--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>
> You surely weren't expecting useful discussion from Tavi,
> were you? He doesn't want to do linguistics: he wants to
> make grand, sweeping claims about prehistory, which he then
> 'supports' with pre-scientific pseudo-linguistics.
>
Surely you'll be surprised if you knew people from other fields often
considers historical linguistics to be anything but science (smoke and
mirrors, so to speak). But the best example of a "grand, sweeping claim
about prehistory" is surely the Kurgan theory of Gimbutas, Mallory,
Anthony & Co., which attributes to the nomadic shepherds of the Pontic
Steppes the role of speakers of PIE. As important as their contributions
to European prehistory and in particular to the IE family, they only can
be considered the direct ancestors of Indo-Iranians.