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OT: R*-M173 back migration
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mystery Solver: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Mystery Solver: How many African language phyla are you aware of? Do you think that all these phyla account for all the languages spoken in the continent? And again, what is the case being made; language expansion into Africa, or...? Because if not, what is the point? [/QUOTE]In the standard linguistic classification: Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo, Khoesan are the 4 phyla. + some isolates. The case being made is that language spreading across Africa displacing as well as assimilating the wide variety of languages already existing some 30KYA would explain both the, clearly distinguished phyla with few isolates and the large variety of morphological, and consonantal schemes found within them.[/QUOTE]Which language was supposedly doing this 30ky ago? You don't seem to be properly engaging in what is being said. If there no specific language family being noted here, and this is just done for the heck of hypothesizing, then wouldn't this take us back to the question you are responding to? And as already relayed to you, so what if many of the *Euro-identified* languages have been deemed to belong to families; does this in any way diminish diversity of African languages? If not, then what's the issue? [QUOTE] Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: These characteristics seem contrary to the enormous time depth of African languages and the expected variety that would result.[/QUOTE]"Enormous time depth" of which African languages - how enormous? You just claimed that your extracts from Blench were acknowledging relatively recent divergences of many of the major languages spoken, so what is all this talk of 'enormous time depth'? ^This is why I said you hadn't been carefully engaging in what my reponses to your extracts were saying and why so. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: I don't think of this thread as an argument between us or that I need to defend all of Blench's points.[/QUOTE]I don't know where this topic is going or even coming from now, but one thing is clear,you seem to be defending the extracts, which I would imagine follows the claim made about 30ky ago expansion. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: As I pointed out above, his hypothesis is seriously damaged if R1*-M173 did not occur in Papua, south India, etc, where his back population would have come from.[/QUOTE]Therefore, which would render the rest of his claims pointless, as this would have been the basis of going through all that guesswork, no? [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: You asked for examples from your response: Quetzalcoatl wrote [QUOTE] This is very much in contrast with Papua and the New World, where linguistic differentiation is at levels such that existing groupings remain disputed and many isolates have been identified.[/QUOTE]Mystery Solver said: [QUOTE]Because unlike Africans, when these groups moved into new habitat and diverged from thereon at some points in time, being highly conservative groups and living in relative isolation from one another, less assimilation would have lively occurred; hence, this would have resulted in relatively more pronounced language divergences.[/QUOTE]But essentially this is what Blench is saying, i.e. African languages have not been isolated and instead the major phyla have displaced, assimilated the languages that were there originally (i.e. this expansion overran languages not empty space.[/QUOTE]Again, the reason I told you to carefully read my responses. Blench is simply talking about the idea of more isolates being in the said non-African places and using that to extrapolate about the possibility of African languages being initially more diverse than it is now [and one which he reckons 'ought' to have followed through to this day - see your emphasized citation with in the *very last post* of my reply at the bottom], while I'm on the other hand, providing the biological and linguistic rationale for the cause of the said "situations" in the citation to which I was replying - see the difference? E.g. see citation below: [i]Whatever the [b]present situation[/b], there must have been [b]a stage in African prehistory[/b] when the continent was characterized by [b]**extreme** linguistic and biological diversity[/b]. As [b]modern humans[/b] diffused from southern and eastern Africa, they would have spread over the continent at [b]extremely low population[/b] densities, either assimilating or out competing existing in situ hominid populations.[/i] What does 'extreme diversity' mean here?...perhaps because he is including 'non-modern' humans, so as to cause this 'extreme diversity'? Because as far as modern humans are concerned, on what basis would it be proposed that Africans would have been 'extremely' more diverse than the case is today? How does he know that languages in this 'prehistory' were any more diverse than it is today? [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: Quetzalcoatl said [QUOTE]To illustrate the point, there are more language isolates in Colombia than in the entirety of Africa (AILV 1994). This seems entirely counter to our present understanding of the relationship between time depth and linguistic diversity; if modern humans did indeed come out of Africa, and they already had some form of language, [b]*then the languages of Africa ought to be considerably more diverse than those in Papua or South America.*[/b][/QUOTE]Mystery solver said [QUOTE]African languages are diverse; they just so happen to be relatively more closely related due to relatively less isolation of African groups, as a result of the more recent divergences, resulting into fast paced expansions of these groups more so than their much earlier predecessors, because these demographic events came about at a time when humans had already began producing advanced cultures, with these cultural processes progressing with new generations. Assimilation processes with the relatively more direct decendants [in terms of TMRCA lineages] of earlier groups means acculturation, with languages eventually converging with or replaced by the more dominant languages [likely the newer ones] spoken in the region.[/QUOTE]Again, the points you make: that these divergences are relaitively recent, that absorption has taken place, that expansion was rapid because of technological advantages are the points that Blench makes. [/QUOTE]Again, you are not engaging. See post above, because I think it is just as relevant to this post [and please pay attention to what I highlighted above with the '*', when taking the advice]. ------- Ps: Didn't see this in your reply to Rasol, because I thought it was part of your citation of his word, which it isn't... [QUOTE]Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl: Rasol said [QUOTE]I keep referring to it, because it is better grounded in evidence and reason than Blench's far fetched and weasel worded speculations, which attempt to attribute to 'eurasia' languages which are not found in eurasia based upon dubious assocation with lineages not proven to have originated in eurasia. Blench is arguably engaged in special pleading in the absense of evidence.[/QUOTE]I think you are mischaracterizing Blench, or perhaps my description was not good enough. Blench clearly says that this is speculation about a possible way to explain what linguistics finds. He does not claim any Eurasian languages-- every language and its development takes place within Africa. I still think that R1*-M173 did not originate in Africa. The papers you cited and Keita's paper seem to locate its origin somewhere in the Levant-- and it does seem that this shoots down Blench's idea that his back flow population with this lineage came from the region of Papua. This, to me, does not qualify as "weasel words", "special pleading" etc.[/QUOTE]Where does Keita make the claim that R*-M173 originates in the Levant; in fact in the said citation, he isn't arguing for any Levantine origin of anything - where did you get that idea? [/QB][/QUOTE]
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