Historic Political Narratives You Disagree With

[Sol]

There are quite a few ridiculous historical linguistics narratives which get falsely amplified for political reasons, like:

-India as the birthplace of the Indo-European family, which is laughably false but pushed by BJP types
-Tamil/Turkish/Sanskrit, etc. as the origin language of humanity. At least the Turkish one brought us the hilarious Sun language theory
-Levantine Arabic is a descendant of Aramaic (this seems to mainly be pushed by Lebanese Christians like NNT who don't want to admit that their mother tongue is a descendant of classical Arabic)
-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.
-This kind of gets to the previous point, but a lot of late 20th century historical linguistics, kind of influenced by pacifist pastoralism coming from the 60s, had a bias against traditional 19th century style narratives of conquerers spreading languages and preferred to think of these things in terms of peaceful gradual diffusion. Recent research has increasingly suggested that, at least in the case of Indo-European history, this is not super accurate and that some degree of violent steppe conquest was probably a big factor in the language spread.

[Senator Incitatus]

"Versailles caused the rise of the Nazis and WW2" is a popular one that is blatantly false.

Which Versailles?

[Aurelius]

There are quite a few ridiculous historical linguistics narratives which get falsely amplified for political reasons, like:

-India as the birthplace of the Indo-European family, which is laughably false but pushed by BJP types
-Tamil/Turkish/Sanskrit, etc. as the origin language of humanity. At least the Turkish one brought us the hilarious Sun language theory
-Levantine Arabic is a descendant of Aramaic (this seems to mainly be pushed by Lebanese Christians like NNT who don't want to admit that their mother tongue is a descendant of classical Arabic)
-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.
-This kind of gets to the previous point, but a lot of late 20th century historical linguistics, kind of influenced by pacifist pastoralism coming from the 60s, had a bias against traditional 19th century style narratives of conquerers spreading languages and preferred to think of these things in terms of peaceful gradual diffusion. Recent research has increasingly suggested that, at least in the case of Indo-European history, this is not super accurate and that some degree of violent steppe conquest was probably a big factor in the language spread.

I stumbled on this one about Albanian once upon a time. It's gold.

https://www.facebook.com/etymonline/posts/1217676848349196

Want to know why I disable the apparatus that allows anyone to post anything on this Facebook page? Because the first 10 items in the etymonline mailbox this afternoon read like this:

The mother of languages is albanian dialect GEGERISH.
I speak albanian greek italian english and some french and accidentally all the meaning of words comes in albanian
It is a big mistake with latin and greek entomology of words.
DOG in albanian mean " want something"
DO= want
G= GJE = something
and dogs want from people food and love.
Albanian language has 3 dialects GEG TOSK and GREEK ( Macedonian region)
(The greek government keep it secret for profits)
CAT in albanian mean "kap"
Here letter P is changed to T.
Π= ΤΤ =Τ
Kap mean "catch" and the cats catch rettils and insects.
If you want be e real etimolog you must study albanian languige in GEG dialect.
And something very strange is that new words of tecnologie have meaning only in albanian languige.
Facebook, television, computer,etc.
Etimologi of word MAGNET= ma gje ne te = keep things on it.
I ensure you all words of the europe have real embrional etimology in albanian language.
The word BOOK in english dont have any meaning
BOOK in albanian mean "bread"
Book feed the brain

Down in the comments...

Here's some of the rest:

Anatomy= anat e mia= my body parts
In albanian language is easier to explain.
Ana te mia = my parts
Center= q'eshte nder= it is between ( something)
TELEVISION= te le vizion = it leave you vision
Tele is very important word in technology and no language in the word can explain.
Tele= te le = (means)it leave you
Water this is amazing here you can understand how old is this world.
Water is a materil without shape and we know from history how many catastrophes it makes like flooding or Noe history.
Water= ma terr= keep panik
Ma terr mean also= keep the earth.
Here we can understand what is inside of our planet only water.
Albanian language is a big science.
And real scientists say a lot of lies about gravity and how is the shape of earth.

aaaaand, it continues. Here's today hit from our friend:

Excalibur is another 100% Albanian language.
Excalibur= e s 'ka lind burri= haven't born yet the man.
All the letters are the same.
If you know this legend of king Arthur.
English and Scottish people will know there natinal origin from Balkan.
I m not laying you.

