--- In cybalist@... s.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@ ...> wrote:
> >
> > 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. The Goths never did that in the Roman Empire, nor the Mongols in Iran or China, though they at least managed to become the rulers, not mere immigrants but conquerors. 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. That's not their terminology today, but it's that idea though now in the language of genetics and Darwinism.
> >
>
>
> Regardless of their supposed higher intelligence (which would make Ukraine an IQ hotspot?)<<
Remember "rocket science"? The Russians were the first in space, Gagarin was from some Ural district, pretty close to the putative Urheimat ;-)
> the conquests of the IE-speakers are no more remarkable than those of the Huns, the Mongols or Napoleon which had no lasting linguistic consequences. What is remarkable are the conquests of the IE language, the only plausible parallel to which I see in the conquest of the Chinese language over all those of the invading peoples.<
That is precisely the point this Hart is making: that conquests and occasional military advantages like the first war-horses are ordinary and temporary affairs, whereas the linguistic conquest was of a far more enduring and penetrating character which requires a deeper explanatory factor, viz. higher intelligence. Which he readily concedes to the Chinese as much as to the Nordic IEs.
> The property of the Chinese language which made it fittest for survival was that it was a written language, which makes it the language of choice when some important fact must be remembered. I think IE had something similar, but less: extensive mnemotechnic rules for learning laws and rites by heart, based on a codification of the language in its oral form; that's why several of the IE languages had native grammatical traditions
>
Extrapolating from Hart's premises, i suppose he would say that the very concern to make information more durable, through writing or mnemotechnics, is itself a sign of high intelligence. Note however that the first writing was in ever-hot areas close to the Tropic of Cancer, Sumeria and Egypt, which in his theory would have fostered indolence and failed to select for intelligence.
I am not saying that this racial theory is the right answer, only that it is at least *an* answer to the gap in the AIT. Alternative answers are most welcome, and I already thank you for this input. The question of why IE was so successful, remains one that ought to occupy at least some scholars of this field some of the time.
Kind regards,
KE
BE SCARED BE VERY SCARED!!!!!!!!!!