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

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:23:03 -0500, Thomas Wier <trwier@...>
wrote:

>Except that it's not noticeably more complicated than the other
>major alternatives.  In fact, Mallory's, which is only a more
>sophisticated version of Gimbutas' (crazy) theories about
>"Old Europe" (in which the evil warlike patriarchal Indo-Europeans
>overran the peaceful agrarian matriarchal mother-goddess worshipping
>pre-Indo-Europeans -- I'm actually not exaggerating here even for
>effect; read her works) involves all sorts of invasions and movements,
>so in some sense Mallory's view, which predominates, is the more
>complicated.
I'm familiar with Gimbutas' theories, thank you.

I'm not even sure whether you're a supporter of Lord Renfrew's theory or
if you're just playing advocatus diaboli here.  I suspect that your
enthusiasm for it is only lukewarm, in any case, because I haven't seen
you making any arguments in favor of it, only a lot of critique of the
arguments against it.  I don't know where the IE "homeland" was, or if
indeed one can be identified, but it strikes me that Renfrew's theories
require a lot of special pleading.