[Sol]

There are quite a few ridiculous historical linguistics narratives which get falsely amplified for political reasons, like:

-India as the birthplace of the Indo-European family, which is laughably false but pushed by BJP types
-Tamil/Turkish/Sanskrit, etc. as the origin language of humanity. At least the Turkish one brought us the hilarious Sun language theory
-Levantine Arabic is a descendant of Aramaic (this seems to mainly be pushed by Lebanese Christians like NNT who don't want to admit that their mother tongue is a descendant of classical Arabic)
-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.
-This kind of gets to the previous point, but a lot of late 20th century historical linguistics, kind of influenced by pacifist pastoralism coming from the 60s, had a bias against traditional 19th century style narratives of conquerers spreading languages and preferred to think of these things in terms of peaceful gradual diffusion. Recent research has increasingly suggested that, at least in the case of Indo-European history, this is not super accurate and that some degree of violent steppe conquest was probably a big factor in the language spread.

I stumbled on this one about Albanian once upon a time. It's gold.

Albanian is especially funny to do this for because its appearance in the historical record is very very recent--late medieval, unlike most languages that people do this for, which often have some deep textual tradition.

(Of course all languages are equally old).

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

The notion that the 1950s was the most prosperous decade in US history, that America had a stronger welfare state and it was some sort of progressive epoch with Eisenhower being to the left of Bernie Sanders. A quarter of the country lived in poverty and Medicare and Medicaid were non-existent. Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative who refused to deficit spend even in the midst of a recession. The only reason he kept the tax rate as high as it was was because fiscally conservative dogma was balanced budgets at the time rather then supply side.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

That the Democrats were opposed to free trade until "neoliberals" took over the party or whatever.

Anyone parroting this is effectively arguing that FDR, Woodrow Wilson and candidates like William Jennings Bryan were protectionists, making it a talking point about as stupid as the notion that Bernie Sanders would be a right-winger in Europe.

In the days of Bryan and Wilson, Republicans were the party of protectionism and Democrats were the party of free trade.

Yes and one of FDR's first actions was repealing Smoot-Hawley which was passed by Republicans. And the most protectionist President since WWII before Trump was definitely Nixon. The only remotely protectionist Democratic President since the Civil War was maybe Carter.

I’d argue Obama was more protectionist, the GM bailout was pretty straightforward economic nationalism and was a huge part of what he ran on in 2012.

Agreed on the larger point that Democrats have more or less always been the more pro-free trade party. It’s just that prior to the 1970s organized labor wasn’t really hostile to free trade. Neoliberalism didn’t make Democrats more pro-free trade, it made organized labor more protectionist and Democrats didn’t update their stance on trade to respect this.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That the Democrats were opposed to free trade until "neoliberals" took over the party or whatever.

Anyone parroting this is effectively arguing that FDR, Woodrow Wilson and candidates like William Jennings Bryan were protectionists, making it a talking point about as stupid as the notion that Bernie Sanders would be a right-winger in Europe.

In the days of Bryan and Wilson, Republicans were the party of protectionism and Democrats were the party of free trade.

Yes and one of FDR's first actions was repealing Smoot-Hawley which was passed by Republicans. And the most protectionist President since WWII before Trump was definitely Nixon. The only remotely protectionist Democratic President since the Civil War was maybe Carter.

I’d argue Obama was more protectionist, the GM bailout was pretty straightforward economic nationalism and was a huge part of what he ran on in 2012.

