Re: Racism [Was: Hercynian (again)]

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
<bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:

>
> > As Mr David W. Anthony (BTW, one of the champions of the
> > Kurgan theory) pointed out, in language replacement processes, the
> > "loser" language is spoken by a minority stigmatized by the dominant
> > society, whose language is considered as prestigious. So pretending

no

> > other languages than the historically attested ones were spoken in a
> > given area is fairly inaccurate, to say the least.
> > (...)
> > There's a strong tendence to forget about minority languages in

atlases

> > and text books. Too often the winners make active efforts to erase

the

> > traces of "loser" language, for example, by translating alloglottic
> > toponyms to their own language and even people names. I think I

should

> > have used "ethnical cleansing" instead of "racism".
>
> All we know with relative certainty is that:
> a) there's genetic continuity of European population from Upper
> Palaeolithic (73%) and from Neolithic (the rest)
>

I'm afraid that genes and languages aren't necessarily correlated,
precisely because of language replacement. This is why defensors of the
continuity theory have to negate it.

> b) one language replacement has taken place in Romance,
> Anglo-Saxon, South Slavonic, Magyar, Maltese, and Turkish Countries
> (rarely two: maybe Hungary, Andalusia, Sicily, parts of Turkey, German
> East Europe, parts of Russia, and similar cases)
> c) a second language replacement is taking place in urban

societies.

>

Sure, these are historical documented cases, but by no means the only
ones.

> That's all. With know also that a population replacement has very
> sadly taken place in the Americas.
>

But population replacement has little to do with true language
replacement, where a majority adopts the language of a small minority.

> All the rest is speculation. A compelled one (we have no other
> means left), but nonetheless speculation. Someone likes genocides,
> some other one likes complaining against genocides, someone doesn't
> like having to do with genocides at all. Same for language
> replacements.
>

My own idea is that we call "Indo-European" is the result of the
superposition (by means of language replacement) of several linguistic
layers since the Mesolithic to aprox. the Bronze Age. And IMHO both the
traditional model (reductionist) and the continuity theory (monolithic)
distort this. The former, because it tries to derive everything word
from a single protolanguage, and the latter because either merges layers
(e.g. the Mesolithic layer with the most recent one) or reverses their
chronological order (e.g. by making the Neolithic layer a superstrate of
the most recent one).