Dates of Human Diaspora WAS: Re: PIE and Nostratic

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@W...>
> wrote:
> [snip]
> If Nostratic is real, then Proto-Nostratic would have been spoken
> somewhen between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago if not earlier,
> and the most likely location is northeastern Africa.  At any rate,
> it seems to predate the invention of agriculture.
> [snip]
Joerg, I wonder about your dates.

As I understand it, there may have been some human settlement in the
Americas as early as 20 kya (20 thousand years B.P.); and was almost
surely at least one settlement of humans related to modern "Native
Americans" in the Americas by 10 kya.

Furthermore, as I understand it, East Asia's Pacific coast was well-
settled by 25 kya.

I don't know if these next dates are regarded as settled; but I had
heard that the "out-of-Africa" (into Asia) date for completely modern
humans was probably by between about 50 kya and about 45 kya, and
the "left turn" into Europe was probably by about 30 kya.

So, if Proto-Nostratic was spoken less than 20,000 years Before the
Present time, why couldn't it have been spoken nearly anywhere in the
Old World?  Only if it was spoken more than 30,000 years B.P. would
its range have to have been limited to Africa and/or Asia.

Also, is it really settled that Proto-IE is from 6000 BP (4000 BCE)?
Don't some of the same people who think it came from Anatolian
farmers instead of Kurgan horsemen and charioteers, think it came
from 7000 or 8000 BP or BCE?

Why would Proto-Nostratic have to be an entire 5000 to 7000 years
older than Proto-IE?  Why couldn't their age difference be the same
as the difference between Vulgate Latin (4th to 5th century C.E.) and
Dante's Italian (13th to 14th century C.E.)?  That would be more like
800 to 1000 years.

Accepting a short age for Proto-IE, that would be 6800-7000 years for
Proto-Nostratic; accepting a long age, 10800-11000 years for Proto-
Nostratic.  If the age difference between Proto-Nostratic and Proto-
IE is 1000 years (enough to make Dante unable to recognize Latin as a
natural language, and unable to see it as related to Italian or to
any of the Romance languages he had learned), then Proto-Nostratic,
if indeed it ever actually existed, might have been spoken as late as
9000 B.C.E, 11000 years ago.

The part about Proto-Nostratic "predating the invention of
agriculture" seems likely, given that not everybody who speaks
a "Nostratic" language had an agriculture.

Tom H.C. in MI

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