Re: CHAT: Genetics: was: CHAT: minimum phonemes, was vrindo

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> > >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, alypius wrote:
> >
> > Cavilli-Sforza, in connection with the human genome research project, has
> > demonstrated that there is a very strong--not perfect, but very
> > strong--relationship between genetic relatedness and linguistic relatedness.
>
> I've heard of that project, of course, but merely in the newspapers...
> Can you give a reference for that demonstration? Its not that I don't
> believe you, it's that I'm not convinced yet ;-).
http://chess96.com/Olympiad/indoeuro.htm
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/Indo2.html

There is certainly overlap/correlation, but as you said
elsewhere, it can be a dangerously misleading one.

Perhaps more emphasis should be placed on the wave-spread
theory as a balance to the family-tree of languages.
Of course, genes spread in exactly these same 2 ways,
but one is often out of phase with the other.
Even today, there are said to be language "continua"
between French/Spanish/Italian near the borders.

There is much doubt that Proto-IndoEuropean was ever spoken
by one homogeneous group or ever had one standard dialect.
Maybe it just sort-of came together from several sources,
then diverged into many, like a style of music.