October 03, 2003
Review of Indo-European Origins: the Anthropological Evidence
Quarterly Review of Biology, Dec 2002 v77 i4 p487(2)
Indo-European Origins: the Anthropological Evidence. (Book Review) Robert R. Sokal.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Chicago Press
By John V Day. Washington (DC): The Institute for the Study of Man. $68.00 (paper). xxiv + 546 p; ill.; no index. ISBN: 0-941694-75-5. 2001.
This is an ambitious and unusual book. The author has set himself the task of collecting and summarizing 200 years worth of research on the Indo-European (IE) problem by scholars from diverse disciplines. Comparative linguistics leaves us in little doubt that in prehistoric times there existed a population that spoke a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language ancestral to nearly 150 living languages dominating Europe, and widely distributed throughout West and South Asia. Who were these ancient PIE speakers, when and where did they live, and by what processes did their descendant languages arrive at their present locations?
In successive chapters the author lists and discusses evidence from linguistics, textual and artistic sources, and biological anthropology (dermatoglyphics, cranioskeletal studies, and genetics). Some of the biological findings are quite up to date, although the intensive current research in this area will rapidly outdate them.
One difficulty of studying IE origins is the complexity of the concept. The author points out the noncongruence of several aspects of ancient populations in Europe. These would include archeological, biological, cultural, and linguistic criteria. These criteria yield only partially overlapping classifications of their constituent populations. One statement or investigation about Indo-Europeans may refer to linguistic characters, yet incautious readers may transfer the inference to biological characteristics of the populations. Although the author is well aware of these complexities, it is not always easy to recognize which aspect of the IE puzzle he refers to in his accounts.
The discussion focuses on four population-dynamic processes, all of which can lead to language change: in situ divergence; demic diffusion; elite dominance and folk migration, the two being opposite ends of a continuous spectrum of population movements; and contact-induced language shift. The author postulates expectations for each type of evidence under each of the above models and draws conclusions from the results of numerous cognate studies.
The structure and scope of this book raise an important question for researchers who want to test hypotheses by summarizing numerous experiments and other results. In fields such as clinical trials, where the hypotheses are more narrowly defined, meta-analysis has become established as the procedure of choice. Some new type of meta-analysis has yet to be developed for data, such as the ones in this book, ranging from descriptions in ancient works of variable reliability to conclusions reached from sophisticated statistical analyses of carefully designed studies. Absent such procedures, it is difficult to interpret the often contradictory evidence from several disciplines.
An added problem arises from the possibility of misinterpreting the results of the reported findings. I am unable to evaluate this in disciplines in which I have no expertise, but as an example of the dangers inherent in such a multifarious study, I can cite the treatment of synthetic surfaces in Chapter 9. The author references my work on synthetic surfaces (on page 240) without reporting the gist of my findings that the interpolation of unbalanced data matrices invalidates the maps based on them, because even random patterns when treated in this manner yield trends that invite interpretation. He not only goes ahead and uses the synthetic maps of the first three principal component maps as evidence, but also discusses the evidence from the next four components that even their authors do not consider seriously. Since the author cites the impressive total of over 2,600 references, one wonders how many others might be misinterpreted.
Day's tentative conclusions are that the PIE speakers came from small, sparse populations that established themselves by migration and elite dominance in various regions of Eurasia. They were characterized by light pigmentation of skin and hair and originated on the Eurasian steppes. Because of the many references cited in the text, the book in places makes for wearisome reading. It suffers also from the lack of an index. Nevertheless, this volume is an invaluable compendium for anyone interested in or researching the IE problem and I, for one, will certainly consult it in the future.
ROBERT R SOKAL, Ecology & Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York
Posted by Dienekes at October 3, 2003 03:01 AM | PermaLink"Day's tentative conclusions are that the PIE speakers came from small, sparse populations that established themselves by migration and elite dominance in various regions of Eurasia. They were characterized by light pigmentation of skin and hair and originated on the Eurasian steppes"
How could he not come to this conclusion?
Posted by: Polak at October 3, 2003 08:34 AM>> How could he not come to this conclusion?
Day's book is good as an overview of research, however his conclusion is not borne out by the facts. There is no good reason to believe that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were especially light pigmented, even if one accepts the steppe hypothesis (which is most likely incorrect anyway).
Posted by: Dienekes at October 3, 2003 02:43 PMNo good reason to believe that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were partially depigmented in a Nordic sense? Day provides 83 pages of good reasons on the pigmentation issue alone.
Most archaeologists, including Mallory and Gimbutas, accept "the steppe hypothesis." Alternative explanations suffer from a dearth of evidence.
Posted by: Ptolemy at October 4, 2003 10:50 PM>> No good reason to believe that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were partially depigmented in a Nordic sense? Day provides 83 pages of good reasons on the pigmentation issue alone.
You read the wrong book. Day does indeed amass a great volume of evidence, which however points in the direction of early Indo-Europeans being mainly brunet.
>> Most archaeologists, including Mallory and Gimbutas, accept "the steppe hypothesis." Alternative explanations suffer from a dearth of evidence.
That's your opinion.
Posted by: Dienekes at October 5, 2003 01:08 AM>>You read the wrong book. Day does indeed amass a great volume of evidence, which however points in the direction of early Indo-Europeans being mainly brunet.
What? How would you know? I own the book. You obviously have not read it. Otherwise, you would have posted your own review of the book itself. Instead, you posted a review you wrote of "In Quest of Our Linguistic Ancestors," lamenting that it is "impossible [to cross-reference his citations], unless one purchases Day's book."
>>That's your opinion.
Yeah, and most archaeologists' opinion as well.
>> What? How would you know? I own the book. You obviously have not read it.
No, I've read it in full and the facts presented therein do not support the author's conclusion. I'd advise you to read it too with a critical spirit.
Posted by: Dienekes at October 5, 2003 02:54 PM