PALEOLINGUISTICS
Pictet, Evans, Thurston & Sewell
AN IMPRESSIONIST ANALYSIS
James C. L'Angelle
New York University
Anthropology, Archaeology, Paleontology
"...anthropology (general study), ethnography (particular aggregations) and ethnology (all aggregations)...":
(The Lab) -- Pioneer in the field of historical linguistics, Adolphe Pictet, opened his volumnious work on the origin of European language with the following;
"...mais rien n'indique qu'ils aient débuté par être exclusivement chasseurs , à l'exemple de certaines tribus sauvages . Lors même qu'il en aurait été ainsi , il serait im possible de le prouver , puisque la vie pastorale d'abord , et ensuite l'agriculture."
"But nothing indicates that they started to be exclusively hunters, like some wild tribes. Even thus would have been so, it would be possible to prove it, since pastoral life first, and then agriculture." (1)
Of course, the rather far-reaching introduction was overshadowed by his methodology of creating word similarities where there may not have been any, as criticized by E.P. Evans in an 1884 issue of Atlantic Monthly;
"The comparatively high culture which the linguistic palaeontologist claims for primitive Aryan society is wholly inconsistent with the state of barbarism in which the descendants of the original stock are known to have lived at a period long after their supposed dispersion." (2)
"The comparatively high culture which the linguistic palaeontologist claims for primitive Aryan society is wholly inconsistent with the state of barbarism in which the descendants of the original stock are known to have lived at a period long after their supposed dispersion." (2)
Evans challenged the assumption that the emigrants from across the Caucasus had somehow lost their ability to fashion tools from metal, regressing to "a condition of life scarcely superior to that of a cave-dweller and contemporary of the mammoth." (Page 617) The field of linguistic paleontology, or paleolinguistics, has come a long way since the theory, and its antithesis, was presented. Genetics and calculus are employed to a limited degree to better explain the course of evolution of European language. But it doesn't account for the inconsistency in the regression to Neanderthal for Pictet's advanced pastoral emigrant culture, if it existed at all. Evans obviously didn't believe it for a minute. Evans argues strongly against the method used by Pictet to generate similarity in words, comparing it to a French chef, or to an impressionist painting where detail is lost the closer one gets to the artwork. In fact, some of Evans' very doubts are beginning to surface the more the actual paleontological record is uncovered in Europe. Even more important, those doubts are beginning to address a core theory in anthropology in the pattern of emergence of civilization; from the so-called "hunter-gatherer," to the "pastoral," or agricultural, to the gradual introduction of civilized culture.
By today's standards, with the rise of the internet, comes the proliferation of "stages of civilization;" a web search will return a million articles with any number of "stages.". This doesn't contribute one bit to the above debate as to whether Pictet foresaw in its kernel stages of evolution, civilization out of order with the Evans paradigm.
In 1909, Edgar Thurston published Castes and Tribes of Southern India. (3) Reviewed by "R. Sewell" in 1910 in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the clash between the hunter-gatherer vs. pastoral theory surfaced, in two different ways. Sewell first noted the difference between anthropology (general study), ethnography (particular aggregations) and ethnology (all aggregations). The distinction was specifically noted in "the notice of the Karumba and Karuba tribes," in which "the two are sharply differentiated from one another." The first were hunter-gatherers, the second part of the "ordinary agricultural population." (4, Page 915) Two theories rose as to whether the tribes were part of the same ethnologic group or were ethnographically distinct. One theory held that it was all in the name, while the other was based on "stature and nasal index." The latter relates to skull physiology but that would also affect how words are pronounced. Although the tribal comparison of the two is relatively recent, Sewell elaborated on the rewriting of words by the government, such as the changing of the River Khrisna to the River Kistna, dropping diacritical marks in the process. In this brief review of Thurston, all of the characteristics of the problem are almost accidentally addressed. Two tribes, physically different, but not necessarily genetically; one remained a hunter-gatherer, the other pastoral, without any strong evidence that one preceded the other. The Pictet impressionist image from afar became blurred when examined up close, as paleolinguistics played a part in something as basic as spelling.
Cited
1.) Pictet, A., LES ORIGINES INDO - EUROPÉENNES OU LES ARYAS PRIMITIFS, MÊME MAISON, Paris, 1863, Page 4; Les origines indo-européennes, ou, Les Aryas primitifs: essai de ... - Adolphe Pictet - Google Books
2.) Evans, E.P., "Linguistic Paleontology," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LIII, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1884, Page 616; The Atlantic : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
3.) Thurston, E., Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Government Press, Madras, 1909, Castes and Tribes of Southern India: Volume I—A and B (gutenberg.org)
4.) Sewell, R. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1910, pp. 914–17, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25189758.
Notes:
Burgess, James. “Notes on Hindu Astronomy and the History of Our Knowledge of It.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1893, pp. 717–61, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25197168.
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