Re: Europeans descend from Basques...

From: richardwordingham
Message: 13794
Date: 2002-06-09

--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:
> "semiconsrback" <adan-pol@...> wrote:
> <<Found the next article on a german website. It claims basically
that more than 3/4 of all europeans descend from basques and that
their presence in europe goes back to at least 20,000 years. these
new genetic studies do not confirm any migration into europe around
7,000 years ago. I can provide a complete translation of the article
later or somebody else could do that.>>
<Rearrange>
> The original web site in German is at
http://science.orf.at/science/news/50465

The scientific paper for the genetics is at
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~macaulay/papers/richards_2000.pdf

The analysis is performed by assuming expansions or immigrations at
particular dates. It uses 9000YBP as the date of the start of the
Neolithic expansion. One of the paper's conclusion is that about 20%
of Europe's maternal lines arrived at the start of the Neolithic.
There are regional analyses which look consistent with the Mesolithic
population being rapidly assimilated by incoming farmers.

Later immigrants are mopped up by an arbitrary(?) immigration date at
3000YBP. The conclusions of the paper do not oppose the notion of
something happening at 7000YBP.
<Snip>
> This news article seems to find linguistic conclusions, too, citing
the expected toponym evidence of a Basque substrate from Theo
Vennemann. Luckily, there's enough place names in Europe to supply
plenty of substrates.

> The mDNA evidence would create a problem in dating -- 20,000BP is
a short date. If I understand the evidence correctly, the estimate
range probably averages to 35,000BP -- once again raising the
question what this has to do with modern languages.

It simply says that Europe wasn't repopulated at the Neolithic.
There is plenty of room for substrates even on a modification of
Renfrew's model! (It might also suggest that there were widely
spread languages before IE spread.)

> I should also note a statement "Das Baskischen (Euskera bzw.
Euskara genannt) gehört nicht zur indogermanischen Sprachfamilie und
gilt als die älteste lebende Sprache Europas."
<Snip>
But that is simply based on the assumptions that Uralic and IE are
not native to Europe!
Regards,
Richard.