Mummies of Urumchi

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

>>but our Tokharian texts are from the early Middle ages, and the mummies are
>>*millennia* earlier.

>-- no, the mummies are _continuous_ from millenia earlier up until attested
>Tocharian.  The physical type remains constant, and the material culture shows
>a smooth development over time.  When a new language comes in (Uighur) so does
>a new physical type.

So we have a) a continuous record of mummies from the earliest times down
to the times of the Tocharian texts (with a clear and foolproof indication
that the most recent ones were Tocharian speaking - I mean an indication
other than their being palefaces ?), b) it is common knowledge that the
people who wrote/read/used the Tocharian texts *were* palefaces in the
first place and c) the identification of race and language is correct and
the one thing to do after all ?

>The material culture (textiles, etc.) also shows clear links further west.

What does that tell us about the Tocharians ? West = Indo-European seems to
be a hazardous equation, though west = palefaces is of course slightly less
hazardous. The Tocharian language (and the *only* meaningful way to use the
designation "Tocharian" is in connection with *language*) is only known
from the *East*; if the mummies show material items which point to the
(far) west, this could equally be taken as pointing *away* from Tocharian,
rather than the opposite.

>Old Chinese also has a fund of early Indo-European loanwords, some of them
>identifiably Tocharian (or proto-Tocharian, to be picky).

Yes, such a body of loans has been pointed to, but this is a matter of
ongoing debate rather than one of established fact. I don't take issue with
the fact here, but it could be interesting to discuss the
Proto-Tocharian/Old Chinese evidence here to see what there is really to it.

>And Tocharian
>demonstrably separated from the IE mainstream rather early,

Please, demonstrate this, if it is demonstrable. Doing this, please
identify the IE mainstream and its common traits (which then would have to
be identifiable as common innovations not shared by Tocharian), and name
the features of Tocharian which are so archaic that the language occupies
such a special place in the family due to them. I'm not denying that a lot
of things underwent great changes in Tocharian, but it remains to show how
far this justifies atributing it an Anatolian-like position in the family.

>and shows no close
>affinities with Indo-Iranian.  It doesn't even have many early loanwords from
>Indo-Iranian.

OK

>This means that Tocharian had to be isolated from the otherwise-predominant
>Indo-Iranian linguistic environment.  Do you have a better place in mind to be
>isolated _in_ than the Bronze Age Tarim Basin?

Sorry, I'm not questioning the fact as such, I'm questioning the methods
used to establish this as proven. Certainly a question like "do you have a
better idea ? No ? So, here we are" is not the kind of reasoning much
confidence should be built upon, or is it (e.g. I don't have a "better
idea" for the genetic affiliation of Turkic, yet I'm sure that - beyond the
shadow of a doubt - the "Altaic" hypothesis, linking it with Mongolian is
wrong and misleading; by this logic this wrong idea should be taken as the
current state-of-the-art until a "better idea" is found. I, for one, regard
the formulation "I don't know" as enough of a "better idea").

>>isn't the simple identification of those two entities (the mummies -
>>Tokharians) an oversimplification?

>-- no.  Not by the usual standards of the field.

If these are the usual standards of the field, then - to relieve you
personally from my attack - it is the field which tends to
oversimplifications and has, if true, adopted standards which might well be
regarded as appalling (especially the language = race bit, which should be
rotting in the most forgotten section of linguists' cellar of embarrassing
ideas).

A different case: come to think of the Baltic.  "The physical type remains
constant, and the material culture shows
>a smooth development over time" is exactly what archaeologists tell us
>about people there. No indication of the arrival of different people from
>somewhere else over a considerable span of millennia. This can only mean
>(and it has been said by Balticists !) that the Baltic region is simply
>the Urheimat der Indogermanen. Now do we follow this ? We have to, by the
>"usual standards of the field" ...
That this says *nothing* about how the Baltic *language* came to the
region, because a change/spread of language does *not* imply a
change/spread of different people, let alone of a different physical type,
is my humble idea of a valid standard of the field. But the field is bored
by this, saying hell, we cannot identify race and language and that's bad.
We could have such a tremendous number of positive hypotheses if we could,
so why don't we (tacitly, if need be) declare this procedure possible after
all ?

Regards,

St.G.

Stefan Georg
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