone else on the list has
any comments, I'd be most interested.
Gerry