tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post4965044380230558688..comments2024-01-04T04:11:55.717+02:00Comments on Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: Deep common ancestry of Eurasiatic languages (Pagel et al. 2013)Dienekeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02082684850093948970noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-65772713511725307752016-03-07T13:08:33.069+02:002016-03-07T13:08:33.069+02:00There is a great problem with the map; Official la...There is a great problem with the map; Official language of Azerbaijan with its 10 million population( Azerbaycan ) is an Altaic one, 90% of the population speaks a Turkic dialect. <br />In additioon to that, West of Iran speaks a Turkic dialect as well, the same dilact with Azerbaijan. Their population is minimum 25 million. <br />Southeast of Turkey is shown as part of the indo european map, which is correct, but the authors should have payed respect to the Azerbaijan language as well. <br />Th author is not aware of the language of 35 million Azerbaijanis there. Alis Uhat Erhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12230643682245782418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-15221396315301880922013-07-29T03:01:05.143+03:002013-07-29T03:01:05.143+03:00I think the paper has been grossly misrepresented....I think the paper has been grossly misrepresented. The only statistical result I can actually see is that matching roots are reconstructed for the meanings most likely to preserve their words. This could simply result from reconstruction work being concentrated on meanings most likely to yield long range matches if the languages are related!<br /><br />I suspect doing a proper analysis of matching roots when there are multiple roots per meaning was simply too difficult. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10215016408458655804noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-10223996534580832292013-05-22T14:56:29.559+03:002013-05-22T14:56:29.559+03:00According to this study the Caspian Sea level betw...<i>According to this study the Caspian Sea level between the LGM and the end of the Ice Age was about 50-80 m higher than nowadays. That is enough to flood the the area west from the South Ural. At the other hand the article says the sea level during the LGM was even lower than now, so the "block" was not here during the entire Ice Age. </i><br /><br />Slumbery,<br /><br />Thanks for the link. I think the article actually supports my claim. The larges "Khazarian" extension of the Caspian was actually way earlier, in the Eemian ~130,000 ya. This much later and smaller extension coincided with the quick warming after LGM, <~16.8 - 13.7 kya calibrated [my conversion], that is, coinciding with the Bølling-Allerød interstadial. And it was only about to 50m height (absolute, above sea level!), or ~50 degrees northern latitude. That's just north of Volgograd, and leaves plenty of space in the plains south of the Urals (apart from the fact that the northern portion would have been frozen in the winter, and as such passable). <br /><br />As I have stated before, though, I think the then-existing waterway (spillway) to the Pontic must have been an important fishing and migration route.eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-1339836098757506022013-05-16T20:21:43.438+03:002013-05-16T20:21:43.438+03:00IS there a study between South Indian Languages an...IS there a study between South Indian Languages and other languages. for First person and 2nd person there is some similarities. <br /><br />Ex: you,me, father , mother, sister etc.<br /><br />Some languages might have spread with mothers also.(Mother tongues?)<br /><br />Mt haplo M spread areas can be looked for common words between ASI, East Asia, Some Catalan words, some Saami, Finnish words. <br /><br /><br />Nathan Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18392998104066477963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-90392196025421609982013-05-15T17:39:23.358+03:002013-05-15T17:39:23.358+03:00Jim:
"Why is it so hard for people to accpet...Jim:<br /><br /><i>"Why is it so hard for people to accpet that culture can pick up one or maybe two technologies and nothing else from another culture?"</i><br /><br />Because some very popular narratives depend upon the assumption that one may begin with a historic people speaking a known language and then trace that language back through time via its material culture. At the risk stating the insultingly obvious, that's why.<br /><br />Rokus:<br /><br /><i>"This way, China is not a 'glaring exception' to some global IE Bronze Age expansion but rather indicative of a Bronze Age cultural potpourri being strong enough to constitute an important agent for Bronze Age IE convergence among already related people."