Roslyn M. Frank 1.0. Introduction In the first chapter of this ... - Dialnet

96 Roslyn M. Frank
Although the significance of the findings of genetics is multifaceted, in the
context of this chapter there are specific aspects of the research that need to
be highlighted. As I mentioned earlier, the Near Eastern genetic component,
associated by many investigators with processes of demic diffusion, is no longer
considered to be as statistically significant as it was when Ammerman and
Cavalli-Sforza (1984) first published their results. Instead, the genetic makeup
of Europeans is now viewed as having two main components, one older than
the other. Moreover, as noted, investigators argue that a major population
expansion occurred in Western Europe during the Late Glacial (c. 11-16.000
years ago) as the ice sheets retreated and unglaciated areas further north became
available for re-settlement.
Phylogeographic analysis using molecular evidence assigns 60% of European
mitochondrial DNA lineages (Richards et al. 2000), and an even higher proportion of
Western European Y-chromosome lineages (Semino et al. 2000), to a population bottleneck
prior to an expansion from southwest to northern Europe (Achilli et al. 2004;
Pereira et al. 2005; Rootsi et al. 2004; Torroni et al. 1998; Torroni et al. 2001). (Gamble
et al. 2006)
Gamble et al. (2005: 209) sum up the implications of these genetic studies
for Renfrew’s Anatolian model:
The growing evidence that the major signal in European genetic lineages predates
the Neolithic, however, creates serious problems for the agriculturalist perspective.
If western Europe was, to a large extent, repopulated from northeast Iberia
[Pyrenean-Cantabrian zone] then, since place-name evidence suggests that people in
this source region spoke languages related to Basque before the advent of Indo-European,
the obvious corollary would seem to be that the expanding human groups should
have been Basque speakers.
If we take this last statement by Gamble et al. seriously, it elicits to two
inter-related questions. The first was formulated recently by the geneticist
Richards (2003: 135), namely, who are the «Europeans»? The second one
was posed initially in the nineteenth century: who are the «Indo-Europeans»?
From one point of view, the first question has no linguistic counterpart.
But keeping in mind the recent findings concerning the Pyrenean-
Cantabrian refugium, there is a hint that the Basque language could shed
light on these deeper time depths. In the case of the second question, for
most researchers today the term «Proto-Indo-European» is no longer
conflated with some unified linguistic system; nor is it equated with some
cohesive population of reified speakers, dating back to the Bronze Age or
beyond. For example, Zvelebil and Zvelebil (1988) have emphasized that