Re: Indo-European Studies
Gerold Firl (geroldf@sdd.hp.com)
12 Jul 1995 12:56:42 -0700
In article <3trcqa$eel@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla02@cc.keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace) writes:
>Mad racial theories arise when you
>start arguing for an Indo-European racial group, as opposed to a family of
>languages. So what? But I don't think that anyone (apart from recognised
>loonies) now argues for a European source of Indo-European.
Why do you say that? Judging from the afiliation between the horse, the
early indo-europeans, and cattle, and looking at the places and times when
IE peoples first enter the historical record, it seems the likliest
homeland for the IE peoples was on the eurasian steppes, west of baihkal.
Probably the best of these lands are west of the urals, which makes them
european; while the eastern wing of the tribe may have had their
territorial base in asia, it seems probable that the european grasslands
have been inhabited by members of the IE family for a long time.
And really, classifying IE as a racial group is hardly "mad"; it's more
like a case of extreme splitting. At one time, the speakers of proto-IE
undoubtedly consisted of a cohesive cultural unit, which I picture as a
large tribe or primitive "nation". They certainly had distinctive cultural
attributes; whether there was sufficient genetic differentiation from other
tribes to warrent introducing a separate racial designation seems doubtful
to me, though perhaps not quite mad or loony.
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