</i><br /><br />I'd put special emphasis on the word, <em>convergence.</em><br /><br />I think the least likely scenario is one in which PIE expanded once, and only once, from a single geographic location, neatly branching through time at a reasonably constant rate. Terry, if memory serves, mocks these as "Garden of Eden" scenarios and rightly so. They make for easily understood story lines but inevitably become a Procrustean bed. I do not necessarily deny the possibility of a Bronze-Age linguistic expansion out of south-west Russia. I just don't see why we must focus on this potentiality and ignore population movements resulting from the spread of agriculture, for instance, or economic and cultural interaction along prehistoric trade routes.<br /><br />The story of conquering horsemen thundering across the steppe is a powerful image, both psychologically and socio-politically, and its linguistic consequences are easy to explain. The linguistic consequences of a mosaic of peoples interacting locally, with their immediate neighbors, while simultaneously embedded in trade networks extending over thousands of kilometers for a thousand years or more, that is a much harder problem, obviously, but one that cannot simply be ignored.<br /><br />Of course, agriculture itself may not have had a single point of origin, either, and it certainly did not spread uniformly or instantaneously. The same may be said for other technological innovations, as well. This is rather the point.Va_Highlanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04671547664669092756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-91236403482268681122013-05-13T23:55:47.839+03:002013-05-13T23:55:47.839+03:00So, if the Kurgan interpretation of chariotry is t...<i>So, if the Kurgan interpretation of chariotry is the rule, then why is China such a glaring exception?</i><br /><br />I don't object to a certain Bronze Age IE vocabulary, but obviously this vocabulary was easy to accept as part of a Bronze Age package, by populations having a varying degree of Eurasian relatedness. This suggests the arguments for a Bronze Age PIE being per definition congruent to the primary IE expansion are invalid. Rather, shared "PIE" Bronze Age vocabulary was nothing but a Bronze Age layer on top of an older vocabulary of western groupings that had remained "connected" since earlier expansions. I gather those initial IE expansions were Mesolithic and at least partly reminiscent of the earlier expansions meant by Pagel et al. This way, China is not a "glaring exception" to some global IE Bronze Age expansion but rather indicative of a Bronze Age cultural potpourri being strong enough to constitute an important agent for Bronze Age IE convergence among already related people. Even Mallory referred at such a "broader Mesolithic homeland" hypothesis, albeit as a straw man to ridiculize the most obvious archeological alternative against his own pet theory. This is all about evolving linguistic concepts, and those considered by Mallory were just too immature.Rokushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13883125231922541439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-78164431940536542182013-05-13T21:53:46.622+03:002013-05-13T21:53:46.622+03:00"Their chariot burials are the most splendid ..."Their chariot burials are the most splendid the world has seen, yet there is not a shred of evidence suggesting that the Shang elite were of Indo-European extraction or spoke an Indo-European language."<br /><br />This understates the case. There is pretty clear evidence of what the Shang language was like and there is nothing remotely IE about it.<br /><br />Why is it so hard for people to accpet that culture can pick up one or maybe two technologies and nothing else from another culture?Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-33439733841395182242013-05-13T15:39:59.825+03:002013-05-13T15:39:59.825+03:00Rokus:
"Having IE cognates for wheel and cha...Rokus:<br /><br /><i>"Having IE cognates for wheel and chariot, and a potential shared Eurasian substrate word for horse, Chinese may be the ultimate argument against a Bronze Age Indo-European expansion."</i><br /><br />China presents other problems for the standard Kurgan narrative, as well. The story goes that the horse and chariot provided overwhelming tactical advantage on the battlefield, a vehicle, both literally and figuratively, for an inferior number of Indo-European elites to overwhelm and dominate otherwise superior peoples.<br /><br />But consider the Shang. Their chariot burials are the most splendid the world has seen, yet there is not a shred of evidence suggesting that the Shang elite were of Indo-European extraction or spoke an Indo-European language. And though the chariot certainly served as a command platform, there is no evidence that the chariot had any other tactical role throughout the Shang era. It seems to have been indicative of elite status and little else.