Book review: Indus Age- the Writing System by Gregory L. Possehl.

[Bo Klintberg]

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

> For the record, a many Indo-European cultures have no record of their migration
> into their historical territories. Such records are lacking for Greece, Italy,
> Anatolia, and also for the Scandinavian countries. Not all ancient peoples were
> equally concerned with their geographical origins. Therefore, the non-mention of
> such migrations in the Vedas is not so important as some assume it to be.

I think there are some serious philosophical problems with your
conclusion. If I understand you correctly you seem to say something like
the following:

The Indo-Europeans migrated. We have not found any of their records
where they say they migrated. Since we haven't found any such records,
they did not write such records. And since they did not produce
such records, it must be because they did not consider it important. And
since THEY did not consider it important, WE should not
also consider it important.

My questions are as follows: Is it PROVEN that the Indo-Europeans
migrated? Does the fact that we DON'T have unearthed any records
necessarily imply that they didn't write any? And even if they didn't
write any records, how can you KNOW that the reason was that they didn't
consider it important?

Let's assume that the reason for why we haven't found any records about
migration is, as you seem to say, that they did not write any records.
Then, philosophically speaking, it would not be impossible that such a
behaviour would be the result of a situation in which there WAS no
migration; thus, why should they write any records of migration, if there
was no migration?

Bo Klintberg
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto, Canada


Your fist
assumption is that they did not write any. How do you know that?
Your second assumption is that the reason for their not writing any is
because they did not find it important have no record of their migrations.
The did not write any
records. We haven't found any records. Assume that there was no migration
at all.