Re: [tied] GLEN AND ANATOLIA IN 7500BC

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 20399
Date: 2003-03-27

John:
>Glen I was refering to an actual movement of population, not just a
>movement of trade goods and cultural influence such as you suggest.

I "suggest"? Not really. We know as _fact_ that there was a neolithic
cultural movement from Turkey into Europe and Western Asia because this
is demonstrable by a cornucopia of unearthed evidence. I rely on a
fact.

In contrast, you assert of a _population_ movement, something that cannot
be attested directly by archaeology and which therefore can only be
interpretive and theoretical on a good day. You do not rely totally on
facts... [Warning bells start ringing!]

Since you are not stating a fact here but an opinion, your view must be
subject to Occam's Razor. It must be logically economical. I continue to
be unconvinced that that is the case.

To show a population movement, we certainly cannot rely on genetics alone.
It must be the most economical conclusion one can make accounting for the
entire cross-disciplinary evidence.

"The Seven Daughters of Eve" hypothesis is insufficient on its own because,
as I've said, it is possible for genetics alone to spread throughout an
area particularly when the contributing group dominates while the "old"
population is at some disadvantage. No population movement is necessary.
Even when the genetics are used in concert with the archaeology, the
evidence does not rule out the following interpretation.

I can state briefly the specifics of that interpretation again. It was a
wave of a **population increase**, not of people themselves, that spread a
significant amount of Middle-Eastern genes into Europe since hunter-gatherer
populations remained sparse as always while a neolithic farmer had five
babies under each arm. For every mesolithic European, there were five
neolithic Europeans, to put it another way.

Knowing that this scenario is not only likely but probable for the
neolithic, prove that a population movement *actually* took place.

So far, I do not see how a neolithic population movement into Europe
is the most economical conclusion one can make accounting for the entire
cross-disciplinary evidence. It is merely assumptive.


>Glen I dont place Anatolia as the origin of IE. I would suggest
>Western Anatolia is a possible place of origin for the putative
>Mesolithic Indo-Tyrrhenian though, or more probably for a Proto-I-T.

Effectively the same thing. Again, there's no evidence of ITyr hydronyms
either and we still need to explain why the group appears to relate to
all the north-eastern languages of Asia, rather than those in Anatolia.
It's still uneconomical to the more obvious conclusion that IE is more
directly derived from Central Asia. The static, hypothesized positions of
Nostratic and IE are immaterial to _how_ IE might have gotten there.


Concerning IE's route to the Ukraine from a presumable Nostratic urheimat:
>There are three possible routes - the Koba culture [...] the Jaitun culture
>[...] Beldibi-Belbasi Culture [...] Take your pick.

You must first establish why I would need to "take my pick" of these
archaeological constructs to demonstrate a linguistic movement. (???)

Movements of prehistorical bands are unregisterable. A population of a
few bands would have surely migrated back and forth seasonally, spreading
a language without really moving anywhere on the grand scale of things.
With no significant material or genetic displacement overall, a misguided
person would believe that there was no population movement. The same dolt
would then presume falsely that there was therefore no linguistic movement.

I really fail to understand your reasoning. It's hopelessly flawed.


- gLeN


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