<br /><br />So, if the Kurgan interpretation of chariotry is the rule, then why is China such a glaring exception? A model, at least in any scientific sense of the word, should be predictive. That this one fails to predict should give us pause.Va_Highlanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04671547664669092756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-43509637988573288172013-05-13T02:45:03.944+03:002013-05-13T02:45:03.944+03:00Very interesting, Julien.Very interesting, Julien.Fiend of 9 worldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17712083368615685458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-12295139223017945212013-05-13T00:48:28.271+03:002013-05-13T00:48:28.271+03:00@ Teo
"I'm not even criticizing the paper...@ Teo<br />"I'm not even criticizing the paper yet"<br />Why the evasion? Let's hear it, so that we can assess this more rationally.<br />Royhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04616142288050209324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-52305517889636709492013-05-12T15:03:33.529+03:002013-05-12T15:03:33.529+03:00In the context of this paper, it may be noted that...In the context of this paper, it may be noted that we also can reconstruct Palaeolithic protomyth by using phylogenetic tools : I have tried to do that in some peer-reviewed articles. See for instance : http://nouvellemythologiecomparee.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/01/20/julien-d-huy-polyphemus-aa-th-1137.html; http://academia.edu/3226058/Un_ours_dans_les_etoiles_recherche_phylogenetique_sur_un_mythe_prehistorique._-_Prehistoire_du_sud-ouest_20_1_2012_91-106; http://www.academia.edu/3045718/PREPRINT_A_Cosmic_Hunt_in_the_Berber_sky_a_phylogenetic_reconstruction_of_Palaeolithic_mythology._Les_Cahiers_de_lAARS_15_2012_ <br />Myths are much better than language to go back in time, because versions of a same myth differ often less in great area than different languages. Moreover, some mythological versions that belong to one family could be found both in Eurasia and America, which mean that they passed from one continent to another with at a time when the Bering land bridge linked Eurasia and America in one same continent (have a look at the work of Yuri Berezkin for instance)Julienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03284260979843366221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-30381065406550370762013-05-12T10:48:26.071+03:002013-05-12T10:48:26.071+03:00Eurologist
""As far as I know, the poten...Eurologist<br /><i>""As far as I know, the potential contact between Central Asia and Europe during the last Ice Age was blocked by a glacial lake. "<br /><br />I thought this has long been debunked by both geophysical and archaeological studies. It was a hypothesis, but all field studies I can find claim there was no such thing. But then, it's Russia - so you'll never know (almost ;))."</i><br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.benthamscience.com/open/togeogj/articles/V002/1TOGEOGJ.pdf" rel="nofollow">this study</a> the Caspian Sea level between the LGM and the end of the Ice Age was about 50-80 m higher than nowadays. That is enough to flood the the area west from the South Ural. At the other hand the article says the sea level during the LGM was even lower than now, so the "block" was not here during the entire Ice Age. <br />How much it actually blocked the way is also a question. The South Ural had no ice cap, so the water was nowhere close to the polar ice. Still, it was pretty much in the way.Slumberyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05139930329199925111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-52457034870712243132013-05-12T04:41:10.956+03:002013-05-12T04:41:10.956+03:00"Gravettian started about as far East as you ..."Gravettian started about as far East as you can get in Europe - so it's not like you need to connect Beringia with Portugal - you only need to connect the Altai with the Russian plains, and the Altai with far NE Siberia. And there is archaeological and genetic evidence for both". <br /><br />And if the authors' dating is too recent that would provide a good fit for such a 'language superfamily' as they suggest. <br />terrythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17327062321100035888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-14467601141221067192013-05-11T21:52:46.697+03:002013-05-11T21:52:46.697+03:00With regard to Chinese and Indo-European, Alexande...<i>With regard to Chinese and Indo-European, Alexander Lubotsky's, "Tocharian loan words in Old Chinese, chariots, chariot gear, and town building", may be relevant.