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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2004-08 > 1092281215


From: ellen Levy <>
Subject: Scythians, Indo-Europeans & Neolithic Farmers
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 20:27:03 -0700 (PDT)


John:

Let me see if I'm understanding you correctly. You
are essentially condemning both linguistic and DNA
studies regarding their estimated rates of mutation
because such things must be random and therefore
completely unpredictable? Aren't you essentially
condemning all branches of scientific study? I mean,
looking at physics, you've got chaos theory at work.

I don't see much difference between population
genetics and linguistic studies. You say that
linguistic groups are "bumping" up against other
language families. True, but so are haplogroups - J
is bumping up against R1a, etc. There is genetic
interchange, just like there is linguistic
interchange. And from a common ancestor, you get
various haplogroups - J and G, for example. Just like
Greek and Albanian branching off from a common
ancestor - PIE speakers.

Clearly, language families are influenced by contact
with outside cultures. Indo-European appears to be
influenced not only by other language families that
surrounded it, but also by the older Paleolithic
languages of Europe that it encountered. For example,
Greek is estimated to have borrowed approximately
one-fifth of it's words from the earlier inhabitants
of Greece (words like "Olympus" and "olive"). But
what is your point about this? That this contact
causes languages to "appear" as if they branched off
earlier from PIE than they actually did? What is your
evidence for this assertion? Because we've been able
to locate those "loan" words from other languages
fairly easily. German is also believed to have
borrowed a vast number of words from the earlier
inhabitants (non-IE speakers) of Europe, but it is
recorded by Atkinson as branching off much later than
Greek.

Ellen Coffman

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