----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <nostratic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 2:53 AM
Subject: Re: [nostratic] Re: AA and IE


[Glen]
> I estimate that Dravidian
> is seperated from Altaic and IndoEuropean by about 7000 years.
> Dravidian and AfroAsiatic are seperated by 10,000 years. The least
> amount of pleading would involve a comparison between IndoEuropean
> and Altaic, a seperation of only 5000 years.

[Alexander]
I wonder what a technique do you use to obtain these figures?
Is it a formula, or an algorithm, or just a complex expert estimation?
Please share it, it's really interesting.


[G]
> First, I worry that, with only Mongolian and Turkic to rely on,
> there is too much opportunity for one branch to have adopted this
> word from another, especially given the nomadic nature of these
> peoples and their late adoption of agriculture (or are we pushing
> the dates back for this as well??). So what about Korean,
> ManchuTungusic or Japanese? No cognates there?

[A]
The data on *kOri are taken from the I.-S. book. When he worked on it,
Japanese was not considered as an Altaic branch yet, so there is no Japanese
data in the book at all. The Korean material in the book is very poor in
general, very rare you can meet examples from it. I agree, it would be very
interesting to check properly the situation in these branches.
As to ManchuTungusic, there is an example from Evenkian (a Southern
dialect), but it seems to be a borrowing from Mongolian. However I would be
surprised if there were many ManchuTungusic sheep-words there. Practically
all the existing now languages of this group (only living languages provide
us with really reach material for comparison, not dead ones, right?) are
spoken by folks who live in taiga, practice reindeer-breeding, and normally
never see a sheep during the whole life (before XIX cent.). Why should they
keep a word, if there is no object to designate?


[G]
> In fact, afaik, I don't recall Proto-Altaic nomads doing any
> farming.
[A]
I think PROTO-Altaic people were not nomads.
Pastoral nomadism is one of the highest achievements of the human
civilization. Long progressive evolution is needed to become real nomadic
herders. Altaic people succeeded to become genuine nomads only in the Iron
Age (and I suspect only with the "help" of Eastern Iranians who already were
nomads by that time).
[G]
> Where did they get the lambs?
[A]
Don't you guess my answer?
Yes, you are right - Altaic people could get lambs only there, where sheep
was domesticated and where all the Nostratic folks origin from - at the Near
East.
Look.
On the territory of NW China a culture with microliths of the Near East type
is found. It was in Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic (I don't recall now
precise dates).
However, they didn't contact with the earliest Chinese culture of mature
Neolithic - Banpo, as the latter cultivated only Chinese millet as a cereal
+ roots and eastern pigs + dogs for meat. Later Chinese got rice from South
(Hamudu culture at Yangtze river).
But
In the 3rd millennium BC in a culture on the Western edge of the Chinese
civilization (Tsitszya - I'm sure, the spelling is wrong, as I take it from
a Cyrillic book) sheep and cattle appeared! There were no wild progenitors
of these animals there. It is much to early to expect Indo-Europeans there.
The horse, the main "mark" of Indo-Europeans appeared in China only in a
millennium, when the Andronovo culture people had come.
Whom could be those people who brought lambs ultimately from the Near East
to China?
I can't find any serious answer but ALTAIC-speaking ones.


Alexander