Re: Who can explain the comparisons?

We are mostly talking about neolithic cultures and associated linguistic families. The corollary structure of the Indian antiquity is a Neolithic expression. The history of communication system is premeditated as a Neolithic lineage. The linguists have explored India as a linguistic area and in extended sense even India as part of south Asian linguistic area on the basis of language typology and projected long time contact as its rationale. The prevailing awareness on Indian language phylogeny confirms the accordance of almost 100% of ethno linguistic groups under four language families (Austro Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo Aryan and Tibeto Burman). The Andamanese language family is the outlier. Austro-Asiatic speakers are dispersed mostly in the central and eastern parts of the country while the Tibeto-Burman speakers are concentrated in the northeastern part of the subcontinent. Dravidians are mainly confined to South India with some exceptions like Kurukh and Gondi speaking people, living in central and eastern parts of India. Indo-European is the most widely spread family, which covers North, Central and Western parts of India. The origin and dispersal of these language families remains unresolved. Reconstruction of hypothetical linguistic ancestors further landed in Europe and other parts of Asia. Linguistics thus helped India to accept as a land of immigrants and their localization. Equating language with people accentuated the dichotomy of immigrants and locals which they couldnt affix time and space unconvincingly. The pre history of India thus stranded in the dynamics of immigrant time and associated cultural corroborations. A make belief circularity of ideas permits the Neolithic communication systems as the antique expression of India. The protagonist of prehistory quite often became language which tranquillized pre history as history on language lineages of India despite the fact that except the outlier Andamanese language family, all major language families are Neolithic lineages. The profound episode as far as India is concerned; it was not initially peopled during Neolithic times. Modern human remains dating back to the late Pleistocene (5500025000 years before present, ybp) and by the middle Paleolithic period (50,00020,000 ybp), were found in India, subscribing Allchins view that the descendants of early and middle Stone Age formed a considerable element in the late Stone Age population of the subcontinent. The genomic explorations have evidently projected India as a corridor for dispersal of modern humans in concordance with southern route hypothesis. Locating high percentage of the Pleistocene specific Indian mtDNA lineages and Y lineages among the Indian populace cutting across trans variable (language, environment, culture, caste, economy etc) suggest a founder genomic substratum underlying in the diverse population groups in India. This scene encapsulates the view that genetic continuity does not imply linguistic continuity. So far, the nation has been encountering the question of original inhabitants with out substantial deep rooted evidences. The stratified understandings on peoples of India in terms of language have framed various questions. Who are the original inhabitants of India among the language isolates, Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian speaking populations? Many of the non genomic studies and some genomic studies argued that Austro Asiatic groups were the earliest settlers. The comprehensive Y chromosome study support the view that Dravidians are the original settlersby not only refuting the settler status of Austrics and even any possibility that Austro-Asiatic speakers could have dispersed from India is also eliminated.

The genomic studies encompass the view that Indian populace has unison in maternal pattern and in general genetic phylogeny is not in congruence with language phylogeny or caste affiliations. Prof.Witzel's observation on proto munda features before Drvaidian features in vedic literature is the most significant evidence came to counter the claim of non Indic words as Dravidian. Here the point I would like to make is the existing linguistic lineages of India defintly may be having its links to out side India too. But it doesn't attest the linguistic prehistory of India can be traced by estimating the linguistic affinities alone.

There were movements of people towards India and from India. The ethno archeology based on the dominant linguistic substratum may not give much evidences to show the linguistic prehistory of the people concerned. We should trace more about the pre neolithic linguistic lineages in coming days to know the linguistic prehistory of India.

sreenathan

"fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "sree nathan" <sreenathan.ansi@ yahoo.com>
To: <cybalist@... s.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:04 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Who can explain the comparisons?

> Dear all
> It seems that fixing authonous status to a particular linguistic group in
> India at this juncture may not yield much as the present genetic enquiries
> clearly observed paliolithic susbtratum cutting across all linguistic
> groups. some studies have shown Austro asiatic is the oldest as per their
> maternal ancestry is concerned and interestingly other studies on Y
> chromosomes have shown Dravidians are ancient. This suggests that there
> is no definite conclusion on peopling has evolved yet even through genetic
> studies.However, Andamanese language gives some insight in accordance with
> their genetic ancestry that they were the oldest. Until the picture of pre
> Dravidian substratum is clear as far as India is concerned fixing
> autothonous to any immigrant neolithic linguistic lineage may be
> problematic.
>
> sreenathan
>
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At least we know which language is not autochthonous.

Indic comes from the Pontic area.
It's hugely surprising that Austro-Asiatic could be oldest in India
as this group of languages comes from Taiwan or an area not far away from
there.

Dravidian has good chances of being autochthonous,
even though it may have expanded toward the south and been replaced by Indic
in the north.

Arnaud
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