</i><br /><br />Having IE cognates for wheel and chariot, and a potential shared Eurasian substrate word for horse, Chinese may be the ultimate argument against a Bronze Age Indo-European expansion. Apparently Bronze Age culture introduced a new vocabulary within an extensive territory that vastly exceeded the IE group. So why this linguistically cohesive group should have expanded only together with a derived vocabulary if all IE people could have acquired their Bronze Age vocabulary in just the same way as the Chinese? That Pegal et al. doesn't even mention that unscientific Kurganist ideology increases their credibility about an ancestral dispersal of related populations in Eurasia. So now in 2013, what is this specific Chinese - Indo-European thing all about?<br /><br />Ah, BTW, the Basque as well as Chinese (or better: Na-Dene?) lexicon seem to cluster even better with Germanic. In the Eurasian hypothesis PIE probably equals nothing but a poor attempt to unify linguistic populations that even in the Bronze Age already had a long history within a Sprachbund.Rokushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13883125231922541439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-33236638295989539932013-05-11T16:20:47.180+03:002013-05-11T16:20:47.180+03:00With regard to Chinese and Indo-European, Alexande...With regard to Chinese and Indo-European, Alexander Lubotsky's, "<a href="https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/2683" rel="nofollow">Tocharian loan words in Old Chinese, chariots, chariot gear, and town building</a>", may be relevant.Va_Highlanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04671547664669092756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-396623342970025802013-05-11T14:56:39.344+03:002013-05-11T14:56:39.344+03:00War Lord:
"As far as I know, the potential c...War Lord:<br /><br /><i>"As far as I know, the potential contact between Central Asia and Europe during the last Ice Age was blocked by a glacial lake. "</i><br /><br />I thought this has long been debunked by both geophysical and archaeological studies. It was a hypothesis, but all field studies I can find claim there was no such thing. But then, it's Russia - so you'll never know (almost ;)).<br /><br /><i>"Furthermore, considering that Mongoloid and Caucasoid populations are not genetically close related, their language relationship would have to stem from some "steppe lingua franca". But this is practically impossible, due to the huge geographical distances. "</i><br /><br />I would claim this is exactly likely, given the long time frame of steady contact and the genetic evidence (far NE proto-Mongolian autosomal DNA in all Europeans, and many E Asian uniparental markers present in Northern Europeans (both ancient and today, and at any rate of deep time history).<br /><br />Gravettian started about as far East as you can get in Europe - so it's not like you need to connect Beringia with Portugal - you only need to connect the Altai with the Russian plains, and the Altai with far NE Siberia. And there is archaeological and genetic evidence for both.eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-7589784067833860572013-05-11T09:31:44.371+03:002013-05-11T09:31:44.371+03:00I am very surprised to know that this language doe...I am very surprised to know that this language does not have semantics. Nice and very informative blog.<br /><br /><br />Thanks,<br />Mark Duin<br /><a href="http://markduin.com/" rel="nofollow"><br />Motivational Speaker</a><br /> Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15409038494727238438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-4978854289376627642013-05-11T02:54:41.644+03:002013-05-11T02:54:41.644+03:00"One way to work around NO is to say that P w..."One way to work around NO is to say that P was responsible for the proto-language, and that segments northward moving NO simply joined later down the line". <br /><br />Taking note of the doubts expressed as to the validity of the Eurasiatic theory but accepting it for now, I have to agree with you that 'P was responsible for the proto-language'. And also 'that segments northward moving NO simply joined later down the line'. But that would eliminate your postulated Dravidian origin: <br /><br />"The division between LT and KxLT is one of the deepest genetic division within that group and that is analogous to Dravidian's split from the other languages". <br /><br />KxLT doesn't really fit the theory. But we can be fairly sure that P moved west through South Asia soo after its formation, so it could have carried Dravidian's ancestral language as it went. <br /><br />"We then require the extra work around that is the hypothesis that Dravidian was not LT's language, but a language brought to LT populations by members of the P diaspora". <br /><br />As I mentioned above, I think this is probably the correct