Dating the final IE unity

[Stanley Friesen]

At 07:19 PM 2/1/00 +0000, Hans Holm wrote:
>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.

Indeed they almost certainly are NOT.  The very fact that they are so
similar indicates a *very* recent date for their arrival in most of their
current localities.  For a first guess as to the homeland of the
Pama-Nyungan languages, one might look to the area with the greatest
diversity of languages in the group in the smallest area (suggesting
greater time depth for differentiation in that area).

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com