> Thus there was a greater distance between the Bahreini Sumerians and
> the Elamite-Dravidian dialect chain, stretching from the Zagros to the
> Indus and possibly beyond.
>
I am not a specialist of dravidian, but I spend some time reading the
book by McAlpin on "elamo-dravidian". First objection : he places
brahui as a separate branch of "elamo-dravidian" - but brahui entered
northern india in the 13th century ! Brahui is not, as far as I know, a
particularly aberrant dravidian language, it doesnot deserves being
placed that high in the stammbaum. This casts some doubts about the
seriousness of Mc Alpin's work. Second objection : he doesnt cite
elamite in cuneiform translitteration as any sensitive man would do.
People that studied eve the very basics of cuneiform writing will know
how difficult it is to have a precise idea of how the language was
pronounced. In the case of akkadian and hittite, we have languages to
compare with, but in the case of sumerian and elamite, we cannot reach
any phionetic precision, not even telling the segmental inventory of
the language.
Guillaume