Glen in reply to my point
> >Glen can you tell me why you think Afro-Asiatics ultimately came from
> >the Middle East? And what was the route they took into Africa? I
>think it
> >relates to your thesis about Niger Kordofanian.
> [...]
> >It is interesting that you have languages swimming against the
>tide...
> >Movements prior to the origins of Agriculture were all out >of
Africa not
> >into it.
Wrote
> John, just to clarify in case you've misread: NigerK is not
Nostratic.
> NigerK is a Dene-Caucasian language, a macro-family to which
Nostratic also
> belongs. Dene-Caucasian (c. 25,000+ BCE) and the later Nostratic (c.
15,000
> BCE) happen to have sprung from the same general area (Middle East).
Hmm... why "Middle East"? What evidence do you have that Dene
Caucasian and later Nostratic came from the Middle East?
> The movement of NigerK into Africa (which happened while Nostratic
was still
> developing from DeneC c. 15,000+) and the later movement of
AfroAsiatic
> dialects (Omotic, Chadic, Cushitic, Berber and maybe Egyptian) into
Africa
> (c.8,000 BCE ?) have absolutely nothing to do with each other. That
> AfroAsiatic is a Nostratic language is nothing new either, having
been
> proposed long ago by many other people for some valid grammatical
reasons.
OK - so for you NigerK is Dene Caucasian of 25,000 years ago. So you
are proposing that a language group that was obviously widespread in
Ice Age Eurasia - from Spain to Kamchatka, should have moved South into
the tropics? Hardly likely, especially when population densities were
likely higher in the tropics than in Eurasia. Even a movement from the
Middle East into Africa 25,000 years ago is unlikely.... it contradicts
all that we know about the movements of human populations and human
cultures at this time.
> As usual, you're mixing genetic movement, linguistic movement and
> technological movement together into one big disorganized pile of
> meaningless data. The question I have to ask is: "What data are you
using to
> guage this physical movement out of Africa?" It's not genetics again,
is it?
> And how "prior" do you mean? I'm looking at the last 25,000 years,
not the
> last million.
So am I. In the last 90,000 years there have been three human
movements out of Africa
60-80,000 BCE - the movement that took Australians and Indo Pacifics to
South East Asia and Australia
30-40,000 BCE - the movement that took Aurignacian Homo Sapiens
(Cro-Magnon's) from North East Africa, through Palestine to the
Eurasian Steppes (the probable origin of Dene Caucasian)
15-8,500 BCE - the movement that took the microlithic-mesolithic
cultures from North Africa to the Eurasian forests (the probable origin
of Nostratic)
In this time there was no movements from the Middle East back into
Africa - that only came later with the neolithic revolution in the
Middle East.
So since people did not move into Africa - and you claim languages did
- I want to know again, Glen, on what do you base your evidence? How
can a language jump from the middle east, without human agency, from
the middle east to Africa, when the traffic was all going the other
way? And why would a Dene Caucasian language, move from a cold
temperate climate (the Ice Age Middle East) into the tropics? What was
the "motor" that took it in this direction - not overpopulation (which
spread English around the world), as it was Africa that had the highest
population densities until the neolithic - not the Middle East. Not
cultural superiority - European and Middle Eastern hunter gatherer
cultures were not technologically superior to African ones. Glen, what
is your evidence of a movement from the Middle East to Africa, and why
is this evidence of a movement from the North to the South and not of a
movement out of Africa, from the south to the north - as all the other
evidence attests?
Regards
John