John:
>I am having trouble trying to tie Archaeology and Genetics into your
>trees of a Steppe and Eurasiatic.
Oh, cool! Somebody that disagrees vehemently with me! Hooray! I love it :)
John:
>Firstly, I find it interesting that you place Uralic in with Chukchto
>and Inuit. Given the paleo-linguistic discussions genetic >connections
>with PU discussed on this list, I would have thought >these languages would
>be closer to Altaic rather than Uralic.
...I thought we got passed this already. Didn't we just agree that genetics
is not an absolute indicator of linguistic relationship? Remember Ainu and
Japanese? Ainu and Japanese are nowhere near closely related and yet by your
genetics, we'd place them side-by-side on a linguistic tree. As always, I
place Uralic and EskimoAleut together based on _linguistic_ reasoning. How
many times must I underline linguistics to get the point across?
Uralic and EA share a reduction of the Steppe three-way stop contrast, from
a distinction of voiced, tense voiceless and lax voiceless {*g, *k:, *k} to
a single voiceless set {*k} and a lingering use of subjective/objective
conjugation. Altaic, on the other hand, shows signs of a stop shift ({*d,
*t:, *t} > {*d, *t, *s}) which Uralic and EskimoAleut simply do not have.
Altaic also has completely lost the old subjective/objective system,
retaining only a single set of markings for both transitive and intransitive
verbs. EskimoAleut couldn't be further from Altaic.
Plus, since Steppe must have had a three-way contrast, I find it unlikely
that two completely supposedly seperate groups like Uralic and EskimoAleut
would happen to evolve in the exact same way independently. As well, if
EskimoAleut were more closely related to Altaic, it isn't very apparent and
would need much sweaty explanation in a house full of trained brow-beating
linguists.
>Keltiminar (5,500 - 3500) Yenisei River bend
>
>Keltiminar is the first appearance in this area of a mesolithic "wide
>spectrum" adaptation, and it would seem fair given the chain of
>interlocking mesolithic wide-spectrum hunter gatherer cultures that
>stretch back to late Ice Age Africa - that this represents the spread
>of Nostratic to Altaic anguage groups.
Keltiminar is definitely far too late for Steppe and is not worth theorizing
since IE would have already been developing at this time (Consult my
linguistic map for further understanding).
Bomhard has already offered a better solution. His "Eurasiatic" (my Steppe)
arrived in Central Asia "sometime before 9,000 BCE" where the climate was
far too dry to support any agriculture until no earlier than 8,000 BCE.
Thus, Steppe speakers were no doubt mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Bomhard
explains that the _neolithic_ (pottery, agriculture, stock breeding)
travelled northward into Central Asia by the _sixth_ millenium BCE.
...so, I'm not sure what you're talking about with this "mesolithic
wide-spectrum" stuff. I find 9000+ BCE to be too reasonable a date
linguistically to ever support this Keltiminar idea. Sorry.
>Grebenki (8,000 - 7,000) Steppe to Urals showing continuity of >cultures
>through Dnester - Bug and Dneiper-Donetz 7,000 - 5,500
This sounds connected with the beginnings of IndoTyrrhenian and Boreal.
>Given this evidence Glen, we have a problem
>
>1. The route taken by PIE/PU speakers north from Africa seems to have
>been via a chain of mesolithic cultures through Anatolia, the Balkans
>and hence the Pontic Steppes and Urals
_We_ have no problem. You are the sole owner of this problem. No one
seriously claims that PIE and PU came directly out of Africa - It would be
like saying that English comes directly from the North Pontic-Caspian on a
special route of its own. If this is what you think, then you're going to
need to develop this crackilicious idea a little more before uttering it in
public.
I'm now down on my knees... I beg of you. For the sake of my sanity and
others', stop proposing these ideas until you know some linguistic facts.
Read more about Nostratic theory. Pleeeease. You're killing me. Get
acquainted with Bomhard's proposal.
>The Caucasas seem to have been a culture barrier, there is not much
>connection between the Zarzian derived Kobystan of the Araxes mouth >and
>the steppe Mesolithic cultures northwards (i.e. proto->Kartvellian).
This is not surprising and is a well known fact. It is confirmed by
Nostratic linguistics. Again, my linguistic map shows the uniqueness of
Kartvelian vis-a-vis the rest of the Nostratic group and certainly vis-a-vis
the Steppe languages.
>So how do we get Boreal cultures to Chukotia and Kamchatka? Are you
>saying that Inuit (Eskimo) of Greenland is closer to PIE due to its
>connection within Boreal, than are the Altaic languages, Glen?
The languages, yes, not the genetics. And I will continue to maintain this
until others can get involved and dethrone my theory with some linguistic
thoughts. John, learn some stuff about EskimoAleut, please. The genetics
here are definitely not in line with the linguistic realities. Boreal would
have been partly carried further by trading contacts and thus goes beyond
genetic evidence. The people traveling across the Bering may very well have
been genetically more related to people now speaking Altaic languages, but
the EskimoAleut language is much closer to Uralic linguistically. I don't
understand why you can't acknowledge the fluidity of language areas over
time.
Your genetics and archaeology here are hazy and useless arguements against
the Boreal subgrouping. Linguistics is the necessary tool to unlock this
solely linguistic mystery.
Have a scrumptilicious day.
- gLeN
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