Re: [tied] Re: From words to dates: Water into wine, mathemagic or

From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 47408
Date: 2007-02-11

 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 3:44 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: From words to dates: Water into wine, mathemagic or phylogenetic inference?

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@ ...> wrote:
>
> > > The horsemen in Europe are there in the
> > > archaeological record, general death and destruction.
> >
> >
> > Death and destruction? Please do not tell me we are back to the
> > barberic nomadic Aryan hordes destroying the dark skinned
> > inhabitants of the "Indus" valley civilzation aka the Aryan Invasion
> > Theory. Your Sankritist colleagues over on Indo-Eurasian have done
> > every thing possible to deny that they support such violent
> > conquest. Now they are talking about Indo-Aryan peaceful migrations
> > or trickle ins.
>
> I repeat:
> The horsemen in Europe are there in the archaeological record, general
> death and destruction.
>
> Now try to read it properly this time.
>
>
> Torsten

So these violent horsemen of Europe brought the "Indo-Aryan" languages
riding chariots to South Asia. " Aka the blond aryan superman
butchering the dark skinned dasas of the Rig Veda.

M. Kelkar

***

First, Mr. Kelkar, let me say that I personally appreciate the highly interesting information which you discover on the Internet, and kindly furnish to this list. Whether one shares your views or not, new information is always helpful.

But I would like to also say that that framing the question in outmoded and discredited ideological trappings ("blond supermen" and "dark-skinned dasas") serves no useful purpose; and, in fact, prejudices the response you will receive from readers. If you only want to 'vent', then fine! If you actually wish to convince of your views, then your arguments must be less bitterly framed.

I sincerely doubt that anyone whose opinion can be considered to be informed believes, today, that the Nordic ethnic type predominated among the earliest IE speakers.

 Though every ethnic group has moved around a lot, Nordics are clearly at home in Northern Europe; and IE has been most severely modified by the predominantly Nordic populations of Northern Europe, suggesting strongly to me that their languages are IE overlaying some other language(s) which was the earlier language of the Nordics.

 What was the ethnic type of the earliest IE speakers? I doubt there is a simple answer. I favor the view that PIE developed from a contact between speakers of various Caucasian languages and Afro-Asiatic speakers, who were ethnically separate. The resulting ethnically mixed group spread out from Anatolia in all directions, probably in connection with the spread of agriculture. The ubiquity of IE almost requires a population-expanding mechanism like agriculture.

So, I hope these remarks are helpful.

 

Patrick

***