Re: OIT and Atlantis

"Dean_Anderson" <dean_anderson@...> wrote:
<<You're absolutely correct that it does not change it in a purely
linguistic way but since the theories of the spread of the IE
languages are related to archaeology...>>

Exactly. So, comparative linguistics is not really the problem, is it? The
problem is attaching a language of some specific kind to archaeological finds
thousands of years before any language is evident in them. And becuse you
are looking for a language where there is no direct evidence of language,
there is very low statistical certainty to any of this. Far lower than
usually pretended.

So what this is all about AT BEST is which theory looks least unlikely,
because no theory has any high statistical likelihood. I find the idea of an
IE "assemblage" that includes bronze, chariots and red ochre (e.g., Mallory)
convoluted and forced, based on anything I know about the material remains.
But I could be wrong.

It's a quite simple observation, on the other hand, that the spread of
neolithic technology in certain areas matches up with historical IE pretty
good. There are "linguists" like Mallory and Witzel who work overtime to
deny it.

But most of their "proofs" are really not linguistic at all. Which guys like
Shaffer haven't caught on to, ...yet. The way you do learn that important
fact is not to deny the importance of linguistics, but to understand what is
provable by linguistics and what is not. (That's where "scientific
methodology" comes in.)

*PIE (note the asterisk, it's important), on the other hand, is not an
archaeological concept. It is a comparative linguistic concept, based on
internal logic, like geometry. It's unaffected by archaeology, because
there's NOTHING in it archaeology can contradict. Absolute dates are
irrelevant. Chariots are irrelevant. That's what confounds those who try to
take on linguistics without trying to understand it. And understand what is
linguistically provable and what is not. And why they bang their heads
against the wall, complaining about linguistics.

If your "PIE" concept is archaeological, you really have no quarrel with
comparative linguistics (no matter what Mallory says.) But you may have a
problem in archaeologically defining what "PIE" looked like, how to find it
without written records and how you know it even existed. Remember that
there are people who would suggest it never existed and I think Shaffer is
one of them.

"Dean_Anderson" <dean_anderson@...> also wrote:
<<I think that the archaeologists Shaffer, Kenoyer, Possehl, Jarrige,
et al. would disagree with you.>>

Look there are archaeologists out there looking for Noah's Ark. I can't make
everybody happy.

"Dean_Anderson" <dean_anderson@...> also wrote:
<<In what way is it irrelevant? Perhaps the problem here is that we
have different definitions of relevance.>>

Right. My other training is in American law. So my definition of relevant
scientific evidence is evidence that has statistically valid probative value.
My definition of materiality is that the evidence is pertinent to the issue.
On that basis, I am forced to conclude that the "discoveries" you mention
are neither relevant nor material to the location of the linguistic *PIE,
UNLESS you can SPECIFICALLY explain how each has verifiable probative value
to that issue and, more importantly, how each one is even pertinent to the
location of *PIE.

S.Long