"Dean_Anderson" <dean_anderson@...> wrote:
<<Would it be too much to ask for you to simply state your ideas and evidence
without the inflammatory rhetoric?>>
Sorry that you consider it inflammatory. I'm just think it's being accurate.
A heck of a lot of "news" about "OIT" and the ancientness of Indian culture
are almost as overenthused as that press release on the Amazons that was on
this list. And to the extent you are repeating these things it's you who may
be fanning the conflagration. But maybe you aren't aware of that.
But when you claim that you know of discoveries that are going to revamp
fundamental linguistic theory, you might be prepared for being categorized by
some as something like Atlantean.
First you claim:
"The re-evaluation of the India Urheimat Theory by mainstream scholars is
primarily due to the recent archaeological and geological discoveries, not to
the Hindutva agenda."
Come on. There's no basis for this. These big new discoveries appear to
have little or no logical link to India as the "IE Urheimat."
Which is why I asked:
<<And what specifically do they have to say about Vedic's linguistic relation
to the other IE languages?>>
And you answer:
<<Not much at this point.>>
Well then what the heck could these big discoveries have to do with an IE
homeland? What cause is there for saying there's some need for such a
dramatic "re-evaluation"?
An IE Urheimat is a linguistic concept. Without comparative linguistics
there would be NO specific reason to think there EVEN WAS a single parent PIE
language or that there even was a single homeland. Without comparative
linguistic, it is just as easy to conclude that IE originated in ten
different places and mixed in some kind of mish-mash that produced later IE
languages.
If these big discoveries you mention don't have "much" linguistic impact,
then they really CAN'T have much impact on the Urheimat question. So why are
you making such big claims for them?
And then you go even further in adding:
<<Where we stand now is the recognition that something is wrong but no one is
really clear what has to change.>>
Recognition by whom. This is uncalled for. You keep citing Witzel, but
there is nothing I've seen by him that suggests he sees any need for either
"re-evaluation" or "that anything is wrong" with comparative IE linguistics,
at least as far as this Indian issue goes. And that's because the big
discoveries you bring up have NO impact on comparative IE linguistics. And
that really is Witzel's point as far as the IE Urheimat is concerned.
Even if Harrapan spoke Vedic, that only screws up Mallory-Gimbutas datings
and the Aryan invasion theory.
BUT it logically has NO effect on the linguistic statement that Vedic cannot
be *PIE. Or in making it more likely that India was the IE homeland. All it
would do is push back the dates in Asia, and really not far enough. It does
not change the fact that Vedic is a daughter language that is quite distant
from *PIE.
"Dean_Anderson" also wrote:
<<You may not agree with Witzel et al. but to lump them with Atlantis,
etc. is inappropriate. So based on that and other statements you
made, I concluded that you were not aware of the centrality of horses
to the debate among Indologists, at least; and thus you had not read
the Indological literature.>>
Well, however central it is to Indologists and Indological literature, it is
NOT central to India as the IE homeland. In fact, linguistically, it is
unrelated.
The fact that horses can be even be brought up in connection with the
India/PIE issue is reflective of the same thing I see in Dinesh Agrawal's
charming "Demise of the Aryan Invasion Theory" where he writes, among other
things: "...the view of the archaeologists like Prof. Dales, Prof. Allchin
etc. that the end of the Harappan civilization came not because of the so
called Aryan invasion but as a result of a series of floods, the discovery of
the lost Dwarka city beneath the sea water near Gujarat coast and its
similarity with Harappan civilization - all these new findings... indicate CO
NVINCINGLY (my caps) towards the full identity of the Harappan/Indus
civilization with post Vedic civilization."
This Atlantean theme can also be seen in The London Times, Sunday, January
20, 2002, report on an Indian government press conference entitled "An Asian
Atlantis?": "Two undersea cities discovered off India are said to be 9,500
years old. Are they remnants of a lost civilisation, or do the claims owe
more to Indiana Jones than science?..."
A separate piece regarding this discovery indicates: "What was found has
surprised archaeologists around the world and was the subject of a private
meeting two weeks ago attended by the Indian Minister in charge of
investigating the underwater site about thirty miles off the coast from
Surat. An American [who was invited to] that private meeting was Michael
Cremo, researcher in the history of archaeology for the Bhakti Vedanta
Institute in India and author of the book "Forbidden Archaeology"....
"Now, [said Cremo] another American archaeologist, Richard Meadows of Harvard
University, is proposing there should be an international effort here. On the
surface that sounds like a good idea, but it also may be an effort of
American archaeologists and others to control the project."
"I don't think they want to see a civilization being as old as it appears to
be according to these new finds at 9500 years ago. So, I would hope the
Indian archaeologists and government would be very cautious about letting
outsiders in there..."
So forgive my mistake if you thought I meant Micheal Witzel was Atlantean. I
only meant that the public relations regarding all these wonderful new
discoveries is getting Atlantean. Which it plainly is.
Steve Long