Re: Can relationships between languages be determined after 80,000 y

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 52145
Date: 2008-02-01

Afro-Asiatic goes back beyond 7,000 years --I've seen
claims that take it back to 11,000 years ago
I read something recently about Australian languages
that makes claims about an Australian language family,
which obstensibly goes back 50,000 years or so. An
obvious problem is that Pama Nyungan seems to have
spread across the landscape around 4-6,000 years ago.
If Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin had not been
documented, IE would have been figured out, although
it might look different --perhaps even closer to
reality, given that the IE pioneers tended to give us
a Greek-Sanskrit creole and call it IE


--- James Dow Allen <jamesdowallen@...> wrote:

>
> Can relationships be determined after even 7000
> years?
> If Sanskrit and all ancient writings hadn't existed,
> would the Indo-European family have been readily
> discoverable?
>
> James Allen
>
>
>
>
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