Agreed on the larger point that Democrats have more or less always been the more pro-free trade party. It’s just that prior to the 1970s organized labor wasn’t really hostile to free trade. Neoliberalism didn’t make Democrats more pro-free trade, it made organized labor more protectionist and Democrats didn’t update their stance on trade to respect this.

The GM bailout had nothing to do with tariffs.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

That the Democrats were opposed to free trade until "neoliberals" took over the party or whatever.

Anyone parroting this is effectively arguing that FDR, Woodrow Wilson and candidates like William Jennings Bryan were protectionists, making it a talking point about as stupid as the notion that Bernie Sanders would be a right-winger in Europe.

In the days of Bryan and Wilson, Republicans were the party of protectionism and Democrats were the party of free trade.

Yes and one of FDR's first actions was repealing Smoot-Hawley which was passed by Republicans. And the most protectionist President since WWII before Trump was definitely Nixon. The only remotely protectionist Democratic President since the Civil War was maybe Carter.

I’d argue Obama was more protectionist, the GM bailout was pretty straightforward economic nationalism and was a huge part of what he ran on in 2012.

Agreed on the larger point that Democrats have more or less always been the more pro-free trade party. It’s just that prior to the 1970s organized labor wasn’t really hostile to free trade. Neoliberalism didn’t make Democrats more pro-free trade, it made organized labor more protectionist and Democrats didn’t update their stance on trade to respect this.

The GM bailout had nothing to do with tariffs.

It was a form of protectionism though in that it’s sole purpose was the preservation of American jobs.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That the Democrats were opposed to free trade until "neoliberals" took over the party or whatever.

Anyone parroting this is effectively arguing that FDR, Woodrow Wilson and candidates like William Jennings Bryan were protectionists, making it a talking point about as stupid as the notion that Bernie Sanders would be a right-winger in Europe.

In the days of Bryan and Wilson, Republicans were the party of protectionism and Democrats were the party of free trade.

Yes and one of FDR's first actions was repealing Smoot-Hawley which was passed by Republicans. And the most protectionist President since WWII before Trump was definitely Nixon. The only remotely protectionist Democratic President since the Civil War was maybe Carter.

I’d argue Obama was more protectionist, the GM bailout was pretty straightforward economic nationalism and was a huge part of what he ran on in 2012.

Agreed on the larger point that Democrats have more or less always been the more pro-free trade party. It’s just that prior to the 1970s organized labor wasn’t really hostile to free trade. Neoliberalism didn’t make Democrats more pro-free trade, it made organized labor more protectionist and Democrats didn’t update their stance on trade to respect this.

The GM bailout had nothing to do with tariffs.

It was a form of protectionism though in that it’s sole purpose was the preservation of American jobs.

That's not what protectionism refers to. I could easily see Bill Clinton doing that in a comparable situation. Obama left free trade pretty much entirely intact.

[darklordoftech]

That the Democrats were opposed to free trade until "neoliberals" took over the party or whatever.

Anyone parroting this is effectively arguing that FDR, Woodrow Wilson and candidates like William Jennings Bryan were protectionists, making it a talking point about as stupid as the notion that Bernie Sanders would be a right-winger in Europe.

In the days of Bryan and Wilson, Republicans were the party of protectionism and Democrats were the party of free trade.

Yes and one of FDR's first actions was repealing Smoot-Hawley which was passed by Republicans. And the most protectionist President since WWII before Trump was definitely Nixon. The only remotely protectionist Democratic President since the Civil War was maybe Carter.

I’d argue Obama was more protectionist, the GM bailout was pretty straightforward economic nationalism and was a huge part of what he ran on in 2012.

Agreed on the larger point that Democrats have more or less always been the more pro-free trade party. It’s just that prior to the 1970s organized labor wasn’t really hostile to free trade. Neoliberalism didn’t make Democrats more pro-free trade, it made organized labor more protectionist and Democrats didn’t update their stance on trade to respect this.

