Re: Why did Proto-Germanic break up?

> And the development of "efficient socio-political structures" in general
> leads to less diversity, not more (cf. the connection between Celtic
> factionalism and the diversity of Celtic languages), or the multitude
> of languages on the Balkan and the Balkanic politics (no value
> judgement intended) of that area.
>

Are the Balkans more linguistically diverse than Western Europe? I
don't think so. Certainly there is less dialect diversity in Stokavski
Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian or in Daco-Romanian than in say,
France/Occitania, Germany, or Italy. What is (or was) distinctive about
the Balkans was the multilingual character of many areas, not number
of languages.

Jim Rader