Your professor's views, while one can't say they are nonesense, are
clearly old fashioned and very open to criticism. It is a web or
argument consisting of a set of assumptions with varying probabili-
ties of being true. Let me hint at some examples.
First, we no long assume a direct connection between the diffusion
of a people and of a language. It used to be assumed that the spread
of European languages into Europe was evidence of the migration and
domination of mounted warriors from the western stepe or an area
north of the Caucasus range. We now understand much better the
diffusion of language, perhaps as a wave of cultural advance that
has little to do with any large scale movement of people.
Second, the old theory, best articulated by J.P.Mallory, IN Search
of the Indo-Europeans, has in recent years been subject to consider-
able challenge. The point of origin, the timing, and the cause of
the migration of Indo-European peoples has been challenged. They
might have been agriculturalists from what is now modern Turkey,
for example. I'm not myself impressed with this alternative view,
but it means the old view of Mallory is open to question, and you
find that doubts about the underpinnings of a theory compound as
those underpinnings are not entirely sure.
Third, the whole theory rests on a number of Enlightenment assump-
tions that are increasingly open to question. For one one, we now
do not assume a sharp categorical distinction between settled agri-
culturalists and nomadic hunters or pastoralists. In fact, there
is recent evidence that hunters and agriculturalists in early Europe
had a symbiotic relation. We don't presume that settled cultivators
are the sole originators or civilization, and pastoralists inherently
uncivilized, whatever the term "civilized" might mean. We have a far
more positive view of hunting-gathering and pastoral societies today
and a much less certainly positive view of agricultural societies.
The old ideal types have simply collapsed.
Fourth, to infer that Eurasian steppe pastoralists were predatory
because they hunted and eventually domesticated wild horses is ob-
viously naive and adventurous, and the assumption that a society
that relies on imposition of tribute from "outer tribes" or a mix
or trade and booty through their relations with more distant
peoples, is necessarily conducive to a "winner-take-all" mentality,
is likelwise a peculiar notion.
It is hard to separate scientific theory with some probability of
truth from the ideological and racist agenda embedded in the
traditional theories. This is important to bear in mind, for,
despite the serious challenges, there is probably a good deal of
truth embedded in the old views, although they no can be responsi-
bly used to support the imperialistic and racist ideology they
once served. There probably is a functional relation between
religion, economy, and social structure in a society, but we
need to be careful about generalizing from one society in order
to impose assumptions on another. If the Plains Indian situation
is analogous to the movement of Indo-European pastoralists into
Western Europe (assuming we know something about the latter),
that is interesting and suggestive, but that analogy is no sub-
stitute for a reasoned and substantiated argument about Plains
Indian social dynamics.
Haines Brown
brownh@ccsu.ctstateu.edu
Warping with ZOC (V2.05)