The GM bailout had nothing to do with tariffs.

It was a form of protectionism though in that it’s sole purpose was the preservation of American jobs.

“Protectionism” means protection from foreign competition.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

It's a massive oversimplification, but I wouldn't call it blatantly false. The "dictated peace of shame" was clearly influential in shaping the German post-war political culture,

That Germany lost the war was clearly influential in shaping German post-war political culture. The dolchstosslegende concerned the November armistice itself, not just Versailles. The fact is that the German political class would have been unreconciled to any peace acceptable to the victorious Allies. The phrase you quoted here is quite telling: "dictated peace of shame". Of course any peace from the victors to the defeated would have been perceived as "dictated", and that defeat in the war was "shameful" to many Germans. None of this is the fault of Versailles.

the reparations were a huge liability to the economy which clearly did not help the trust into the democratic government.

Reparations were large but quite payable. The German government chose crashing its economy, the occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation instead. Nor did it destroy trust in democratic government - why did pro-Weimar parties win majorities throughout the 1920s? And at any rate opposition to reparations was led by pro-Weimar politicians. The Nazis got nowhere using it as a wedge issue because all mainstream parties in Germany agreed with them that war reparations were unjust.

[If my soul was made of stone]

-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.

I have a strange relationship with Gimbutas, because this particular pet narrative of hers is clearly oversimplified and colored by presentist ideology-pushing at best but I really wish that it could have been true. I do genuinely believe that there was an era of prehistory before patriarchy, but it probably wasn't much like the second-wave "goddess movement" conception of it, and it probably ended due to changing lifestyles and material conditions leading to a deepened gendered division of labor rather than their dumb narrative about their menfolk or patriarchal cultures from elsewhere violently overthrowing it. Even more infuriating is the insistence by plenty of those folks that the idealized matriarchies were agriculturalists in tune with the forces of nature who were overthrown by pastoralists or hunters, when most evidence points towards the transition to agriculture enforcing gender roles and negatively impacting our relationship with the natural world. It's not hard to see why so many people get caught up in this romance, though.

[Alcibiades]

It's a massive oversimplification, but I wouldn't call it blatantly false. The "dictated peace of shame" was clearly influential in shaping the German post-war political culture,

That Germany lost the war was clearly influential in shaping German post-war political culture. The dolchstosslegende concerned the November armistice itself, not just Versailles. The fact is that the German political class would have been unreconciled to any peace acceptable to the victorious Allies. The phrase you quoted here is quite telling: "dictated peace of shame". Of course any peace from the victors to the defeated would have been perceived as "dictated", and that defeat in the war was "shameful" to many Germans. None of this is the fault of Versailles.

the reparations were a huge liability to the economy which clearly did not help the trust into the democratic government.

Reparations were large but quite payable. The German government chose crashing its economy, the occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation instead. Nor did it destroy trust in democratic government - why did pro-Weimar parties win majorities throughout the 1920s? And at any rate opposition to reparations was led by pro-Weimar politicians. The Nazis got nowhere using it as a wedge issue because all mainstream parties in Germany agreed with them that war reparations were unjust.

Hmmm, the Young Plan ended up being a pretty important catalyst for the rise of the Nazis, even if in terms of improving their organisation rather than directly increasing electoral support for them; their participation in the Hugenberg-led ‘National Opposition’ to the Plan was vital for Hitler gaining contacts with various other right-wing groups and individuals, particularly Hugenberg’s media empire and wealthy industrialists.

Of course the referendum ended up going nowhere, but I think it’s fair to say that whether Germany should try to cooperate with the Allies to get the best possible deal on reparations, or refuse any acknowledgment of the existence of reparations on principle (and this was the only possible grounds for opposing the Young Plan, which was a clear improvement on the previous arrangement) was at times a significant wedge in Weimar politics.