expanation. <br /><br />"ie P and NO were geographically separate". <br /><br />Exactly. P moved west, NO moved north and M and S stayed where the individual ancestors of all four originated. Or perhaps M and S moved slightly east, but not far. <br /><br />"another group of KxLT developed into P, evolved the aforementioned proto-language, and stayed in the north and west". <br /><br />I don't think so. MNOPS was a single haplogroup so must have first coalesced in a single region. That leaves no place for just P to have coalesced very far to the north and west unless MNOPS had expanded hugely before the separate haplogroups developed on the expanding MNOPS margin. terrythttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17327062321100035888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-21502005831053257982013-05-10T23:51:06.232+03:002013-05-10T23:51:06.232+03:00Rokus,
"For instance the word 'cot' o...Rokus,<br />"For instance the word 'cot' of NW European substratum origin (Nordwestblock), that is also substratum in some Uralic branches and Chinese."<br /><br />Then this would be an argument for a substratum of say, Urlaic in Germanic, not of an unltraconserved etymon inherited form PIE. That etymon happens to be missing in Celtic and Italic, and probably everywhere else in IE. <br /><br />And thanks for the URL to that paper. I knew that IE material in Chinese has been identified. This is where to go look.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-82306253727391121682013-05-09T22:39:16.312+03:002013-05-09T22:39:16.312+03:00Roy, right on.
Ruhlen's books seem clear.
Puk...Roy, right on.<br />Ruhlen's books seem clear. <br />Pukul (Malay: beat (gong))<br />Pugilist (English: boxer)DDedenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10033851770461086341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-86711054666738740122013-05-09T22:12:59.868+03:002013-05-09T22:12:59.868+03:00Roy, linguists developed the principles - shared i...Roy, linguists developed the principles - shared innovations as evidence of monophyly, etc. - that paelontologists and presumbaly biologists rely on.<br /><br />"If its doyen Noam Chomsky is anything to go by..."<br /><br />Oh, sorry - didn't catch the irony the first time.Jimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07187836541591828806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-61387750777691394572013-05-09T18:26:45.321+03:002013-05-09T18:26:45.321+03:00Lots of linguistics is good science. This is just...Lots of linguistics is good science. This is just a bad example. A linguist posting at language log explains why this particular study is utter bunk, focusing on the weakness of the protolanguage reconstructions relied upon:<br /><br />http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4612andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172964121659914379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-56049580549831144392013-05-09T12:23:52.790+03:002013-05-09T12:23:52.790+03:00"The Dene-Caucasian proposal includes NW Cauc...<i>"The Dene-Caucasian proposal includes NW Caucasian*, Yeneseian, ST and Basque. Not Kartvelian."</i><br /><br />Though your statement is correct, Pagel's study is on a lexical level. Grammatical/phonological subdivisions are of a different category, and apparently more prone to contact or indicative to shared development than the basic lexicon. Kartvelian certainly shares a basic lexicon with the Dene-Caucassian supergrouping, though may have been more isolated.<br /><br />The problem is that lexicon similarities never received as much recognition. The number of words without clear etymology that can be found in languages all over Eurasia is much more amazing than presented in this study, albeit probably not always as consistent. For instance the word 'cot' of NW European substratum origin (Nordwestblock), that is also substratum in some Uralic branches and Chinese. Pagel's study certainly isn't exhaustive since it only included 7 language families. I did some shopping myself and in a quickscan in Tsung-tung Chang's severely underestimated 1988 thesis "Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese" I found cognates of the class "among four or<br />more Eurasiatic language families", in Chinese words such as Who, What, Old, To give, To flow.Rokushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13883125231922541439noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-70252369916676896182013-05-09T07:28:07.337+03:002013-05-09T07:28:07.337+03:00This is truly dire stuff. We already know:
