Re: Language tree rooted in Turkey

Diarmid Logan wrote:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/nsu/031124/031124-6.html
> 
> Language tree rooted in Turkey
> 
> Evolutionary ideas give farmers credit for Indo-European tongues.
> 
> 27 November 2003
> 
> JOHN WHITFIELD
> 
> A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to spread
> and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that farmers in
> what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not later Siberian
> horsemen, as some linguists reckon.

I have just finished tearing this drivel to pieces elsewhere already.
Just look at the nonsense above "Siberian horsemen". They do have and
did have Reindeer, but they are hard to confuse with horses.

[snip rubbish]

> All other Indo-European languages split off from Hittite, the oldest
> recorded member of the group, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, the
> pair calculates.

Languages aren't exactly stable. They are prone to change - the rate
of change vary greatly. It very often depends on external matters to
the people using the language. It can be geological activity (earth
quakes, volcanos causing a people movement), drought, immigrants -
emigration and even a return of people. How can anyone factor in these
unrelated, at times chance events? They cannot even know that the area
contained the same people that long ago as they claim - those that
spoke Hittite. Lets face it, there are a number of languages that use
the Hittite hieroglyphs to write their text, including Mitanni, Luwian
etc. This shows a contact with people of different languages existed.

> Around this time, farming techniques began to spread out of Anatolia -
> now Turkey - across Europe and Asia, archaeological evidence shows.
> The farmers themselves may have moved, or natives may have adopted
> words along with agricultural technology.

The obvious here is that first it had to ARRIVE IN Anatolia before it
could move from there. If the notion "agriculture spreads the
language" is used as "argument", that agriculture = IE language, then
the language should NOT be Hittite, as agriculture originates from
Afro-Asiatic language areas. The "theory" fails for that reason alone.

> Some linguists believe that Kurgan horsemen carried them out of central Asia 6,000 
> years ago.

I can assure these people than a particular type GRAVE does NOT ride
horses - it is a 100% guarantee!

[..]
-- 
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised 
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The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
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