Well perhaps "meets resistance" is a polite way of
saying something else. The article in SCIENCE (cf.
www.sciencemag.org: it only costs $5 to read it unless
you're already subscribed) referred to earlier
("Spreading the Word, Scattering the Seeds") is a
report by Ben Shouse of a conference held at the
University of Cambridge, and organized by Lord renfrew
and gis Australian friend Peter Bellwood. The
Conference ("Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal
Hypothesis"= 24-27 August) indicated that "many
scholars were suspicious of the grand aspirations of
the farming-language hypothesis" (p. 988 col.1). A
good deal of proof from India and Southeast Asia was
offered which weakened "the case for cereal crops as
engines of linguistic dispersal" (p. 988 col. 3). And
after summarizing this, Shouse continued thus:
"Europe, the continent for which Renfrew conceived the
hypothesis, is under siege as well. Complicating the
picture, European languages and crops come from
different homelands, at least according to most
linguists. And conference participants raised other
reasons for skepticism... [e.g. the documented reality
of "language shifts" .."millenia after farming
arrived." And then: "Furthermore, hunter-gatherers may
often have held their ground against the advance of
farmers, as evidenced by the strong contribution of
preagricultural genetic markers to modern European
genotypes." (p. 989, cols. 2-3).==Shouse balances his
report by concluding that Renfrew "thinks his
hypothesis will survive these growing pains." GK: The
only question is: how much of the original hypothesis
will have to be recast, and at what point will
"quantity turn into quality" (:=))?
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