Re-Inventing the Wheel

Interesting article today in the NYT Science section about new attempts to use mathematical tools developed for biology to do comparative linguistics. The authors of the new study have come up with a very early date for PIE (that's proto-Indo-European, to you and me): 8,700 years ago. Traditional dates based on older methods agree on about 5,500 years ago. Linguists are skeptical after failed attempts at "glottochronology", which involves comparing how many cognates languages share from a core group of words. This objection also seems pretty telling:

The earliest wheels appear in the archaeological record around 5,500 years ago. So the proto-Indo-European language could not have started to split into its daughter tongues much before that date, some linguists argue [because they all have cognates for "wheel" which are descended from a comon source word]. If the wheel was invented after the split, each language would have a different or borrowed word for it.

Still, it could be true. Dr. Gray (one of the authors) argues that each language could have independently derived their word for wheel from the PIE root for "to roll." I'm not sure how plausible that is, but it's not obviously crazy. Anyway, it's food for thought.

It's also cool that scientists have found a new planetoid, or Kuiper Belt object, or maybe even wandering Oort Cloud object. But Sedna? What's with abandoning Latin and Greek mythology for some native American name? I like a little onomastic consistency in my solar system, thank you very much. How about Dis or something? Orcus? Aidoneus? Minthe, even? (She was a concubine of Hades' whom Persephone turned into a mint plant. The things you had to watch out for in ancient Greece, I'm telling you. She's probably no good because "Sedna" is bright red.) I don't think we've seen any features on Pluto, so it can't be we've used up the whole cast of the underworld on craters and suchlike. C'mon, science guys! Don't go all Kwakiutl on us, there's no sense in it.

Comments

[mattH]

Of course, you should remember that just because the earliest known wheel is 5,500 years old doesn't mean it wasn't invented/discovered before. Earlier dates for certain things have a habit of popping up, usually about the time many theories have come to rely upon it, ironically enough.

[Belle Waring]

Yes, I thought of that too. Absence of archaeological isn't evidence of archaeological absence, as they say.

[Carlos]

I read the Gray-Atkinson paper after it came out. The constraints they selected automatically biased their results for an older time of separation, and the linguistic data set they used was deeply unrepresentative of the Indo-European languages. Not surprisingly, the trees they came up with were horrible.

I expected this paper to die a quick and quiet death. But not only has the New York Times resurrected it, it's tried balancing the account.

Ugh. The NYT used to have decent science reporting. Still does, for some individual articles. But there's been a downward trend for years.

C.

[drapeto]

C'mon, science guys! Don't go all Kwakiutl on us, there's no sense in it.

nonsense. political correctness now rules the land. the snifflers support group meets in the basement at 2pm, tea and cookies will be served.

[chujoe]

What about the arbitrary nature of the sign, huh? Personally, as someone who lived in the NW for many years, I thought Sedna was an inspired choice, though I think I would have gone for Quan Ho, the Goddess of Mercy worshiped by the Chinese & Vietnamese. We could all use a little mercy, no?

[wolfangel]

Some responses to this work:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000208.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000209.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000210.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000211.html

[chris]

Colin Renfrew, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge (UK), has been arguing for 25 years that IE languages spread, at least into Europe, with the dissemination of agriculture, starting 7 - 8 thousand years ago.

[Anton Sherwood]

It has been suggested that the breakup and spread of IE got its initial impetus from the rise of the Black Sea after the ice ages. Probably not true, but a charming notion.