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The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) suggests that the Indo-European languages originated in Europe and have existed there since the Paleolithic. It argues that the appearance of Indo-Europeans coincides with the first regional settlement of Homo sapiens in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic age.
Its main proponents are the Italian linguists Mario Alinei, Gabriele Costa and Cicero Poghirc as well as the German and Belgian prehistorians Alexander Häusler and Marcel Otte.
Continuity Theory
The Continuity Theory proposes that Indo-European speakers arrived in Europe tens of millennia ago, and that by the end of the Ice Age, had already differentiated into Celtic/Italic/Slavic/Germanic/etc. speakers occupying territories within or close to their traditional homelands. It also suggests that the glaciers and pre-glacial basins that compartmentalised Europe during the Ice Age may actually have been the mechanisms for this process of differentiation of Indo-European into its component families.
It is based on a synthesis of linguistic studies, the archaeogenetical studies of Brian Sykes indicating that some 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to the Paleolithic, as well as on archaeological data indicating European cultural continuity.
Proponents point to a lack of archaeological evidence for an Indo-European invasion in the Bronze Age; to the lack of substantial genetic change since the Paleolithic; and to analogy with a theory of a Paleolithic origin of Uralic peoples and languages in Eurasia. Moreover, the continuity theory is much more parsimonious in comparison with classical approaches to the IE developments.
PCT critique for systematic bias German historiography and related 'wissenschaften'. This state sponsored systematic bias lay shadow, to this day, on understanding of European prehistory.
Criticism
The mainstream[citation needed] position of historical linguistics is that genetic continuity does not imply linguistic continuity[citation needed]. 2003 Nature have quite contrary quote Languages, like genes, provide vital clues about human history[1]
That theories of a literal "military conquest" have fallen into disfavour with most supporters of the theory of a Chalcolithic origin of Indo-European. What it mean Chalcolithic origin conception is a brige toward PCT from Kurgan h.
The time frame proposed by PCT is far beyond mainstream estimates, by a factor of at least 500%,[citation needed] and the hypothesis is not taken seriously in Indo-European studies[citation needed].
Alinei's book was reviewed favourably by Jonathan Morris in Mother Tongue, a journal dedicated to the reconstruction of Paleolithic language, judging Alinei's theory as being
- "both simpler than its rivals and more powerful in terms of the insights it provides into language in the Meso- and Palaeolithic. While his book contains some flaws I believe that it deserves to be regarded as one of the seminal texts on linguistic archaeology, although given its lamentable lack of citation in English-language circles, it appears that recognition will have to wait until a translation of the original Italian appears."[1]
Now as on 2007 the number of citation[2] is larger in English language papers. Perhaps some English-only speaking linguist learned Italian language.
References
See also
- Pre-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European language
- Proto-Indo-Europeans
- Neolithic Europe
- Urheimat
- Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory
- Devaneya Pavanar (postulates origin of the Tamil language in Kumari Kandam before 100,000 BC)