Re: NEW GUINEA AND ANATOLIA IN 7500BC

NED SMITH WROTE:
<<...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.

...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.>>

I think this is also an old point-of-view. 19th Century anthropologists
often portrayed "primitive" cultures as being either complacent (i.e., in
paradise) or unmotivated (i.e., lazy) and therefore prone to isolation. But
what seems to be a key factor is that these cultures do not build up any kind
of surplus in food, materials or secondary products. They do in fact have
contact (e.g., there is ritualized war among Amazonian tribes) but do not
trade because there is no surplus to trade, no food preservation and nothing
above subsistence manufacturing.

Markets and the exchange of surplus food and materials for other surpluses or
for mesolithic resources (e.g., furs and hides, lumber, plant materials, or
even surface metals, etc.) necessitate communication. Sometimes this results
in pidgins, creoles or contact languages. Sometimes it creates bilingualism
or even wholescale conversion to another language.

The basic premise of the article you mention in any case is that without
economic motivation, cultures will isolate. A slightly different point of
view says that humans have a tendency to be basically consumers and will look
to spend their surplus on something new-fangled that they can't find at home
-- things like cows, goats, pigs, horses, grains, wheeled vehicles, etc.
Only a lack of surplus will get in the way.

Steve Long