Re: Indo-European family tree (was Re: Celtic and Afro-Asiatic?)

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Hallo!
>
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > >      Gray and Atkinson address some "minor" problems with
> > > glottochronology which they claim to have overcome with some
> > > advanced mathematics they call a "Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo
> > > model"; but I don't see how that can remedy the problem that the
> > > basic assumption of glottochronology - that lexical replacement rate
> > > was constant - is false.  It is still glottochronology.
> >
> > That's not what tey use bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo for. What they do
> is
> > replacing the assumption of a constant change rate with the assumption that
> > equal rates are the likeliest - if the likelihood penalty from varying
> rates
> > than the gain from achieving a more likely topology, the model will produce
> > unequal change rates in different branches.
> >
> > (I'm not saying this works; I'm not in a position to judge. What I can say
> is
> > that if it does not work, the reason is not the mere fact that lexical
> > replacement rates are not constant.)
>
> Nor am I in a position to judge.  However, they arrive at a date for
> the breakup of PIE that must be wrong.  See below.
>
> > > Third, the age they assign to Proto-Indo-European is impossible.
> > > Any archaeologist will tell you that the wheel wasn't invented
> > > yet 8000 years ago.  Yet, a PIE word for `wheel' is reconstructed
> > > with as much certainty as is possible in this discipline.  And also
> > > words for `yoke', `wagon', `carry by wagon', etc.  This means that
> > > Proto-Indo-European can hardly be older than 6000 years.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > If their time-depth is wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean that their
> > topology is wrong.
>
> The idea behind the Anatolian origin hypothesis is that PIE was the
> language of the first Neolithic farmers of central and eastern Europe,
> who are archaeologically known to have spread across the area between
> 5500 and 5000 BC.
[BIG snip]

I think you misunderstood what I meant by "topology" - I meant the structure of
the tree (specifically, the branching order), not the geographical position of
the speakers of any pre-record IE form.

Re: the Black Sea Flood, my understanding is that it's considered refuted by
geologists. I could go looking for material on this, if you want.

                                                     Andreas

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