--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@...>
wrote:
Oops, I forgot to address the final point Alexandru takes up in his
posting:
I had written:
> > "Given the Balkan potential for small
> > populations of mountain pastoralists"
Alexandru wrote:
> From where you deduced a 'small population'? -> This population
is
> spreaded today from Dalmatian Coast and Nothern Greece, and from
> Pannonia and Slovakia in the North until Nister and Bug in the
> East ...Could you imagine that a small population could spread in
> such a huge area from some 'small pastoral isolated groups' in less
> than 500 years from about 900 to 1400?
There are two sides to this:
(1)
It is always important to realize that small populations can increase
spectacularly within a short time if conditions are such as to favour
growth. The underlying cause is exponential growth. As an
illustration let us start from an initial group consisting of a mere
thousand people. Given a population growth of 2% a year, population
doubles every 35 years and you cross the half million mark after 315
years and the four million mark after 420 years.
Note that a growth of 2% a year is by no means extreme: in
Yugoslavia, both Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovina had higher growth
rates during the first decades after the war, not to speak of Kosovo,
which was consistently at or over 2.5% from 1945 to 1981 and nearly
reached 3% in the mid sixties. Demographically, almost anything can
happen.
Note also that a beginning with a thousand people is almost
ridiculously modest. It is probably more realistic to start
caulculations again with an initial group of 10.000 people.
So in order to cover large territories you don't need sprawling
millions: those millions will automatically come to pass if you
spread and if conditions are right.
(2)
But languages spread not only by people spreading and multiplying,
but also by language shift, which is a much more common phenomenon
than people tend to assume. Chances are that the large numbers of
speakers of Daco-Rumanian consist for a significant part of
descendants of speakers of Bulgarian who changed over to Rumanian.
Nothing would be more natural.
Willem