Linguistic KB

[Raoul Martens]

On Mon, 21 June 1999, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

> Do you have good reasons to disagree with the techniques for linguist-
> ic chronometrics and language drift discussed, for instance, Renfrew's > old book Archaeology and Language, and the sources he refers to?


There certainly seems to be some such good reasons:

1) The theories of Renfrew & Gimbutas re. the 'Indo-European Homeland"
have been efficiently refuted by geneticists Sokal, Oden and Thomson in
'Origins of the Indo-Europeans: Genetic evidence' in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. Vol. 89, 1992. The average correla-
tion genes/language (GEN,LAN) 0.141 for 25 genesystems (incl. the ABO
bloodgroups at 0.144) is statistically significant, whereas the corres-
ponding values for Renfrew's/Gimbuta's models 0.060/0.067 are not.

2) A 'dendrite' of bloodgroup frequencies for 45 world populations in-
dicates a central position for the Hindus with a direct link to Egypt,
see Hirszfeld, Ludwik: Probleme der Blutgruppenforschung, Jena 1960.

3) In 'Indo-Europeans in the Middle East', Anthropological Linguistics
Vol. 23, nr 6 1981 C.T. Hodge argues that 'Afro-Aryans' must have left
Egypt for the Near (and Middle) East at the very latest 13.000 BC.

4. As often reported in the media mitochondrial DNA indicates that the
whole world population descends from not very distant African ancestors.

In view hereof and as the Cro-Magnons are commonly held to have had the
ability of speach 40.000 BC no (re)constructed 'proto-language' apply-
ing to 4000 BC appears to reflect the 'homeland' of any
languagegroup.
Sincerely
Raoul Martens