Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="tetsujin28" data-source="post: 2808235" data-attributes="member: 1478">There is no evidence of an 'Indo-European culture'. This is the result of a confusion between language and culture. If you can find a copy, I recommend Colin Renfrew's (one of the most respected archaeologists and linguists dealing with Indo-European origins) article, &quot;Prehistory and the identity of Europe, or, don't let's be beastly to the Hungarians&quot; in P. Graves-Brown, S. Jones, and C. Gamble (eds.), Cultural Identity and Archaeology: The Construction of European Communities. It's a good volume in general, and has lots of good articles on the 'Celtic question'.Some statements in the article are especially worth noting:&quot;...I shall argue again, as others have done recently...that 'the Celts' never existed in any meaningful sense, although it is perfectly reasonable for us to discuss and analyse the extent to which languages which we would classify as Celtic were spoken at any given time. Similarly, it is clear, I think, that there was never an ethnic unit that could properly be called 'Indo-European'...[T]here is never likely to have been a 'Celtic nation', if that term implies an association of populations possessing some coherently-unified social organization. Certainly there is no archaeological evidence for such an association....In the same way, it is highly unlikely that there was ever any kind of Indo-European social unity in Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp; ...There is thus emphatically no basic presupposition that family relationships among languages are likely to be accompanied by social bonding among communities.&quot; (pgs. 128-129)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tetsujin28, post: 2808235, member: 1478"] There is no evidence of an 'Indo-European culture'. This is the result of a confusion between language and culture. If you can find a copy, I recommend Colin Renfrew's (one of the most respected archaeologists and linguists dealing with Indo-European origins) article, "Prehistory and the identity of Europe, or, don't let's be beastly to the Hungarians" in P. Graves-Brown, S. Jones, and C. Gamble (eds.), [i]Cultural Identity and Archaeology: The Construction of European Communities[/i]. It's a good volume in general, and has lots of good articles on the 'Celtic question'. Some statements in the article are especially worth noting: "...I shall argue again, as others have done recently...that 'the Celts' never existed in any meaningful sense, although it is perfectly reasonable for us to discuss and analyse the extent to which languages which we would classify as Celtic were spoken at any given time. Similarly, it is clear, I think, that there was never an ethnic unit that could properly be called 'Indo-European' ... [T]here is never likely to have been a 'Celtic nation', if that term implies an association of populations possessing some coherently-unified social organization. Certainly there is no archaeological evidence for such an association. ... In the same way, it is highly unlikely that there was ever any kind of Indo-European social unity in Europe. ... There is thus emphatically no basic presupposition that family relationships among languages are likely to be accompanied by social bonding among communities." (pgs. 128-129) [/QUOTE]

Verification