Dating the final IE unity (was: Re: GREEK PREHISTORY AND LANGUAGE)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language - given its date - is a formidable
>piece

-- nobody much in this field takes it at all seriously because it ignores all
the _linguistic_ evidence, and in fact flatly contradicts everything learned
by comparative and historical linguistics over the past 250 years.  Either
our reconstructive linguistics are all wrong, or Renfrew is wrong.

And Renfrew has shown repeatedly that he doesn't understand the linguistic
arguments he's attempting to critique.

>Not the least of which is the extent of IE dispersal at those periods in time
>when ACTUAL DOCUMENTABLE EVIDENCE of language becomes available.

-- we know from historical examples that languages can spread very quickly
over very large areas, so this is not a significant argument.

We also know that the spread of a language doesn't necessarily leave much
archaeological evidence at all.