--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 11:31:44 PM on Saturday, June 7, 2008, Rick McCallister
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Vennemann is no Greenberg. His work is thought out and
> > well elaborated although it often rests on very slim
> > foundations. Even if he were completely wrong, he would
> > not be a crackpot, just wrong.
>
> I think that his idée fixe has taken him at least to the
> edge of crackpot territory.
And that is an ad hominem too.
During the last Ice Age there was a Franco-Cantabrian Refuge; from
that the hunter-gatherers populated Western Europe after the ice
disappeared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Genetics_of_the_Sami_Peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people
The precursor of Basque must have been spoken in that refuge area. If
not, where did the Basques arrive from later? The pocket was small
enough that Basque might have been the only language, or language
family spoken there. It is therefore a question worth investigating
whether Vasconian languages spread along with the genes, and the idée
fixe is the one that denies that.
Torsten