Etyma, shouldered adzes and molecular variants

Abstract

The prospect of reconstructing lost chapters of prehistory through interdisciplinary research thrills and tantalises. The epistemological limitations of combining insights from linguistics, archaeology, palaeobotany, paleoclimatology and genetics are occasionally pointed out. In the absence of writing, potsherds do not speak any particular language, nor does any molecular variant on the genome represent an absolute marker that its bearers in prehistory spoke a language belonging to some particular linguistic phylum. The links between language and palaeobotany and between linguistics and palaeoclimatology appear to be even more tenuous.