Glen wrote
> Now, let's see...
>
> We could say that IE was _always_ where it was: Huh?? Come on,
> time for a reality pill. Next!
Glen , come on, you will have to do better than that. Are you saying
IE was where it wasn't? Or are you saying it wasn't where it was?
And when and for how long was it there? And when wasn't it there?
And if it wasn't there how did it come to be there?
> We could say that the IE are from Europe: Completely unfounded
> linguistically. Laughable.
Hold your horses. There are the links with Uralic and Altaic,
agreed.
But your assumption is that these languages did not move and IE did.
Well, could it not have been that IE did not move (much after 8-9,000
BCE), whereas Uralic and Altaic did, a great deal, from the West to
the East. This move shows up in the archaelogical record and is well
documented. Come on Glen, be logical - there is your theory of
Uralic
and Altaic stationary with IE moving west (with no archaeological
evidence to back it up); or evidence of Uralic and Altaic being the
"big movers" - and IE being almost stationary by comparison, for
which there is good evidence.
> We could say that IE came from Anatolia: definitely unfounded
> linguistically. Another laugh.
Glen, given that in the mesolithic period, mesolithic cultures are
found first in the Middle East, then in Anatolia, then in Greece
(Franchthi cave), then the Balkans and Danubian gorges, then on the
steppes, and finally into the trans-Uralic forests, I ask you Glen
what does this show? Each move was associated with warming climates,
and the spread of ecosystems northwards. This isn't Renfrew we are
talking about here. This is the spread of your beloved Nostratic and
its daughter languages surely! IE may not have started in Anatolia,
Indo-Tyrrhenian may not. But ultimately Anatolia is the land bridge
par excellence between the Pontic Steppes and the Middle East. Even
more so during this period because the Dardanelles did not exist.
Come on Glen, get real, rather than creating fanciful theories based
upon linguistic constructions that only show linkages between
languages - not the directions people moved! For that we need other
(genetic, archaeological) evidence.
Glen, lets look at the genetics. Not a single one of C-S's Principal
Component maps, for either Europe or Asia show a population group
moving from the Central Steppes to the West (even despite the later
Turkic and Mongol invasions). Instead the principal component for
both Europe and Asia is out of the middle east (reflecting the out of
Africa movements). The second in both is in Arctic areas, one
Samoyed, the other Saami. The Third for Europe is Basque. For Asia
it is the separation between North and South Mongols. The Fourth for
Europe is the Pontic Steppe, for Asia it is Jomon Japanese (and
Gilyak!) So there seems to be no extensive movement of human genes
in
this direction.
Glen lets look at the archaeology. You have by now retreated out of
mesolithic cultures back into Upper Paleolithic. But even here there
is no luck. Baikal Malatya is derivitive from European Gravetian and
Aurignacian. Again - a movement in the same west to east direction.
Glen, the same shows up linguistically. Na Dene moved West to East.
Sino Tibetan did too. NW Caucasian stayed put. Similarly
linguistically - Altaic moved most to the east. Uralic moved east
too, Yukaghir most of all, those with a heavy PIE input the least of
all. PIE stayed on the Pontic Steppe.
Glen, I don't dispute you linguistically on the PIE (Semitish is
another matter but we'll leave go of that for the while). The links
you see with Tyrrhenian and Uralic and Altaic make sense to me. But
why must you continue with your attempts to levitate the Mountain and
bring it to Mohammed (i.e. move from East to West). Cannot you see
it
would be easier for Mohammed to move to the mountain (moving from
West
to East) - the way archaeology suggests?
> We could say that IE came from the steppes: supported by some
> deeply engrained similarities in pronominal systems, grammar
> and, if I have my way, numerical systems, between IE and
> Uralic/Altaic. These similarities have been continuously
> outlined by Nostraticists for a century and cannot be ruled
> out as coincidences or even "convergeance", given the volume
> of evidence that is so easy to deny if you're lazy.
We could say that Uralic and Altaic came from off the Pontic Steppes.
Glen, your own genealogic linguistic trees suggest so. Tyrrhenian is
closest to the Nostratic root on your own charts!
So when you ask
> Hmm, which one to choose? So difficult to decide, really. And what
> with mythology making IE's substrate clear and pointing the
> language's origins to the steppes. And the eery similarities
between
> IE and NWC phonology/vocabulary that almost seem to hint at an
early
> interaction before 7000 BCE. And the fact that NWC itself seems to
> closely correlate with _more_ eastern language groups like
> SinoTibetan and NaDene as if NWC and IndoTyrrhenian moved in the
> same direction (west to the North Pontic-Caspian).
Or Glen, could it be that NWC and IndoTyrrhenian hardly moved from
where they are found in historic times (as supported by the
anthropology), and Sino Tibetan and Na Dene moved enormously (again
supported by the anthropology and archaeology). Is it really so hard
that you have to keep denying reality of culture and genetics.
> Regardless of what archaeology you can
> throw at me, it's absurd to think that Central Asia in no way
> affected the west from 9000 BCE onward.
Glen, sorry mate it was rather from 9,000 BCE on that the West was
affecting Central Asia. Central Asia was cold, dry, underpopulated,
difficult to adjust to. The west was warming, forests were
spreading,
populations were growing, pushing out towards the frontiers.
Cultural
sophistication was developing. Now which way do people normally move
in such circumstances?
You say
> I am very willing to accept a Proto-Steppe language that lied ahead
> of the mesolithic advance. Afterall, barnyard words like "sheep"
> (*hu) or "cow" (*k:u) are somewhat iffy to reconstruct with
> certainty in ProtoSteppe. I will certainly never accept a
> nonsensical _Anatolia_-derived IndoTyrrhenian.
OK Lets set Tyrrhenian aside for the moment. But first lets get some
basic language agreed upon
paleolithic = specialist big game blade tradition hunter-gatherers
mesolithic = wide spectrum microlithic tradition hunter-gatherers
neolithic = ground tool tradition farmers and herders.
Now why would farm yard animals be associated with a hunter gatherer
mesolithic culture?
> I wish that, in your linguistical ignorance, you could respect the
> common consensus among linguists that IE couldn't possibly come
from
> Anatolia in any way, shape or form. Your archaeological points
> against this view mean absolutely _squat_ with a capital "S" in
> linguistics. Read a dictionary.
Glen, I have never, repeat (read my words), never suggested IE came
from Anatolia. PIE did not exist 9,000 BCE. That was when
mesolithic
cultures came out of Anatolia and into the Balkans, moving north into
the steppes.
> I also wish you could take heart that archaeology and language are
> different creatures and when speaking of linguistics, you better
> damn well know what you're talking about on a linguistic standpoint
> if you wish to be taken seriously.
I wish you would learn too that languages, genes, and cultures move
because people move. The evidence of movement of one can and does
help us understand the movement of the others. Linguistic knowledge,
as your theories repeatedly demonstrate - in the face of utter
archaeological and genetic ignorance as you so eloquently put it may
be worth "absolutely _squat_ with a capital 'S' ". Languages move,
as
Jarred Diamond so well shows in his "Guns, Germs and Steel: A History
of the last 13,000 years", because one group has a technological and
demographic superiority over another for a period of time. And
technology and demographics shows up in the archaeology. Very rarely
in the linguistics.
Please less vituperation and more evidence next post.
Regards
John