Re: Neanderthal and PIE
| From: | Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, October 12, 2008, 20:54 |
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On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 4:03 PM, Michael Poxon <mike@...> wrote:
> Possibly silly way out of this (almost equally silly!) mess? Make what we
> call Neanderthals a stranded group of aliens - hence the anthropological
> discontinuity as well - who live an awfully long time and breed only after a
> long time as well, so language change is much slower and more gradual. At
> the same time it would be an opportunity for a SF scenario, quite popular I
> understand. that posits we ourselves are alien offspring!
To make that halfway plausible, you would have to posit that the aliens
terraformed themselves to be able to live in Earth gravity, atmosphere,
etc., digest nutrients found in Earth plants and animals, etc; borrowing
a heap of DNA from the smartest animals they could find, improving
on it and making sure the resulting brains had enough room for their
minds.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
I analyze the results and write the article
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