Spirit_Warrior
Active Member
You've made this point a number of times. But a lot of this drop is about time rather than distance. I don't think you've entirely digested the point I made in the post you replied to.
I understand your point how a language can artificially be preserved over time and I understand Sanskrit, Hebrew and old Church Slavic are examples of this. However, you keep missing or ignoring my point about distance: We still find that it is generally true that over distance the cases are gradually lost. So Slavic has indeed been artificially preserved, but it still retains only 7 cases of PIE; Sanskrit has also been artificially preserved, but it retains all 8 cases of PIE. Hence, the distinguishing factor/variable here is not time, but distance.
I think you should at least admit that my observation is correct that moving from India to Europe, we find the languages go from most complex to least complex, starting with most complex in India and least complex in Germany.
How we interpret this fact is open to interpretation, but I think it is consistent with the IE tribes beginning from India and moving towards Europe. It also explains why most IE languages are found not in India but in Central Asia and Europe --- as India being the origin point would be the point where there are least number of IE languages and Europe being the end point would be the point where the highest number of languages would develop, because of multiplication over time.
I don't think the linguistic evidence at all precludes India as being the origin of PIE. I also want to understand why are you ignoring other forms of evidence, like the MtDNA evidence I cited earlier shows Europeans have ancestry in India or the discovery of the Saraswati river?