Dravidians from Africa/not Europe

[benji wald]

 Clyde Winters wrote:
 
>This along with the evidence for a genetic relationship between Dravidian
>languages and African languages indicate that the Dravidians did not
>originate in the Indus Valley or Iran.
 
and later
 
>   The Dravidian traditons, and linguistic evidence indicate that the
>Tamilian speakers >migrated from Southeast Asia down into South India.
 
I am not aware that Clyde provided any linguistic information to support
these claims.  The characterisation "African" languages is too vague to be
of linguistic value, and does not indicate impressive knowledge of that
field.  There are at least four language families indigenous to Africa,
which have not been demonstrated to be related to each other, much less to
any other language family.  If Clyde claims that Dravidian is related to
only one of those families, as is least implausible given the time frame,
it also remains for him to specify the nature of the relationship, e.g., an
independent descendent of Niger-Congo or of some more specific group.  In
any case, archaeological artifacts alone allow only the possibility not the
certainty that language was imported along with certain other aspects of
culture.
 
Clyde's statement about the origin of Tamil speakers has nothing to do with
his proposed African origin of the Dravidian language, and simply indicates
that aspects of Tamil culture (including loan-words, I suppose) were
subject to influence from Southeast Asia at some time in the past, perhaps
even by assimilation of some Southeast Asians into the Dravidian society of
the Tamil area.  The linguistic evidence for this should be distinguishable
from linguistic evidence for a genetic relation between Dravidian and the
un-named African family.  Southeast Asia also sounds more like a cultural
area than a specific linguistic family.