Dating the final IE unity

[Hans Holm]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

JS>Observers as late as the 4th century CE said that the Gallic-Celtic of
JS>Lyon, in the Rhone valley, was mutually comprehensible with that of the
JS>Galatians of Anatolia (who arrived from the Balkans about 270 BCE).

.. "mutually comprehensible" here should be seen quite relative.
I remember a parallel:

Most scholars would regard the branches of Turcic as different languages,
wouldn't they?

In spite of that, in a recent TV-film, a native speaker of Turcish
presented himself talking to people of different Turcic languages (e.g.
Uighur) on a bus-tour in central Asia with only little difficulties. But
that seemed to be a very rudimental 'small' talk.

And in such a sense the above cited "observer" could (should?) be
understood.

JS>This requires either no change, or perfectly synchronized change, in pre-
JS>Celtic across thousands of miles, ...

.. I propose "little change". And there are much more examples.

JS>, ... for 4000 years.  Which is in blatant violation of everything we know
JS>about languages and how they develop.

.. Is it? This is an IE group, but if we take a look beyond our IE nose,
e.g. to Australia, we find about 70 % covered by speakers of Pama-Nyungan,
the languages/dialects of which are regarded as very closely related. And
archeologists now redate the first settlements back to more than 50.000
years (for a up-to-date overview see Stringer in Antiquity 73/99:876). Of
course these must not be the direct predecessors of Pama-Nyungan.
Back to IE: Renfrew's farmers in Ireland must not have been direct
predecessors of Gaelic speakers, at least their language must not at all
have been a predecessor.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Hans J. Holm, Meckauerweg 18, D-30629 Hannover
 Tel=FAX x49-511-9585714.