Dating the final IE unity

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

Dear list fellows,

may it be permitted for an outsider to archaeology to speak a word of
common sense:

Although I can't evaluate the evidence I read that the Kurgan complex
moves - with accompanying changes - into the parts of the world where we
later find the IE languages. To a naive outsider like myself that looks as
if, somehwere on the way, the Kurgan culture was that of the speakers of
the IE protolanguage.
   Now, I also observe a heated debate about the validity of inferences
about language based on material remains, since material culture can pass
from one language community to another without affecting the language.
   Of course I agree that there is no necessary link of this kind,
appearances may be deceitful. But - and that is now my point - can we
accept that the same kind of appearances point in a wrong direction at
every chance they get? Is it a wrong impression that, for the Kurgan
complex and its continuations not to be linguistically IE, would
presuppose that a whole series of cases of expansion of a material pattern
to a place where we later find an IE language all conspire to play a trick
on the observer? If so, what is the probability of that? Is it not like
surviving Russian roulette in the long run - i.e. nil?
   Thus, if there are no basic errors in the presuppositions of the above
(e.g. in the identification of continuations of the Kurgan complex or in
the arrows drawn on maps to show where and when the complex moves), then
it follows that the evidence favoring the Kurgan complex as (pre-)PIE is
logically significant and that, consequently, the Indo-Europeans have been
found.
   Some might say that, for this to be conclusive, the grass has to be
much greener in the archaeological field than it is in that of
lingusitics. The way it seems to me is that, for it to be wrong, the
archaeological grass has to be exceptionally dirty or exceptionally rare.
Is it?

Jens