After "10,500 years ago" there is a footnote:
"[15] The physical anthropologist Krantz (1988) provides reasoned
argumentation for such a date. A similar date is suggested by the
archaeologist Renfrew (1987) in a work which has received wide
publicity; the author has an agile mind but lacks an appropriate
training in the methodology of historical linguistics for his work to
constitute a linguistically significant contribution to the debate."
Why I agree with Dixon's negative assessment of Renfrew's linguistic
arguments, I am surprised he finds "reasoned argumentation" in Grover
S. Krantz's _Geographical Development of European Languages_. Krantz
presents a dispersal scenario which is similar to Renfrew's (and also
begins in the Fertile Crescent) but relies on an extremely mechanical
version of the "wave of advance" model -- a definitely artificial
construct, applied by Krantz with dogmatic consistency. He also seems
to lack any historical linguistic training. Anyway, it's clear that
10500 years as the upper estimate of the age of PIE is arrived at as
the deepest age that can be reconciled with the linguistic evidence
for a Neolithic society and culture in PIE times. Most linguists
regard this age as definitely exaggerated, not because
glottochronology gives us a reliable "genetic clock" (it doesn't),
but because much shallower chronologies would perfectly suffice. It
is hard to imagine that for the first two or three millennia of their
existence IE communities expanded over a vast area but did not do
much by way of language change, only to start differentiating at a
reasonable rate in subhistorical times. Apart from that, there are
specific arguments against an Anatolian homeland, and any other
homeland requires a later dating.
Mallory's dating (4500-2500 BC) depends on linking PIE with
the "Kurgan cultures" of the steppe. This in turn leaves too little
time for the divergence of the major IE branches, in my opinion.
People on Cybalist know that I favour a Danubian homeland and a link
with the Linear Pottery culture, with ca. 5600 BC as the "root date"
(the separation of Anatolian) and something close to 4500 BC for the
latest common ancestor of the non-Anatolian branches. 2600-2000 BC
would be the formative period of Proto-Indo-Iranian, with common
Iranian and Indo-Aryan as distinct languages after the latter date.
In brief, here is my (approximate) timeline for the history of Indic
(BP = before present):
7600 BP --- PIE
6500 BP --- non-Anatolian IE
5000 BP --- Proto-Satem
4600 BP --- Proto-Indo-Iranian
4000 BC --- Proto-Indo-Aryan
3700-3200 BP --- Rigvedic Indo-Aryan
3200-2500 BP --- late Old Indo-Aryan
2500-900 BP --- Middle Indo-Aryan
Piotr
--- In cybalist@..., "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...> wrote:
> From Dixon, R.M.W., 1997, The rise and fall of languages,
Cambridge,
> Cambridge University Press, pp. 47-49:
>
> "What has always filled me with wonder is the assurance with which
> many historical linguists assign a date to their reconstructed
proto-
> language...We are told that proto-Indo-European was spoken about
> 6,000 years ago. What is known with a fair degree of certainty is
the
> time between proto-Indo-Aryan and the modern Indo-Aryan languages --
> something in the order of 1,000 years. But how can anyone tell that
> the development from proto-Indo-European to proto-Indo-Aryan took
> another 3,000 years?...Languages are known to change at different
> rates. There is no way of knowing how long it took to go from the
> presumed homogeneity of proto-Indo-European to the linguistic
> diversity of proto-Indo-Iranian, proto-Celtic, proto-Germanic, etc.
> The changes could have been spoken rapid to slow. We simply don't
> know...Why couldn't proto-Indo-European have been spoken about
10,500
> year ago?...The received opinion of a date of around 6000 BP for
> proto-Indo-European...is an ingrained one. I have found this a
> difficult matter to get specialists to even discuss. Yet it does
seem
> to be a house of cards."
>
> Would members like to discuss this and to guess on the time between
> PIE and R.gveda or Sanskrit?