Re: Neanderthal and PIE

Den 11. okt. 2008 kl. 20.22 skreiv Jim Henry:

> OK, let's try it on as a conworld scenario.  What would it imply?
> A conworld can vary from the real world in any number of odd ways,
> but it needs to be internally consistent.
>
> It seems to me to imply that something caused a massive slowdown
> in the normal linguistic changes that would have been happening
> in (let's say) NPIE between 30K and 6K years ago.  Hypothesis:
> a small number of Neanderthal survivors discovered something
> around 30K years ago that made them immortal or at least
> extremely long-lived.  The small community made a habit of
> cremating its few casualties, which is why there are no Neanderthal
> fossils or skeletons more recent than that.  About 6K years ago,
> they were wiped out, but not before their ancient language had
> been picked up as a hieratic language by a neighboring group
> of Homo sapiens.  What with one thing and another, the hieratic
> language had a massive influence on the vernacular, and Bob's
> your uncle.
Here is a better alternative: The Neanderthals didn't die out after
all, but mixed with the Crô Magnons, at least to some extent, and
brought some traditions and genetic material with them that
influenced the culture in the region that later came to develop IE.

LEF