Piotr wrote
> If one accepts the "Out of Some Place in Sub-Saharan Africa"
> scenario of human origins, it stands to reason that the initial
> genetic makeup of our ancestral lineage must have been rather
> uniform. We shall probably have to wait for the next phase of the
> HGP before concrete figures become more than educated guesses,
> but to my mind even a total population of a few thousand (divided
> into tribal groups with 50 or so members each) would have been
> large enough to support a good deal of linguistic differentiation.
>
> I can't help being sceptical about treating "phyla", "stocks" and
> "macrofamilies" as genetic rather than areal units. I think we
agree
> on other points.
I suspect that you missed my point.
The human genome suggests that one lineage of Homo saps finished up
by
chance being those that contributed genetic material to modern
humans,
That does not mean that this was the only lineage alive at the time.
In fact that is extremely unlikely. What happens with such things is
that time and chance slowly whittles away at the number of
independent
lineages until only one survives (a similar thing happens with royal
families - the Medieval lords were slowly whittled down untill the
line that holds the Crown finishes up as the chief landholder (it
happened in both Britain and France).
Thus there was prbably a good deal more linguistic differentiation
than a lineage of a few thousand divided into hunter gatherer bands
of
50 each would suggest. And there was also probably a vast number of
almost modern proto-languages around at the same time, from which
linguistic concepts were robably flowing into and out of as well.
Hence me finding your tangled bush metaphor very meaningful.
Nevertheless, just as time and chance weeds out genetic lineages, it
would seem to do the same for languages. I have seen figures that
suggest that human linguistic diversity reached a maximum about 8,500
BCE (just prior to the origins of grain farming, and the spread of
standardised languages across large areas.) At that time human
populations may have stood somewhere between 15-30 million people,
and
there may have been some 15,000 different languages. This would mean
that the average language had about 1,000-2,000 speakers. (as hunter
gatherer bands were about 30-50 each this would mean about 30-60
bands
per language. The fact that there are so few big language families
today (eg. AA, NK, Kh, NS, in Africa, UrY, Al, IE, AA, Dr, Au, ST in
Eurasia, In, De, Am in the Americas, IP and Aus in Australia-New
Guinea) with the rest being isolates or small groups, to me suggests
just the luck of the draw, historical accident and being at the right
place and time. Our tangled bush has become weeded until all the
leaves stem from only a few shoots further back. Most of their
contemporaries have long gone.
Hope this helps clarify the fact that I really do think we
substancially agree
Regards
John