The Neolithic Hypothesis (Fashion)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<<Conversely, if you mention the fact that German retains "archaic" features,
it assumes that change in this case DID NOT "just happen," but in fact failed
to happen.  If you don't attribute
some external cause for this, then why is the archaism in German
so singular?  Chance?  Or isn't it more likely that Germanic was
either cut-off, isolated or geographically distant from the
"innovative core" - all external factors.>>

In a message dated 4/6/99 11:40:17 PM, whiting at cc.helsinki.fi wrote:

<<External to what? -- the language or the culture or both?>>.

Language is a fundamental part of culture and does not exist without it.
Language without culture has no referents, no context, no medium, no way of
propagating and no reason for being.

One of the reasons I cannot honestly argue with Miquel's notion that LBK
carried PIE or its descendents into northern Europe is that the evidence does
support the existence of a coherent culture or uberkultur that tracks that
idea well.  You can't support the PIE/LBK premise on human genetics, but its
hard to fight it based on the evidence of culture.  Once you see a cohesive
culture, historically or prehistorically, you see a clear medium for the
transmittal and maintenance of an identifiable language.

This is historically confirmed again and again.  Archeaologically you can
pinpoint where you will find Latin inscriptions based on finding Roman
cultural remains first.  Is it 100% predictable?  Of course not.  But it is
the anamolies that prove the rule.  The shock of finding out Linear B was
Greek (nobody was predicting it, not Evans or even Ventris) has now faded
away because the cultural remains have confirmed a clear demarcation between
Minoan and Mycenaean cultures.  All of this is hard history.  It is not pop
sociology.

<<One might as well try to explain why Europeans and North
Americans no longer wear three-cornered hats and powdered wigs based on
physiology or geography or manufacturing techniques or conquest or substratum
populations or the general unsuitability of the hats and wigs themselves,
when in fact it is a sociological phenomenon known as fashion.>>

Culture and "fashion" are historical evidence.  Proto-Geometric was nothing
but a fashion but it reliably labels a period, a culture and a developement.
You have no idea how important bronze helmets, beaver hats and three cornered
hats are to our understanding of history.  When we are not identifying a
culture by a fashion in material culture, we are identifying it by its
language.  LaTene becomes Celtic.  If you feel that historical linguistic
evidence has no pattern, no meaning and is pure frivilous fashion, that's
fine.  I wouldn't want to talk you out of it.

Regards,
Steve Long