Paleolithic Continuity Theory ?

**Crux** · 02-28-2010, 09:33 PM

I just want to ask about your opinions regarding the PCT.
http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html, for those who have not heard about it before.

**Agrippa** · 03-01-2010, 06:22 PM

Originally Posted by Crux

I just want to ask about your opinions regarding the PCT.
http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html, for those who have not heard about it before.

The crucial point is, that no matter who spoke the Proto-language, Near Eastern Neolithics, Central Asian Neolithics, Eastern European or South Eastern European Mesolithics, they all have, if at all, a very limited Palaeolithic continuity.

First, no matter who was more important, Neolithic people from the Near East or Mesolithic people from South Eastern and Eastern Europe, it seems to be most likely, that there were no Indoeuropeans before they met.
Which means, the Indoeuropeans themselves are most likely the result of a regional fusion of local with new elements.

And even if the Mesolithic part was more important, this means that the transformed Mesoltihics of a specific region, most likely in South Eastern or Eastern Europe, became the Proto-Indoeuropean people, which spread the ethnocultural-linguistic package.

This means that there can be, at best, only a continuity for a specific region, not Europe as a whole, because these Proto-Indoeuropeans assimilated the rest, whether they had originally a bigger Near Eastern or European part, they changed the rest of Europe.

So there was no continuity for most of Europe for sure, if its about language and culture, but at best for a specific region, but even thats unlikely, considering the strong impact of the Neolithisation, but at least in certain respects the local, at that time autochthonous part could have been more important.

A pre-Mesolithic continuity over wide parts of Europe, with a shared language and an early split, with different branches long time present at the start of the Neolithic period, even before the Mesolithic period, is actually totally out of question if considering the whole Indoeuropean package and all more or less reasonable linguistic theories.