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The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics
Over the past decade, a group of prolific and innovative evolutionary biologists has sought to reinvent historical linguistics through the use of phylogenetic and phylogeographical analysis, treating cognates like genes and conceptualizing the spread of languages in terms of the diffusion of viruses. Using these techniques, researchers claim to have located the origin of the Indo-European language family in Neolithic Anatolia, challenging the near-consensus view that it emerged in the grasslands north of the Black Sea thousands of years later. But despite its widespread celebration in the global media, this new approach fails to withstand scrutiny. As languages do not evolve like biological species and do not spread like viruses, the model produces incoherent results, contradicted by the empirical record at every turn. This book asserts that the origin and spread of languages must be examined primarily through the time-tested techniques of linguistic analysis, rather than those of evolutionary biology.
338 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 16, 2015
In 2003 and again in 2012 a team of authors, mainly Russell D. Gray & Quentin D. Atkinson, published papers in the journals Nature and Science claiming a radically earlier dating for the spread of the Indo-European languages on the basis of a new Bayesian philogenetic model that they had created. From even a cursory glance one could see that their model was extremely flawed, e.g. categorizing Polish as an East Slavic language, or dating the split of Romani from other Northern Indian languages to 1500 BC when it is known to have left the Subcontinent only around AD 1000. Most linguists only shook their heads at yet another example of Nature and Science performing little due diligence with linguistics submissions, instead happy to publish sensationalistic findings. Unfortunately, the popular press took the 2012 paper up too, never mentioning that the scholarly consensus was overwhelmingly against it.
An admirable job of debunking the Gray & Atkinson findings (and the subsequent mass media distortion) was carried out by two scholars who were also relative outsiders to Indo-European studies, but much more careful to weigh all the data: linguist Asya Peretsvaig and historian Martin W. Lewis. On their blog GeoCurrents they published a series of posts listing the flaws in Gray & Atkinson’s work. Cambridge University Press offered them the chance to draw up their criticisms in the more rigorous form of an academic monograph, and so we have this book.
The book opens with a general overview of Indo-European studies from the 18th century to Gray & Atkinson’s own work. They note how in spite of some attempts (often for racist ends) to place the spread of Indo-European in a grand narrative of sudden Aryan conquest, many prominent scholars even in the 19th and early 20th centuries urged caution and suggested a more gradual diffusion through sedentary populations adopting the more prestigious languages of neighbouring nomadic societies. The authors also mention the frosty reception of Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis, which sees the IE languages expanding out of Anatolia circa 8000 BC like Gray & Atkinson would claim later.
Some of the fatal weaknesses that the authors shown in Gray & Atkinson’s methodology include: 1) dealing solely with the lexicon essentially being the same old glottochronology approach that has repeatedly shown itself to be unreliable; 2) making unwarranted assumptions, such as that languages in millennia BC spread solely by slow demic diffusion when there is strong evidence for sudden population movements over large distances; 3) failing to distinguish shared retentions and shared innovations; 4) inadequately identifying borrowings, and 5) failing to allow for the complex social interactions including cross-cultural marriages, pervasive multilingualism, and wholesale language adoption which is shown almost everywhere in the world at all points of history.
After pointing out the biggest methodological flaws in Gray & Atkinson’s work, the authors show how the data is better explained by the Revised Steppe Theory as elaborated by Mallory in his In Search of the Indo-Europeans and Anthony in his The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. I imagine that most potential readers of this book have already read those popular introductions to the field, so most of this will be familiar, but the authors do draw insightful parallels with other language families such as those of native North America. Finally, Pereltsvaig & Lewis evaluate other novel techniques proposed recently for establishing language relations and dating, and the last chapter underscore how rebutting Gray & Atkinson’s work is crucial for the future of the field, as theory-first approaches already doomed geography in American universities.
This is a fun book, successfully rebutting Gray & Atkinson and along the way bring in all kinds of great trivia that historical linguists will eat up. The vast majority of the authors’ citations are to formal scholarly publications, and the bibliography for this volume is huge and shows a very well-rounded knowledge of linguistics and archaeology. I feel, however, that the book is weakened by the authors’ decision to include some links to blog posts at informal or amateur websites, whether because they wanted to make the book more friendly to a mass audience or because they were approaching a deadline and needed to cite/link to something. Some of the material also repeats in a sign that more editorial intervention would have been welcome.
An admirable job of debunking the Gray & Atkinson findings (and the subsequent mass media distortion) was carried out by two scholars who were also relative outsiders to Indo-European studies, but much more careful to weigh all the data: linguist Asya Peretsvaig and historian Martin W. Lewis. On their blog GeoCurrents they published a series of posts listing the flaws in Gray & Atkinson’s work. Cambridge University Press offered them the chance to draw up their criticisms in the more rigorous form of an academic monograph, and so we have this book.
The book opens with a general overview of Indo-European studies from the 18th century to Gray & Atkinson’s own work. They note how in spite of some attempts (often for racist ends) to place the spread of Indo-European in a grand narrative of sudden Aryan conquest, many prominent scholars even in the 19th and early 20th centuries urged caution and suggested a more gradual diffusion through sedentary populations adopting the more prestigious languages of neighbouring nomadic societies. The authors also mention the frosty reception of Colin Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis, which sees the IE languages expanding out of Anatolia circa 8000 BC like Gray & Atkinson would claim later.
Some of the fatal weaknesses that the authors shown in Gray & Atkinson’s methodology include: 1) dealing solely with the lexicon essentially being the same old glottochronology approach that has repeatedly shown itself to be unreliable; 2) making unwarranted assumptions, such as that languages in millennia BC spread solely by slow demic diffusion when there is strong evidence for sudden population movements over large distances; 3) failing to distinguish shared retentions and shared innovations; 4) inadequately identifying borrowings, and 5) failing to allow for the complex social interactions including cross-cultural marriages, pervasive multilingualism, and wholesale language adoption which is shown almost everywhere in the world at all points of history.
After pointing out the biggest methodological flaws in Gray & Atkinson’s work, the authors show how the data is better explained by the Revised Steppe Theory as elaborated by Mallory in his In Search of the Indo-Europeans and Anthony in his The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. I imagine that most potential readers of this book have already read those popular introductions to the field, so most of this will be familiar, but the authors do draw insightful parallels with other language families such as those of native North America. Finally, Pereltsvaig & Lewis evaluate other novel techniques proposed recently for establishing language relations and dating, and the last chapter underscore how rebutting Gray & Atkinson’s work is crucial for the future of the field, as theory-first approaches already doomed geography in American universities.
This is a fun book, successfully rebutting Gray & Atkinson and along the way bring in all kinds of great trivia that historical linguists will eat up. The vast majority of the authors’ citations are to formal scholarly publications, and the bibliography for this volume is huge and shows a very well-rounded knowledge of linguistics and archaeology. I feel, however, that the book is weakened by the authors’ decision to include some links to blog posts at informal or amateur websites, whether because they wanted to make the book more friendly to a mass audience or because they were approaching a deadline and needed to cite/link to something. Some of the material also repeats in a sign that more editorial intervention would have been welcome.
August 30, 2016
Excellent ... eat that you cocky Gray & Atkinson
March 2, 2026
This screed against the Anatolian hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages makes some good points. I found the final conclusion especially enlightening, as it sheds light on similar faulty epistemologies in other sciences.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews