"Out of India"

[Vidhyanath Rao]

> Large scale migrations have occurred quite regularly within Europe and out
> of Europe for the last 3000 years. 
> 
> E.g.:
> 
> 1) Hittites into Asia Minor (3rd millenium B.C.?)
> 2) Indo-Aryans into Iran and India (2nd millenium B.C.)
> 3) Greek tribes into Greece (2nd millenium B.C.)
> 4) Italic tribes into Italy (2nd millenium B.C)

These four depend on a model of the spread of IE languages which is
still the subject of heated discussions.

We are arguing about physical evidence for #2, remember. If we agree that
there was a large scale migration, then the discussion would be over.

> 5) Celtic tribes into France and Britain, followed by
> 6) Germanic tribes, reaching Scandinavia possibly 800 B.C.

Same problem as above. From where, how, what is the hard evidence?

> 7) Germanic tribes into Gaul, Northern Italy, Spain and North Africa (end of
> 1st millenium B.C. until about 5-600 C.E.)
> 8) Magyar tribes into Hungary (800 C.E)
> 9) Norsemen into Northern Britain, Ireland, Hebrides, the Shetlands,
> Iceland, Greenland about 1000 C.E.)

What was the number of settlers, versus number of raiders who came,
pillaged and left?

> 10) The enourmous transfer of Europeans from Europe to the Americas during
> the last 500 years
> 11) The migration of Europeans to Australia during the last 200 years.

The last two were migrations of much smaller number of people, follwed by
a population explotion made possible by more intensive use of land by
the newcomes. This was not possible for Indo-Europeans. Indo_iranians
did not know even agriculture or wheel thrown pottery, remember :-^

This leaves only 5 cases out the original 11. #7 is a case of 
X pushed Y who pushed Z etc. After all, that is why it took nearly
600 years for the Goths to get North Africa. Now what is the
chronology of Indo-Aryan `invasion'? And, remember, the Indo-Aryans had
to drive their chariots over Afghanistan. Anybody measured the speed of
chariots over mountains? 


> Large-scale displacement of people do not happen every day, but they
> certainly do occur.

Movements of tribes numbering in 10,000s, I will swollow. But they hardly
displaced prexisting populations. They simply inserted themselves into
the preexisting populations in all cases of yours which I consider to be
cases of established migrations.

> It will be published in the series Acta Humaniora of the Faculty of Arts of
> Oslo University. I handed it in 4-5 months ago. I don't how far it has come
> in the process.

Looking forward to it.
Regards
-Nath