At any rate, you’re correct that the reparations, especially after the Dawes and Young Plans, were by no means economically crippling, but I think the psychological impact of their very existence did galvanise anti-Weimar sentiment to a decent extent. This is of course fairly speculative, but there is a theory that Brüning deliberately refused to ameliorate the Depression so that Germany had an excuse to not pay reparations (which, if true, must be seen as a key act in the death of Weimar). Such behaviour may not have been rational, but it was ultimately induced by the terms of Versailles; and reparations above all other terms seem to have driven the German right truly insane.

Basically, I agree with you that Versailles, to a neutral observer, was not in reality particularly harsh or unreasonable. But does that really matter in this historical debate when it evidently was not viewed as such by the relevant actors whom it affected?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Basically, I agree with you that Versailles, to a neutral observer, was not in reality particularly harsh or unreasonable. But does that really matter in this historical debate when it evidently was not viewed as such by the relevant actors whom it affected?

I think it does, fwiw, when the implicit follow-up to "harsh Versailles caused WWII" is "generous Versailles would prevent war." It's a question of whether the Allies acted incorrectly in 1919. You are of course correct that the psychological impact of Versailles was significant.

[(no subject)]

Many earlier peace treaties were through negotiations and compromises and acknowledgement by the victors that even the defeated had rights. Versailles was neither, especially from the French. The fact that the French lie about this - and concurrently pretend that their Vichy crimes were "not really France" - changes nothing.

[Pericles]

Many earlier peace treaties were through negotiations and compromises and acknowledgement by the victors that even the defeated had rights. Versailles was neither, especially from the French. The fact that the French lie about this - and concurrently pretend that their Vichy crimes were "not really France" - changes nothing.

France by default was in a weaker position than Germany after WWI. They had to weaken Germany to stop Germany eventually invading them and dominating the continent. Of course, because the political will did not exist to enforce Versailles, their worst fears ended up coming true.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Hmmm, the Young Plan ended up being a pretty important catalyst for the rise of the Nazis, even if in terms of improving their organisation rather than directly increasing electoral support for them; their participation in the Hugenberg-led ‘National Opposition’ to the Plan was vital for Hitler gaining contacts with various other right-wing groups and individuals, particularly Hugenberg’s media empire and wealthy industrialists.

Of course the referendum ended up going nowhere, but I think it’s fair to say that whether Germany should try to cooperate with the Allies to get the best possible deal on reparations, or refuse any acknowledgment of the existence of reparations on principle (and this was the only possible grounds for opposing the Young Plan, which was a clear improvement on the previous arrangement) was at times a significant wedge in Weimar politics.

I take your point. But I still think there's a world of difference between the Nazis being a well-organised minor party, and a Nazi party winning a third of the vote. Support for the mainstream right had to collapse in the Great Depression for that to be possible.

This is of course fairly speculative, but there is a theory that Brüning deliberately refused to ameliorate the Depression so that Germany had an excuse to not pay reparations (which, if true, must be seen as a key act in the death of Weimar). Such behaviour may not have been rational, but it was ultimately induced by the terms of Versailles; and reparations above all other terms seem to have driven the German right truly insane.

I think it's more that the German political class had been scarred by the experience of hyperinflation so the Brüning government adopted a policy of extremely brutal deflation. You could tell a story of reparations -> refusal to pay -> occupation of the Ruhr -> hyperinflation -> bad Great Depression response -> Hitler I suppose, but the key isn't reparations itself but the economically suicidal responses by German politicians. Yes reparations was an issue for the German economy, but maintaining gold parity with Britain was disastrous. And even then Brüning could be argued to simply be following the economic orthodoxy of the period.

I would say moreso than reparations the war guilt clause was the most controversial term of Versailles to German nationalists.

Basically, I agree with you that Versailles, to a neutral observer, was not in reality particularly harsh or unreasonable. But does that really matter in this historical debate when it evidently was not viewed as such by the relevant actors whom it affected?

