From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 3071
Date: 2000-08-11
<snips> If we may believe C-S's components, IE languages (3d component, Ukrainian centre) are genetically a minority in Europe, less than the Middle-East genes (1st component) or even the component with (2d component). IMO it's not very likely that this 2d component (centre in N- rather than S-Scandinavia) was due to the migrations of Goths, Franconians, Anglo-Saxons, Vandals, Longobards, Vikings... (although they must have left a lot of genes).
"If", as the Spartans said to the Athenians. I wasn't aware that languages had genes ;-). But seriously, I don't trust this component analysis as a guide to linguistic prehistory. ...
Of course not, nobody does. I don't think Cavalli-Sforza's information is important for linguistic reconstructions. If there was good agreement between languages & genes, we should have spoken a Semitic language or so, since C-F's 1st component has its centre in the Middle East. But people have genes & speak languages & make (archeol.) objects. It's the combination of data from diverse sources (archeol., linguistic, genetic, climatic, geographical...) that can be a guide for reconstructing prehistory. C-S has discribed gene gradients, and any good reconstruction of European prehistory should be able to explain them, though it's always possible that they have no importance for IE, or even (as you think?) that they are +- artificial.
Over the last decades archaeologists working with steppe and Central European cultures have grown very anti-Gimbutas, for the very good reason that there is no material evidence of significant incursions from the steppe. The "Kurgan waves" are something like Schiaparelli's "canali" on Mars: they can't be seen in the light of new calibrated datings and new archaeological findings, of which, thank God, there is no shortage.
I agree. I'm only pro-Gimbutas insofar that I think IE came from Ukraine. CW is associated with single graves, with battle axes, corded beakers, sometimes ox wains: no military waves, rather a new form of mobile & extensive agriculture?
Thank you very much for the interesting link http://www.csen.org/Articles_Reivews/Levine,%20et.al%20review/Levine.Review.html . They say there are no indications of domesticated horses at Dereivka. IYO that horse domestication was not important for the PIE lifestyle, or that IE languages came from somewhere else?
Marc