Hi Steve
Thanks for your thoughtful and considered post
Thanks for the reference
> For a contrary view, see Thomas N. Headland, "Hunter-Gatherer
> Revisionism and New Guinea Foragers: A Discussant's Comment" 90th
> Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago
> 1991. It is argued that this "subsistence gardening" is in fact
> well below subsistence and merely supplemental and that these
> peoples's economy and lifestyle are firmly based in foraging. (not
> hunting) Slash-and-burn and other self-replenishing forms of
> farming/gardening are considered in some anthropological circles as
> transitional between food gathering and food production.
Hmm.... interesting. Do you know what ethnic groups are being
refered to here? Certainly, as Goulson showed amongst the intensive
subsistence farming of the Chimbu (and of the Highlands generally -
from the Tari Valley eastwards to Goroka and even to Ukarumpa, this
was not true. Evidence shows that these epople have been practicing
agriculture (eg at Kuk) since the end of the last Ice Age. The
spread of the pitpit grasslands of the highlands is generally
associated with subsistence agriculture.
Even with the sago harvesting, research amongst the Foii, Fasu and
Biami shows that these people had complex structures for estimating
family needs 40 years in advance (how long it took a sago tree to
mature). What was previously thought to be open foraging was in fact
cultivation with a very long cycle between sowing and harvest.
> 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.
Given that subsistence gardening has a very long time horison in this
part of the world (12,000 BP at Kuk), 25,000 BP in the Solomons, it
is very hard to know when the linguistic diversity began. With such
a long time span it certainly has been maintained (if not extended)
by subsistence agrarian cultures.
> 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.
In fact, as analysis of pre-contact stone axe trading from Pangia,
and the Tsigaso oil and bird of paradise feather trading routes
shows, this is not true. Steel axes and spades were appearing in the
Highlands, up indigenous trade routes from the North Coast, from the
1890s onwards.
> 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.
In fact this lack of mesolithic trading is not true. The
Epipaleolithic obsidian trade, from Melos in the Aegean, across to
Ararat in the East, was a well developed "mesolithic" network. In
act, from the studies I have made, it would appear that the Hattic
language (in the centre of this range) and the Hurrian language (to
the east) were both non-Nostratic languages which had previously
retreated into mountain refugaria - their speakers had
technologically specialised in obsidian production and trading -
giving these languages a new lease of life.
> And there may have been, if not a thousand, then hundreds of
> languages there at that time.
Hmmmm.... I feel if there were, the spread of grain farming
drastically reduced the situation to a handful.
> What, you also know what "the diversity selecting and linguistic
> evolution" was in Anatolia in 7500BC?
Do you have any evidence of this Steve?
> We don't even know what language was being spoken in Crete in
> 2500BC.
Presumably a precursor of the language of Linear A. Archaeologically
there appears to have been no new (linguistic?) arrivals after the
arrival of neolithic until the Greek invasion of 1450 BCE.
Steve wrote
> I'm told that languages are becoming extinct at a much higher rate
> than new ones are being born. Extrapolate from that there once was
> a great many more languages around.
Yes there is currently about 5,800 extant languages according to the
linguistic encyclopedia I have. It has been suggested that there may
have been in the order of 10,000 at the end of the last Ice Age. But
Mellaart has shown that this situation was greatly simplified by the
spread of Agriculture (a common non-IE substrate has been detected
from the Caucasas to Southern Italy).
Regards
John