http://www.gnxp.com/new/2009/11/30/old-europe/ Genetics Tue, 03 Apr 2018 05:20:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.27 http://www.gnxp.com/new/2009/11/30/old-europe/#comment-16768 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:19:53 +0000 #comment-16768 Was this the region which Dr Anthony was suggesting spoke an Afro-Asiatic language? I recall he said the Indo-European word “tauros” (bull) was borrowed from that.

]]> http://www.gnxp.com/new/2009/11/30/old-europe/#comment-16769 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:58:43 +0000 #comment-16769 Whisper who dare: there was quite a lot of nice, warm weather in the Bronze Age.

]]> http://www.gnxp.com/new/2009/11/30/old-europe/#comment-16770 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:46:35 +0000 #comment-16770 One of the problems with pre-literate civilizations is that they’re only accessible via archaeology, which is a field averse to system-building or theorizing. 
 
The field seems to be moving away from radical empiricism. K C Chang, a specialist in Chinese archeology from a generation ago, said that his teachers discouraged him from using any insights at all insights from anthropology, history, or texts from the periods following the era was studying.  
 
30 years ago nothing I read did more than enumerate clusters of pots and skulls and femurs and arrowheads found at various places. It was completely infuriating. They wouldn’t even say that Hallstatt might be the Celts. 
 
During an earlier period archaeology was very speculative — e.g. V. Gordon Childe. Gimbutas was sort of a survival of that era.

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