Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew

[Stanley Friesen]

At 01:23 PM 4/5/01 -0400, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>Just to give philjennings at juno.com the benefit of hearing the other side of
>the Chamber:

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 2:39:22 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><<[Renfrew] never did explain why the extant Anatolian IE languages all look
>intrusive.>>

>Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....

What does this mean?  Languages do not appear out of nowhere - they develop
from other, similar languages.

>In a message dated 4/5/2001 1:05:27 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:
><< It's highly probable that pre-Indo-European Europe had a linguistic
>situation much like New Guinea or pre-Columbian North America, with hundreds
>of distinct language families and many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
>distinct languages covering very small areas. >>

>... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.

The only way this situation can occur is great amounts language movement,
but with no language group gaining the upper hand.

>   Every
>one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
>would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.

Not really.  At least in New Guinea on can often determine some constraints
on the order of arrival of the various groups.  (For instance, the language
groups restricted to upland areas must be older than the one seen in
valleys, and groups with compact, more or less contiguous, areas must be
relatively recent).

In any case, at most one of the language groups in such an area can really
be said to be fully indigenous.  All others have to have been intrusive at
some point in time.

>Or perhaps it was just the other languages in Anatolia that were the
>intruders.  Who exactly is the candidate for the aboriginal Anatolian
>language - especially in western and southern Anatolia?

My first guess would be Hattic. Or the aboriginal language could have
become extinct by the time of the Hittite Empire.

>There's more and more evidence that the vast majority of Europeans at least
>are descended from pre-mesolithic populations.  (I would bet that in Anatolia
>we would find something similar.)  This would mean that most IE speakers in
>Europe are descended from people who were there before IE arrived.  In terms
>of economics and technology, by far the number one influx of ideas came later
>with the Neolithic Revolution with its origins in Anatolia and the Near East.
>  The steppes headbanger theory simply does not show much either in innovation
>in ideas or ways of living or in the needed geographical range,

Oh?  Horse riding, possibly wheeled vehicles (and later chariots for sure -
but that was after PIE split up) - these sound like innovation to me!

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net