GREEK PREHISTORY AND IE (EVIDENCE?)

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Just what thoes considerable difficulties are is still something I am trying
>to get at.

-- just for starters:

Ridiculous time-depth.  Even if all the IE languages changed as slowly as
Lithuanian, a 7000 BCE date for PIE is grotesque; and that's leaving aside
the question of the technical vocabulary.

Ignorance of the interrelationships of the IE language (according to
Renfrew's theory Greek ought to be closely related to Hittite and distantly
related to Sanskrit, whereas the reverse is true).

Dogmatic insistance that human behavior, linguistic and otherwise, was
somehow completely different in prehistory.

>Actually if you read A&L you can see that what Renfrew was first of all doing
>was chastising archaeologists for accepting presumptive dates based on
>linguistics - which he points out were often based on old archaeology.

-- in which he's simply wrong.  What he's resistant to is the idea that
linguistics can tell things about the past that archaeology cannot.  It's
methodological imperialism.

>Some archaeologists think Renfrew should have never got involved in the
>language/ethnic thing at all

-- he shouldn't have.  At least, not before he _understood_ what he was
trying to critique.