The tone of your posts (and comments) don&#39;t ma...

The tone of your posts (and comments) don't make some things look as a mere exploratory possibility but as some sort of discovery you have suddenly become fond of (without sufficient research). And that's why I think I'm doing my "job" (so to say: playing my role as critical, yet supportive, reader and commenter) warning you about those.

Obviously I hate as much as you whichever misunderstandings. But, well, they happen - so let's get over them as soon as they are sufficiently clarified.

You seem to feel that if it's not 100% then it can't be right and can safely be dismissed...

No. But if it is just 50% (for instance) then it must be placed on some quarantine clearly. Quarantine doesn't mean it's impossible but that it's clearly not a demonstrated fact. I don't think it should be dismissed totally but neither waved as "evidence" and, IMO, should be pondered along with other equiprobable alternatives.

... but I see no point in using Austronesian as a counter-example...

I haven't used Austronesian as counter-example. I used Austroasiatic, which you argued would not be tonal originally (something I had totally missed, btw). But in any case, Taiwan, the urheimat of Austronesian, is also part of Greater SE Asia, by which I understand you mean including southern China.

... hen we have no way of knowing what the picture was before its expansion in this region.

I am satisfied I have played my role by reading you acknowledging that we really not know what most of SE Asians (Negritos, "Hoabinhians") spoke in the Paleolithic.

It's because I am paying close attention to the details that I see problems you do not see. And I see clues to the possible solution to these problems that you can't see either, probably because you are insentive to the problems in the first place.

Maybe, probably yes, but paying attention to details is what I think I do when you call me nit-picky. So maybe you are also nit-picky in your own way.

If we cannot account for the gap, then we will be unable to respond to multiregionalists who will argue that all the many similarities between Africa and SE Asia/Melanesia, etc. must be due simply to convergent evolution...

As you know, I don't think that continuity can be explained in most cases by mere convergent evolution.

But I do explore other possibilities for the gap or gaps (not sure anymore if it is just one). For example I've been thinking as of late that maybe there are other reasons pushing people to more or less gradually or partially to abandon the HBC. This issue of partial abandonment of the HBC elements is not only seen in Eurasia but also in Africa, even Hadzas seem to have abandoned some elements of HBC (following your reasoning) and certainly have Niger-Kongo peoples and others.

So maybe the process began already in East or NE Africa, becoming increased in the migration to Asia... maybe it is not (or not only) a catastrophic episode what accounts for it but a more gradual and irregular process of cultural "evolution".

I suspect that the main difference between my thought and yours is that you have almost total faith in cultural conservatism while I have more faith in cultural variability and innovation, without totally rejecting the weight of conservatism. However this poses the problem of how did Bushmen and Pygmies managed to be so conservative. The answer maybe is just their isolation (it is a well known phenomenon: isolated communities are almost invariably the most conservative ones).

But of course nothing of this is a definitive theory either, I try to remain open minded - unless I think I have more or less all the evidence in one basket, which is not the case.