There was an interesting and perplexing
article in the
New York Times yesterday about the origins of the peoples of Ireland and Great Britain. It talked about new genetic evidence that shows that they are more or less the same people, with only small additions from new groups over the last 16,000 years. This means that all the Indo-European invaders over the years—the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans—were only only drops in the genetic bucket. They left a large linguistic mark, but they apparently didn't leave a huge genetic one. I have absolutely no problem believing this.
What I do have a problem believing, however, is all the linguistic hooey in the article. Just because the original inhabitants of the region were genetically related to the Basque doesn't mean they spoke a related language. But then it gets weirder after that. First there's the claim that Celtic is far older than previously believed (what does that even mean, anyway?), but then they claim that English constitutes a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic family. Huh?
This all is apparently based on a dating method called glottochronology—a method that linguists developed and then abandoned decades ago. But now geneticists think they can use the technique to date language change, and I really can't fathom why.
And of course, the article doesn't provide any of the data, so it's impossible to see how the researchers came to their conclusions. But I honestly have no doubt that their linguistic claims are easily falsified. So why do geneticists think they can use a discredited linguistic technique and suddenly become linguists? I doubt they'd appreciate it if linguists dabbled in genetics in the same fashion.
