"Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction"

[bouteillebleu]

I have a soft spot for crackpot theories. And Edo Nyland's theory of why all languages evolved from Basque, a language which is commonly taken to be an isolate among languages spoken in Europe, is a great example of such

Comments

[reichsfreiherr]

Entirely from a layman’s point of view shouldn’t it be as simple as there being an obvious similarity in sentence structure or similar words appearing, at least historically? This is probably up there with people complaining that historians aren’t studying Helen of Troy and instead focusing on male figures like Alexander which misses out the crucial difference that one of them was real while the other wasn’t.

[bouteillebleu]

Well, he makes the following claims:

* The original language spoken across Africa and Europe was Saharan, whose closest remaining descendant is Basque;
* Proto-Indo-European is a myth, all the languages that apparently are similar enough that they might have a common ancestral language were actually manufactured, both syntax and vocabulary, by nasty god-worshipping male-supremacist priests who were attempting to fool everyone into believing that Saharan never existed;
* The Saharan speakers were goddess-worshipping female-revering equal-opportunities lovely fluffy people;
* Mass comparison is totally a useful linguistic tool and not just a way to find vast amounts of spurious cognates

[reichsfreiherr]

The Saharan speakers were goddess-worshipping female-revering equal-opportunities lovely fluffy people

That reminds me of this comment in regards to the Mosuo. In this case it seems like the assertion of male = bad: female = good might easily be someone trying to come up with an ‘exotic’ alternative culture in sharp contrast to many of the systems today but with an extra bit of polarisation thrown in to spice things up a bit. It also plays into that myth that while men are aggressive and individualistic, women will automatically bond together and form support communities so I’d wonder if this ‘specialist’ was simply extrapolating from that stereotype. Plus I’m always just that little bit suspicious about ‘academic’ websites where there isn’t any information about the researcher himself.

[rochvelleth]

*rofl* I love theories like this, for the entertainment value :)