From: Mark Odegard
Message: 1761
Date: 2000-03-03
----- Original Message -----From: John CroftI have just purchased for the Gaia Library William Ryan and Walter
Pitman's book "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History".
It proposes (implicitly) that the Black Sea lake circa 5,600 BCE was the Nostratic homeland, with everyone from the Egyptian Dynastic Race, Semites, Karvellians, Indo-Europeans and Linear Bander Keramik (Battle Axe) and Vinca peoples coming out of the Black Sea as survivors.
Whilst I tend to agree with the oceanography and geology, I am having trouble with the linguistics and archaeology of their proposed hypothesis. What do you others thinkI've had the book for nearly two years. Ryan and Pitman have impeccable credentials as earth scientists, and whatever they say about oceanography, hydrology, geology, and such associated sciences are to be accepted as fact.They are not competent to make judgments about historical linguistics and the origin of PIE. Nor are they competent to make archaeological judgments. Their book is addressed to a 'popular' audience, but the title and their speculations greatly diminish the book's overall acceptablity. The transgression of the Med into the Black Sea is way to late to have had any effect on the breakup of 'Nostratic'. There are, however, profound implications for the fallling-together of PIE, in that 5500 BCE is often said to be about the right date, and the north Pontic region is often said to be right place.Mark.