Re: Afro-Asiatic

Alaxander wrote in reply to Glen

> The Near East center of neolithization seems to be not a single thing

like SE

> Asian center (where from IMO the Austric, i.e. Austroasiatic+Daic+AN,
> languages started) or Huanghe center (ST languages). On one hand, we

find

> here roots of both all Nostratic folks and some obviously

non-Nostratic ones.

> On the other hand the set of the very first domesticated species is

double: 2

> wheats (emmer and einkorn) and barley, 2 kinds of animals which were

almost

> identical for the EARLY Neolithical farming - goats and sheep (keep

in mind

> that they at that stage were bred only for meat and skin - not for

milk and

> wool yet - if you had goats you just didn't need to domesticate sheep

and

> vice versa). In the very beginning of the Neolithic we can retrace 2
> distinctive variants of many things, although I must say that rather

soon due

> to contacts this features of different things started to intermingle

giving

> us a motley pattern. Nevertheless is it possible to distinguish 2

initial

> variants with well correlated comlexes:

Excellent point, except I would think that this division separates
between the Anatolian and the Iranian branches of my hypothetical
Caucasian-Japethic family.

> Which of this variants can be associated with Nostratic? IMO only the

1st

> one. Thus Zagros rather than Anatatolia.

I would argue that neither is the Nostratic origin. For instance,
Carvalli Sforza has shown that there is evidence that Berber has been
in palce in North Africa for 15,000 years. Certainly there are clear
connections between the Capsian mesolithic culture of the late Ice Age
and the early neolithic cultures, who adotped farming technologies from
Cardial coastal fisher folk.

I feel there is ample evidence for a number of pre-Neolithic splits
within Nostratic (particularly if Greenberg's Amerind-Nostratic
connection holds up).

John