Articles tagged with: Bouckaert et al.
The Mis-Mapping of the Indo-European Homeland
This post focuses on two additional problems that skew the analysis toward locating the Indo-European urheimat in Anatolia as opposed to the steppe zone: the location of the highest-order split in the IE language family and the southern location of extant Indo-Iranian languages.
The Role of Advection in Modeling Population Migrations
In the previous GeoCurrents post, we suggested that advection as well as diffusion should be taken into account in mathematical models of language expansion. Here, we examine one study of population movement that does just that. This study, co-authored by Kate Davison, Pavel Dolukhanov, Graeme R. Sarson, and Anvar Shukurov of University of Newcastle upon Tyne and published in Journal of Archaeological Science in 2006, aims to model the spread of Neolithic farmers in Europe from a localized area in the Near East. This work is particularly relevant to the linguistic issue at hand, as Bouckaert et al. argue that Indo-European languages were carried from Anatolia into Europe and elsewhere by those very Neolithic farmers.
Do Languages Spread Solely By Diffusion?
The current post addresses the issue of language spread, questioning whether it occurs by way of diffusion only, as modeled by Bouckaert et al. Instead, we suggest that a different transport phenomenon, that of advection, should be incorporated in order to provide an adequate mathematical model of language expansion.
Shared Innovations Are More Important Than Shared Retentions
In this post, we focus on another factor that likewise leads to a misshapen tree: using shared retentions rather than shared innovations as testimony for intermediate nodes on the tree.
103 Errors in Mapping Indo-European Languages in Bouckaert et al., Part III: From Western Russia to the Balkan Peninsula
(Continued) The most glaring error in the linguistic map of western Russia and environs by Bouckaert et al. concerns the labeling of Belarus. The number “22,” placed in the center of the country, is listed as signifying the “Czech E,” which presumably means “eastern Czech.” As the authors have correspondingly appended the label “Byelorussian” to a small area in the …
Response to Quentin D. Atkinson
We would like to thank Quentin D. Atkinson for taking the time to respond to our critique of the Science article by Bouckaert et al., of which he is one of the authors. While he appears to restate their team’s position rather than address specific criticisms that we had voiced, we feel that we should address those issues that Atkinson brings up in defense of their methodology.
The Malformed Language Tree of Bouckaert and His Colleagues
In this post, we will focus on the problems surrounding Bouckaert et al.’s tree diagram of Indo-European languages; the next post will focus on dating issues.
Terranova: The Black Petaltail - A Novel
Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development (5th Edition)
Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World (3rd Edition)
