Re: [tied] Re: Genetics and Renfrew's Model

On Sat, 03 Nov 2001 03:33:20 -0000, markodegard@... wrote:

>Farmers are into inheritance of land. Hunter-gatherers (lox-eaters)
>are into social occasions to gather the bounty of Nature.
>Archaeologists are saying that Northern European farmers seem to be
>little (but more populous) enclaves surrounded by 'more primative'
>hunter-gatherers. These little enclaves became isolated linguistic
>islands, while the much more wide-ranging hunter-gatherers spoke a
>lingua franca.

I'm sorry, that's just not how it works. The Mesolithic populations
of non-Mediterranean Europe must have spoken hundreds of different
languages. There probably was widespread bilingualism, and localized
lingua francas, but it's absolutely out of the question that there was
a single "mesolithic lingua franca" from, say, the Netherlands to
Poland.