From: ehlsmith
Message: 20128
Date: 2003-03-21
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, x99lynx@... wrote:
...[cut]...
> BUT in any case, I don't think that anyone believes this diversity
in
> language was caused by subsistence gardening, so I would think it
would have
> existed, at least to some degree, before subsistence gardening.
Well, actually, IIRC somebody does seem to believe just that.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the reference, but there was an
article published within the last year or two purporting to find a
strong correlation between tropical horticultural societies and
maximum language diversity. The author(s?)put forth the hypothesis
that this was a casual relationship, based on the following
mechanism- a horticultural society in a tropical environment would
have less need for maintaining contact with neighboring groups, since
there would tend to be much less fluctuation in their food sources
than those of foragers, pastoralists or non-tropical farmers. Thus
less need to maintain close ties with their neighbors as a form of
insurance for occasions when their own local supplies run short.
Sorry I can remember where the article appeared. But since the topic
was raised I thought I should at least mention what I could recall.
And I realize of course this doesn't really make a significant
difference to the arguments about the linguistic situation in
Anatolia.
>
> A standard anthropological explanation for the enormous number of
languages
> in New Guinea is the absence of markets and market networks that
would have
> canceled the isolation of these groups. We really do not have
evidence of
> markets in the pure mesolithic (versus say the hybrid economies of
the
> American Plains Indians) so the condition may have mirrored in the
situation
> in Anatolia in 7500BC.
As indicated, it is not just lack of markets, but also lack of the
need to maintain some sort of ties over a sufficiently large enough
area to conteract local fluctuations in food supply.
Ned Smith