Dear Koenraad,
Re:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64492 ,
a response of mine is due to you as I am the "someone" who, on another List, "retorted" to your characterization of the so-called Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) as one postulating an innate racial superiority of the IE-speaking Aryans over South Asian native populations. In that post you also contended that the AIT would ascribe a presumed decrease in the intelligence quotient of the Indians after the end of the Vedic period to their "racial" intermingling with native South Asian populations, which fact would have caused them to loose their original IE "racial" purity.
On that other List, I had replied to you, of course ironically, that you seem to be living in the 19th century since the speculations you mention in your post are typical of certain racially-based theories about South Asian pre- and proto-history that prevailed in that century, but certainly not of modern Indology or of the IE studies which are part and parcel of the same.
Now (here on cybalist) you continue:
> [T]here is a pretty trendy school of sociobiologists and
> evolutionary psychologists who espouse the AIT and link it with
> racial-differential explanations of historical trends. In
> particular, AIT-espousing Indologists like M. Witzel find it hard
> to explain convincingly how a band of mere "immigrants" (not
> even "invaders" who made up for their lower numbers with higher
> military prowess) managed to impose or impart their language on a
> more advanced and far more numerous native population, to the
> extent that the latter completely forgot its own language.
> So, one Dr. Michael H. Hart... gives an explanation for this
> enigma in ch.26, esp. p.187, of his book "Understanding Human
> History" (2007). In answering the question of why IE was so wildly
> successful in so many different circumstances, he reminds us that
> IE originated in the north, among "the Kurgan builders who lived
> on the Russian steppes", and that cold climates mould intelligent
> races.
Wait a minute. Is this Dr. Michael H. Hart any representative of a "trendy school of sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists", or is he merely a fringe racist scholar? The second option seems to be true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H._Hart
"Michael H. Hart (born April 28, 1932 in New York City) is a Jewish American astrophysicist who has also written three books on history and controversial articles on a variety of subjects. Hart describes himself as a Jeffersonian liberal, while his critics call him a conservative and a racial separatist... Among Hart's articles was one, published in 1975, that gave strong scientific support for the conclusion that the only intelligent life in the Milky Way Galaxy resides on the planet Earth... His... book _A View from the Year 3000_, published in 1999, is a history of the future which includes both technological advances and political developments. His... book _Understanding Human History_ is a history of humanity, beginning about 100,000 years ago and going through the 20th century. It includes discussions of developments in every major area of the world, with a focus on the role of the differences in intelligence between various groups. The book discusses the many consequences that those differences have had on human events, starting in prehistoric times and continuing to the present... [A paper of his]suggested that a future of Yugoslavia-type ethnic conflict in the United States could be avoided by a voluntary partition of the country into three states: an integrated mixed-race state, a white state, and a black state... In 1996, Hart addressed a conference organized by Jared Taylor's 'race-realist' organization, American Renaissance, on the need for a racial partition of the United States. Hart proposed a three-way division with one part for white separatists, one part for black separatists, and one part left as multiracial nation."
Why, Koenraad, do you cite *this* guy as a scholar who "gives an explanation for [the] enigma [of language replacement in South Asia]"? Is Hart's ascientific racist bias a good base for a theory about language replacement in South Asia?
Yet you go on administering us Hart's ascientific speculations:
> [According to Hart] the IEs were... moulded by the cold of NE
> Europe into an intelligent race. So [quoting from Hart's
> book]: "What then does account for the remarkable conquests of
> the IEs? Since these conquests occurred over a period of
> millennia, they cannot be due to the attributes of any single
> leader; nor are they due to some particular political system (...)
> nor some particular terrain. The IEs triumphed in the forests of
> Germany, the steppes of C Asia, the mountains of Afghanistan, and
> the islands of the Aegean. Nor (...) their possession of superior
> technology. Quite a few peoples they conquered -- including the
> Minoans, the Etruscans, the Elamites, and the Dravidian-speakers
> of the Indus Valley -- had more advanced civilizations than the IE
> invaders did" [end quote].
A few comments on this quote:
1) Did the IE-speaking peoples "conquer" (I mean, with military means, and following a planned political strategy) all of the countries that became their historical seats in later periods? For instance, did Proto-Tocharian speakers "conquer" the Tarim basin? Or did Proto-Slavic speakers "conquer" Eastern Europe?
2) Why does Hart lump together such disparate "conquests" (as per his own wording, which in certain cases is, however, inappropriate) of non-IE-speaking peoples by IE-speaking ones as the Greek takeover of Crete and the Aegean, the defeat and absorption of the Etruscans by the Romans, the (partial) absorption of the Elamite civilization by the Medes and Persians, and the process of post-immigration elite dominance which caused the spread of Indic languages over NW South Asia through language replacement? These are non-comparable events, with some of them pertaining to proto-history, and some others to the historical period, by which time states (such as the Roman one) were already in existence. The ones mentioned by Hart are, thus, totally different processes.
3) No comment about the "Dravidian speakers of the Indus Valley" (for whom, as you know, there is little linguistic evidence).
> To sum up, the AIT has a gaping hole, viz. the anomaly of a
> relatively small and less civilized population "immigrating" into
> a vast and urbanized demographic heavyweight and then managing to
> get the native language replaced with its own.
This picture you provide, and which many of your "anti-AIT" (generally Hindutva) colleagues also adhere to, is misleading because:
1) we cannot say which of the two concerned populations, the immigraing IA speakers and the natives, were more "civilized";
2) the Greater Panjab region, into which groups of IA speakers supposedly immigrated in the 2nd mill BCE, although a "vast" one, was no longer an "urbanized demographic heavyweight" in the concerned period; it *had been* certainly so till the decline of the Harappan civilization (c. 1900 BCE) and the subsequent move of part of its population eastwards (proved archaeologically for the 2nd mill BCE), but was by then occupied by the Late Harappan cultures, which were mostly non-urban, and whose demographic weight appears to have been much lesser that that of the Harappan civilization in its heyday.
> While AIT proponents intensely ignore this anomaly, it is crying
> out for an explanation. So, the sociobiologists step in with their
> explanation, viz. that the IEs belonged to a superior race.
Some explanations to the assumed phenomenon of language replacement, albeit not fully satisfactory, have been already provided by some supporters of the hypothesis of an IA immigration into the Greater Panhab region during 2nd mill BCE. You know what I mean -- elite dominance, adoption of an "Aryan status kit" (including language, and first of all *liturgical* language) by some of the natives (among whom were many local chieftains who may have provided an exemplary model to their subjects), prolonged bilingualism (supposedly discernible in the many substrate words found in Vedic texts since the earliest books of the Rigveda), progressive disappearance of non-IA languages from North India during a time span of at least 1,500 years, etc.
It isn't intellectually honest on your part to suggest to listmembers that the only explanation being provided for this phenomenon of language replacement (admittedly of difficult interpretation) is, to date, the racist idea that "the IEs belonged to a superior race." This argument is patently false, all the more so that none of the modern Vedic scholars and IE-IIr.-IA comparative linguists who have tried to provide some answers to these difficult questions is involved in the fringe racial theories you refer to.
I'd like to see a discussion on this List on the problem of language replacement in South Asia, but that certainly not on the false and misleading "racial" ground you are proposing us!
Regards,
Francesco