"The surprising origins of Europeans" Topic

"The answers to the human past are out there, hidden in the DNA of bones in ancient burial mounds and unmarked graves.

Increasingly, those answers are coming to light as geneticists at Harvard and elsewhere employ sophisticated methods to extract that DNA and make it readable despite the ravages of time.

On Tuesday, geneticists from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT highlighted those evolving techniques and talked about recent findings that revealed that a previously unknown group made a major contribution to the gene pool of modern Europeans and Native Americans. They also discussed the result of preliminary investigations that suggest that an ancient civilization located between the Black and Caspian seas may have created a major group of modern languages, spanning English, German, Russian, Urdu, Punjabi, and Hindi…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Yes, we're a real "soup-mix" of groups.

Why is this semi-academic article in Utter Drivel though?

Linguists postulated that since the early 1800s.

Mallen is correct. We've established all this already. More unscrupulous people called them the "Aryans." Nice of the genetecists to back up the linguists.

There is only one problem. Where is the physical evidence for them. The towns, the monuments, the ruins…. It seems they would have left some sort of garbage around?

Or were they ecoenthusastic green peacers who policed their campsites.

Good question.

Amicalement
Armand

Clearly they'd be lo-tech nomads. What's to find apart from stone artefacts & possibly burial evidence (if they did anything fancy with burials)?

Dear Ochoin

Agreed, but then, does that constitute a "civilization" as the common coin of the word goes?

The problem becomes --

No artifacts
No records
No literature
No writing
No culuture
No traces

And that is a problem in deed when you're taklking about a "civilization."

We're getting into the fabled noble savage Amer-Indian as a peaceful, eco-conscious greenpeacer, or the myth of the matriarchial caring, sharing, nurturing culture of the femenazis.

Once upon a time there was a…

Would you agree that culture & civilisation are now seen as synonyms?
This came about I think because of the 19th century tendency to equate civilisation with material goods. Surely the ability to produce, for instance, a gas-guzzling V8 doesn't make you superior?

There is more to a people than materialism. Can a tradition in oral poetry amongst illiterate subsistence farmers compare to a dynamic & published literature by a literate people? Ask Homer or Hesiod.
What about spirituality? Is this of no worth?

You can bring in all the politics you want into this but I will not write off pre-tech, non-Western societies quite so glibly.

Sorry Politics has nothing to do with it. Nor does a moral choice of "superiority" because of producing a gas guzzling V-8. On the other hand a civilization that can produce a polio vaccine is far superior to one with medicine men in masks jumping around muttering ululating sounds.

In science I am only swayed by hard objective data and empirical facts.

Okay Otto, 'civilization' may be a high-falutin' term for a stone-age tribe that built only in wood and earth. But anthropologists these days are calling every collection of grass shacks and gardens a 'civilization', so go argue with them.

There have certainly been 'cultures' identified in the right part of western Asia, with permanent village sites, gardens, stone tools, pottery and garbage dumps. There is still debate about which culture or cultures were the original Indo-European speakers. But it's a good bet that it was one of them.

In science I am only swayed by hard objective data and empirical facts.

You're being sarcastic aren't you? Otherwise why would you use such emotive, value laden terms as these:

peaceful, eco-conscious greenpeacer, or the myth of the matriarchial caring, sharing, nurturing culture of the femenazis.

Trust me scholars don't speak like this.People with political agendas do.
And by all means have an agenda but please don't try to claim you don't. It just sounds silly.

Nope Ochoin

Sorry you don't believe in Science, but I do, and they are value laden for you because you are a deconstructionist.

You can call for your spiritual medicine man when you have a heart attack, I'll call for the people who use science, hard objective data and empirical facts.

Now I see why this is on Utter Drivel.