A very interesting topic, and the author is obviously an expert in his field. Unfortunately, his writing style is impenetrable. I find myself skipping down the page, running over sentences, looking for "the meat". I keep muttering to myself, "Get to the point!" Convoluted sentences, overly detailed digressions, very academic vocabulary and structures - unnecessary for the topic. Too bad.
From the first chapter or so of the books, I came away with some important ideas:
1) the concept of wholesale tribal migration (men, women and children with their culture) has largely been supplanted in early history
2) if there was migration, it was probably of warriors who replaced existing elites in areas conquered, and then integrated with the local population in a two-way dance of mutual influence. (this ties into a gender article I read recently - shortage of opportunity for males in most societies - warrior-adventurer as a solution to shortage of resources/women for a society's males) - this elite migration/integration concept is strongly supported by DNA studies in Asia Minor, where the population, though Turkish and central asian culturally, is basically genetically contiguous with Greece and the Balkans
3) cultures and people can mutate, change, develop without a change of population - innovative influence coming from outside
4) in prehistory and early history, the concept of culturo-linguistic (self-aware?) peoples/tribes/ethnic groups, is a projection of 19th and early 20th century european nationalism onto the past - if you examine the history of invading/migratory groups, you see shifting tribal/cultural identities, depending on circumstances, opportunities and political expediency - a useful tool for modern-day nationalistic politicians, but a complete fiction never-the-less
Too bad about the rest of the book.
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