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

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

>Actually, he doesn't, and he's quite explicit about it.

>Renfrew allows language spread by wholesale population movement in just two
>circumstances: the first settlement of previously uninhabited areas, and
>spread by elite dominance.  Otherwise, he sees language spread as proceeding
>by diffusion across established populations

-- which is palpably absurd; the historical record is full of large-scale
movements of population.

Renfrew has to assume that as soon as written records aren't present, the
whole structure of historical causality immediately and radically changes.

It's as clear a case of torturing the historical evidence to fit on the
Procrustian bed of theory as I've ever seen.