IE to ProtoSteppe

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>glengordon01 at hotmail.com writes:

>The word "roughly"  automatically admits to the possibility of long-range
>comparison

-- let's interject some common sense here.  "Agnis" and "Ignis" admit of long-
range comparison, especially since they both mean "fire".  But for comparisons
of this obvious and indisputible nature, the period around 4000 BCE is a
_terminus ad quem_.

Beyond this there are dust-devils, mirages, and wheel-spinning.

Basque probably had lots of relatives at one time.  It would be nice to know,
but we never will.

>What makes good conjecture from bad conjecture is the amount of likelihood a
>hypothesis has

-- which can only be determined if it can be tested.  An explanation
attributing everything before 4000 BCE to a playful God who created the world
in 4004 BCE with ready-made fossils and potsherds is explains everything, and
can't be 'disproved'.  That's what makes it a semantic null set; no possible
way of disproving it.

>Do you realise that you're completely dismissing the field of cosmology
>and quantum mechanics because of lack of "evidence".

-- they're testable.

>it's just accepted that sometimes it  behaves as one or the other.

-- that can be demonstrated experimentally, and has been repeatedly, as has
action at a distance, etc.

>but there isn't any undeniable physical proof.

-- plenty of it, right there on the laboratory bench.