Wheels, Languages and Bullshit (Or How Not To Do Linguistic Archaeology) - J.S. Morris

Came across a paper on IE Linguistics by Jonathan Sherman Morris. I found it extremely humorous. Its a long read but covers a lot of criticisms of the way linguistic archaeology has been used to serve the authors purposes, especially authors like David Anthony. The following quotes are from this paper. 

DOI https://doi.org/10.3726/PHIL012017.3

This part below in the paper had me laughing really hard.

What does this prove? That proto-Indo-Iranian broke away before proto-Anatolian, since the latter family has the PIE term for lion and wine while the former did not? Or does it prove my Leophobic Secondary Pontic Steppe-Anatolian Sequential Dispersion theory, according to which, Anatolian speakers broke away from PIE due to the sheer monotonous boredom of the Steppes and moved through the Balkans to Anatolia, where they encountered lions (note that Luwian includes the root for ‘lion’). When the rump of PIE subsequently broke up because even the excitement of a slow moving, non-steerable cart was no match for the tedium of the Steppes, the non-drinking, killjoy proto-Indo-Iranians went east into the deserts of Central Asia and only lightened up after they discovered soma, while the remainder of PIE went on vacation to Anatolia to visit their long-lost relatives who introduced them to lions, albeit with this proving such a traumatic experience that they immediately fled to Europe and never went back. You may consider the above to be unsubstantiated ‘just-so’ balderdash, and you would be welcome to think so, but I would point out that it is no more simple-minded than the following: “they might have moved several times, perhaps by sea, from the Western Pontic steppes to south-eastern Europe to western Anatolia to Greece, making their trail hard to find” (Anthony, 2007, p. 369), which constitutes Anthony’s own double hand-waving non-explanation of how Greek spread from the ‘wrong’ side of the Pontic Steppes to Greece.

I myself have to study this paper in more depth, so I have not decided my opinion about his overall take on IE language spread. Do give the paper a read.

See

Ancient ancestral south indians (AASI) came from the east, not straight from Africa!