My point is that any decently acceptable peace to the victorious Allies would have been felt to be unjust by a broad section of German opinion. This would indicate that the problem of the post-Versailles order was that much of the German political elite were unreasonable in what they desired.

Many earlier peace treaties were through negotiations and compromises and acknowledgement by the victors that even the defeated had rights. Versailles was neither, especially from the French. The fact that the French lie about this - and concurrently pretend that their Vichy crimes were "not really France" - changes nothing.

This is just not true. Germany had only been a country for fewer than 50 years at Versailles and there wasn't even a discussion about whether that should be reversed. German right to self-determination was accepted. What's most astonishing about Versailles is the acquiescence of the victorious Allies to a unified German nation that dominated Central Europe.

[I Will Not Be Wrong]

I have probably already posted in here, but:

Abraham Lincoln being a liberal
Andrew Jackson being a conservative

[Georg Ebner]

-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.

I have a strange relationship with Gimbutas, because this particular pet narrative of hers is clearly oversimplified and colored by presentist ideology-pushing at best but I really wish that it could have been true. I do genuinely believe that there was an era of prehistory before patriarchy, but it probably wasn't much like the second-wave "goddess movement" conception of it, and it probably ended due to changing lifestyles and material conditions leading to a deepened gendered division of labor rather than their dumb narrative about their menfolk or patriarchal cultures from elsewhere violently overthrowing it. Even more infuriating is the insistence by plenty of those folks that the idealized matriarchies were agriculturalists in tune with the forces of nature who were overthrown by pastoralists or hunters, when most evidence points towards the transition to agriculture enforcing gender roles and negatively impacting our relationship with the natural world. It's not hard to see why so many people get caught up in this romance, though.

A genetical study some years ago in the AJHG claimed, that ~1/4 or 1/5 of the human genome worldwide points to historical matri-focality/locality.
All those holdless tramps, who are in their vulgarROUSSEAUism dreaming of a "reTurn to nature", have no idea, that already the primitives were "culture-people" and not "nature-people". And that the more matriArchaical societies had not only lots of collectivism&conformism, but also of economical&verbal activism. Dishonest intrigues/mobbing instead of open&honest wars. Long live the horseRiders, who brought us aristoCracy, individuality, liberties, drama, history (in a real sense) instead of all those boring and static theoCracies before!

[Georg Ebner]

By the way: How is the position of the Kurgan-theory at US-univ.s?
Here in Germany e.g. L.KILIAN (Bonn) and others launched 40 years ago a big counterAttack with lots of surprisingly strong (albeit finally not convincing, at least not to me) arguments against it and also today M.GIMBUTAS seems to be the S.FREUD of archaeoLogy: NonScientists and young students adore her as the personification of science, but specialists are less convinced (yet, often for very petty reasons).

[RINO Tom]

There are quite a few ridiculous historical linguistics narratives which get falsely amplified for political reasons, like:

-India as the birthplace of the Indo-European family, which is laughably false but pushed by BJP types
-Tamil/Turkish/Sanskrit, etc. as the origin language of humanity. At least the Turkish one brought us the hilarious Sun language theory
-Levantine Arabic is a descendant of Aramaic (this seems to mainly be pushed by Lebanese Christians like NNT who don't want to admit that their mother tongue is a descendant of classical Arabic)
-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.
-This kind of gets to the previous point, but a lot of late 20th century historical linguistics, kind of influenced by pacifist pastoralism coming from the 60s, had a bias against traditional 19th century style narratives of conquerers spreading languages and preferred to think of these things in terms of peaceful gradual diffusion. Recent research has increasingly suggested that, at least in the case of Indo-European history, this is not super accurate and that some degree of violent steppe conquest was probably a big factor in the language spread.

Haven't we found just as much evidence of violent, patriarchal societies in pre-Indo European Europe (using things like evidence of head trauma in skulls and stuff)?  They just didn't (presumably) have as good of weapons/transport.