a: The...This is truly dire stuff. We already know:<br /><br />a: There are similarities between languages.<br />b: Those similarities are usually greater in geographially close languages.<br />c: There are many reasons that a language can have for being similar to another language, NOT ALL OF THEM CONNECTED TO LINEAR HEREDITY.<br />d: Languages do not change at a constant rate.<br /><br />How on Earth can any serious investigator be aware of C and D and then come out with this kind of dross? <br /><br />What his results show is there are similarties between Eurasian languages, which we already knew, it tells us absolutely nothing about WHY, as all the author has done is make up some numbers and feed them ino an equasion he's also made up.<br /><br />No scientific validity whatsoever, it makes me weep that intelligent people should discuss it with anything but scorn.Belenoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15576215104931708232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-21543134023458557232013-05-09T05:44:09.673+03:002013-05-09T05:44:09.673+03:00For those looking for a Y explanation, the bulk of...For those looking for a Y explanation, the bulk of the languages in question, including Dravidian and Eskimo-Aleut, are spoken by bearers of K. The division between LT and KxLT is one of the deepest genetic division within that group and that is analogous to Dravidian's split from the other languages. The sub group of NOP constitute a branch of Uralic-Eskimo-Aleut-Indo-European and to a lesser degree, Altaic, speakers. Thus, at the surface level we have a validation of the Y-language spread hypothesis.<br /><br />This hypothesis runs into a major obstacle, however: the other side of KxLT - M, O, and S. The primary bearers of these haplotypes do not speak a language connected to the aforementioned Uralic-Eskimo-Aleut-Indo-European-Altaic group, nor is this simply explained by postulating that MOS form an early split, because these haplotypes are each of them separate branches of KxLT. O poses a specific problem because not only is it a huge and diverse haplogroup - not suffering from the isolation experienced by M and S, for example - but it split from NO at a shallower level than the split between NO and P - and thus the split between N / Q+R. With N being a lynchpin of the Uralic-Eskimo-Aleut-Indo-European-Altaic formulation, the whole idea begins to flounder.<br /><br />One way to work around NO is to say that P was responsible for the proto-language, and that segments northward moving NO simply joined later down the line. We have evidence of this in the form of there being no NO found in native American populations - ie P and NO were geographically separate. In this scenario, a group of KxLT bearers moved south and east, developed into NO, N, and O, all the while another group of KxLT developed into P, evolved the aforementioned proto-language, and stayed in the north and west. Subgroups of N and O then moved north and west into the territory of P, joining the language party. This otherwise elegant solution fails to explain LT, however, and thus Dravidian's inclusion in the party. We then require the extra work around that is the hypothesis that Dravidian was not LT's language, but a language brought to LT populations by members of the P diaspora.<br /><br />Another explanation is simply that O, M, and S are deviants - groups that diverged from proto-language K by virtue of geographic and demographic isolation. In such a scenario, groups of K moved into the south, became isolated from other members of K, and thereafter evolved into speaking very different proto-languages all the while becoming M, O, and S. Yet such a postulation requires we explain why the same did not happen to N, Q, and R, which managed to preserve the K proto-language. This boils down to a cultural contact/interaction sphere argument, in which case, how do we even know whether it's a Y genetic effect in the first place, given that there are plenty of haplotypes - ie C, D, and I - which are not branches of K but are members of the language party?<br /><br />I think I've shown my thinking process when it comes to the split vs. diffuse debate - ie the areal diffusion effect is of greater importance when it comes to language level connections. Northern Eurasia is a wide open space which we know to have facilitated distant contacts between Europe, Central Asia, North Asia, the Far East, and beyond to the Americas. It then becomes logical that peoples dwelling across this expanse have a few deeply shared cultural and linguistic concepts. Whether this was the preservation of an earlier proto-language/culture versus the result of a latter day phenomenon - say, the spread of a potent cultural force across the trans-steppe high way - is not easy to answer. The 15kya timeline given by the paper for Eurasiatic's expansion is a starting line, one that has to be traced via archaeology through the Paleolithic and the Neolithic for it to yield fruit.Lathdrinorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08214825065599007633noreply@blogger.com