Re: [tied] Re: Mallory's New PIE Homeland?

Do the two concepts, the culture and the language, have to be congruent?
Could there not be many IE-like peoples among which only a few were
influential in the development of the IE languages? That would yield a
huge archaeological homeland with a small linguistically relevant spot
somewhere inside it. It would entail a great mess of archaeological
remains, but still nice and tidy sound laws because they apply only to
the languages that were lucky enough to be continued.

On the other hand, I would only prefer such a solution if nothing else
works. If the traces of the cultural and the linguistic expansion do not
support each other, both are seriously weakened. It is nicer if things are
what they look like.

Jens

On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Geraldine Reinhardt wrote:

> [...]
> I did find this blurb by Mallory on the web and dated to 2000:
>
> <<Readers may feel that the author has betrayed them down an endless
> series of cul de sacs. Nevertheless, this is the current state of
> research into Indo-European origins and this seemed the best way to
> convey why the issue is by no means resolved. Ultimately, we have a
> remarkably unsatisfactory set of choices. We can accept a Pontic-Caspian
> homeland despite the fact it still appears to be archaeologically
> undemonstrated, even under the most liberal canons of proof, in
> explaining the Indo-Europeans of Northern and Central Europe.
> Alternatively, we might wish to opt for a broader homeland between the
> Rhine and Volga during the Palaeolithic or Mesolithic which resolves the
> archaeological issues by fiat but appears to be linguistically
> implausible. Perhaps our only recourse is to return to our strict
> definition of the Proto Indo-European homeland as where the Indo-
> European languages were spoken uin the period 4500-2500 BC. By the end
> of this period it is reasonable to assume that they were spoken from the
> Rhine to beyond the Ural. How they achieved that position is still a
> problem. (p. 257)>>
>
>
>
> In final analysis, guess Mallory is allowing everyone to select his/her
> favorite theory. I am impressed that he's dating PIE to the period
> 4500-2500 BC. I wonder why he limits western I-E to the Rhine ;-)