Re: Origin of Sanskrit (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...

It isn't a problem insofar it is a necessary choice: one has to postulate something, either a great number of completely lost families (purely theoretical families) or enormous extensions of non-IE families or a medium-size extension for both PIE and other known families or an enormous extension for PIE Urheimat. These are the four possibilities with regard to PIE (the second and the fourth one are very similar except for the role of PIE). I know none who prefers the fourth one, in itself higlhly improbable as any hypothesis which operates with very very large dimensions (the second hypothesis included); the first and the third one are normal size as to territorial dimensions, the first one is expensive in terms of postulated families, the third one in terms of conservativeness through time. Different prices, but nevertheless prices