[Sol]

By the way: How is the position of the Kurgan-theory at US-univ.s?
Here in Germany e.g. L.KILIAN (Bonn) and others launched 40 years ago a big counterAttack with lots of surprisingly strong (albeit finally not convincing, at least not to me) arguments against it and also today M.GIMBUTAS seems to be the S.FREUD of archaeoLogy: NonScientists and young students adore her as the personification of science, but specialists are less convinced (yet, often for very petty reasons).

I'm not an Indo-Europeanist, but I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that some sort of Steppe urheimat for the speakers of PIE is the most likely, even though Gimbutas's gendered story of patriarchal conquerors is pure fantasy. PIE has borrowings into and from Proto-Finno-Ugric which is a little difficult to explain if Proto-Indo-European originated in Anatolia.

There's also apparently some suggestive genetic evidence as well.

[Georg Ebner]

By the way: How is the position of the Kurgan-theory at US-univ.s?
Here in Germany e.g. L.KILIAN (Bonn) and others launched 40 years ago a big counterAttack with lots of surprisingly strong (albeit finally not convincing, at least not to me) arguments against it and also today M.GIMBUTAS seems to be the S.FREUD of archaeoLogy: NonScientists and young students adore her as the personification of science, but specialists are less convinced (yet, often for very petty reasons).

I'm not an Indo-Europeanist, but I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that some sort of Steppe urheimat for the speakers of PIE is the most likely, even though Gimbutas's gendered story of patriarchal conquerors is pure fantasy. PIE has borrowings into and from Proto-Finno-Ugric which is a little difficult to explain if Proto-Indo-European originated in Anatolia.

There's also apparently some suggestive genetic evidence as well.

Indeed. And the farmers were surely also less male than the riders, so M.GIMBUTAS was here partly correct, too. (My suspicion is, that the farmer-subStrate played a role in the rise of most sects, which obeyed usually to some kind of deterministic mythoLogy, an enclosed system/ideoLogy - opposed to the father in heaven of Jewish and Aryan pastoralists. J.SEIFERT [Anthropological School of Mödling] studied on this a long time ago.)

[Senator-elect Spark]

Lost Cause mythology

[PSOL]

-Marija Gimbutas's belief that pre-Indo-European peoples were matriarchal/matristic is another inaccurate one, though for a much more sympathetic ideological aim. Annoyingly it kind of prejudiced people against the Kurgan hypothesis for a while, even though it actually seems the most likely story of Indo-European origins.

I have a strange relationship with Gimbutas, because this particular pet narrative of hers is clearly oversimplified and colored by presentist ideology-pushing at best but I really wish that it could have been true. I do genuinely believe that there was an era of prehistory before patriarchy, but it probably wasn't much like the second-wave "goddess movement" conception of it, and it probably ended due to changing lifestyles and material conditions leading to a deepened gendered division of labor rather than their dumb narrative about their menfolk or patriarchal cultures from elsewhere violently overthrowing it. Even more infuriating is the insistence by plenty of those folks that the idealized matriarchies were agriculturalists in tune with the forces of nature who were overthrown by pastoralists or hunters, when most evidence points towards the transition to agriculture enforcing gender roles and negatively impacting our relationship with the natural world. It's not hard to see why so many people get caught up in this romance, though.

A genetical study some years ago in the AJHG claimed, that ~1/4 or 1/5 of the human genome worldwide points to historical matri-focality/locality.
All those holdless tramps, who are in their vulgarROUSSEAUism dreaming of a "reTurn to nature", have no idea, that already the primitives were "culture-people" and not "nature-people". And that the more matriArchaical societies had not only lots of collectivism&conformism, but also of economical&verbal activism. Dishonest intrigues/mobbing instead of open&honest wars. Long live the horseRiders, who brought us aristoCracy, individuality, liberties, drama, history (in a real sense) instead of all those boring and static theoCracies before!

Damn the horse riders for destroying what were beautiful societies.