Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/CaucasianPeoples

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Articles Caucasian peoples and Ibero-Caucasian peoples listed on WP:VFD Apr 26 to May 3 2004, consensus was to delete. Discussion:

Reasons to delete this page:

  1. It appropriates the name "Caucasian peoples" for a subset of the people living in the Caucasus area (namely those who speak languages with no known relatives outside the Caucasusus region), excluding other linguistic groups living there, such as the Armenians, Ossetians, Kalmyk, etc.
  2. It tries to give the reader the impression that the "Caucasian peoples" belong to single "Ibero-Caucasian" group, when in fact there is no evidence that they have a common origin distinct from that of other European and Asian groups.
  3. It does not even mention the mainstream view of the linguists who classifiy those "Caucasian" languages into at least two (probably three or four) families and who, in spite of much searching, were unable to find any convincing similarities among them — a fact that argues strongly against a recent common origin.
  4. It calls the "Caucasian" speakers "indigenous" when there is no reason to assume that they are any more indigenous than the other "non-Caucasian" groups that are now found in the area.
  5. It omits any reference to the existence of those other "non-Caucasian" speakers, whose mere presence deep in the middle of the "Caucasian" peoples should raise doubts about the indigenousness and common ancestry of the latter.
  6. It presents Biblical interpretations (see Tubal) as if they were scientific facts.
  7. The dates it gives for the Indo-European expansion (2nd millennium BC) seem at odds with mainstream chronology.

Perhaps some of the contents could be usefully reworked into some other pages, but the problem is that "Caucasian peoples" is a hopelessly non-scientific topic, whether it includes or excludes the Indo-European and other "non-Caucasian" speakers.
BTW, note that this page has a very long and not very gentlemanly discussion Talk:Caucasian peoples.
Jorge Stolfi 06:40, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • no vote. Could your objections be incorparated in the article? When npoved, this might be a topic that people want to look up. Or is it beyond hope in your opinion? Sander123 11:20, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Salvage the unbiased info re-write the article and change to a more appropriate name. Zestauferov 05:59, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete: hopeless POV. Sander123, I'm afraid you're overly optimistic; just look into the edit wars of User:Levzur. Levzur has a tireless dedication to the promotion of his personal agenda in WP -- "not very gentlemanly" is right on the mark. I see he's restored the stuff about how the Basques and Etruscans originated in the Caucasus. Several people have tried, repeatedly, over a period of months, to tone down the POV of this and other articles, without success. As noted by Jorge Stolfi above, the article has several defects, and frankly there is no reason to suspect that criticism of the article will be allowed by Levzur; may as well just dump it and wait for someone a little more level headed to come along. Wile E. Heresiarch 16:57, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete or redirect to Caucasian. Delete current article and redirect Caucasian peoples to Caucasian. -Sean 02:42, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

After Caucasian peoples was placed in VfD, it was moved to Ibero-Caucasian peoples and the VfD notice was removed. While the name change may make some difference with respect to item 1, on the other hand it makes things worse by imposing the name "Ibero" (which is historically tied to the country of Georgia) over the other three language families, which have no demonstrable linguistic ties to Georgian. I do not know what the Chechens, Ingush, and the other peoples may think, but the name seems to have been chosen unilaterally by (some) Georgian scholars, so it seems highly POV to say the least.
As for the suggestion of Sander123: perhaps some anthropologist without involvement in the political issues could do it; I certainly cannot. "Language" is a failry objective concept, so anyone with a little knowledge of linguistics can read papers and webpages and eventually figure out what is mainstream and what is speculation. Now "peoples" here apparently means "ethnicities", which are not defined by language alone but also by religion, politics, genetics (real or presumed), and the people's own choices -- and hence highly polarized. Thus I do not think that an amateur can make up an authoritative ethnic classification based on webpages and such. For instance, I have seen in some Wikipedia page the claim that Urartians (vanished in 500 AD) were ethnic Ibero-Caucasians; that the Lak, Mingrelian, and Svan speakers (many of them living outside Georgia) are "ethnic Georgians"; and that there are "ethnic Georgians" living in Iran who do not speak Georgian. I do not know whether these claims are sensible or not, and I don't know how to check that the people in quetion agree with them. So I restate my proposal to delete this page and distribute any useful contents elsewhere.
Jorge Stolfi 08:38, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete with extreme prejudice. Falcon 00:59, Apr 29, 2004 (UTC)

DEAR PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE Jorge Stolfi!

YOU ARE NOT A LINGUIST, NOT HISTORIAN. YOU NOT KNOW HISTORY OF GEORGIA AND THE CAUCASUS! "IBERO-CAUCASIANS" ARE INDIGENOUS, NON-INDOEUROPEAN AND NON-SEMITIC PEOPLES OF THE CAUCASUS: GEORGIANS (KARTLIS, KAKHETIANS, MESKHETIANS, MEGRELS, SVANS, LAZS, CHANS, IMERETIANS, GURULS, RACHVELS, AJARIANS, LECHKHUMIANS, KHEVSURS, MOKHEVIANS, TUSHS ARE ETHNIC GEORGIANS, ETHNOGRAPHIC GROUPS OF GEORGIAN PEOPLE), CHECHENS, INGUSHS, ABKHAZIANS, DAGESTAN PEOPLES, ADIGE. OTHER PEOPLES LIVING IN THE MODERN CAUCASUS (ARMENIANS, OSSETIANS, KALMIKS, etc.) ARE NOT INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THIS REGION. LANGUAGES OF IBERO-CAUCASIAN PEOPLES ARE PARTS OF FAMILY OF THE IBERIAN-CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES. "IBERIAN-CAUCASIAN LINGUISTICS" IS ONE OF THE FIELDS OF MODERN LINGUISTICS. GEORGIANS (FROM KAKHETI REGION) IN IRAN WERE MOVE BY SHAKH ABBAS I.

WITH BEST REGARDS,

USER Levzur (DR. LEVAN Z. URUSHADZE)

TBILISI, GEORGIA, APRIL 27, 2004

Dear Levzur,

I am a linguist, I am a historian, I do know about the Proto-Iberian Hypothesis and many (not all) of the tribes concerned. You have not used the correct English forms of the terminology for the article in question and the information has not really been presented objectively. The title has been moved and changed around several times without any clear objective. The best thing to do is to disect the very useful information about the Proto-Iberian hypothesis and present it as such. Since it is a hypothesis it is not necessary to treat it as a proven theory or fact yet. Thust related articles should not be re-written as if the latter were the case already. I would not mind working with you to help you find the appropriate form of English terms and places to put such information.

It is not considered good etiquette to use UPPER case the whole time except for emphasis. To use uppoer case is usually taken as a sign of shouting. As you know it does not become academics to engage in shouting matches.

Zestauferov 05:59, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete. I completely agree with Jorge Stolfi. Josh Cherry 00:40, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
  • It seems wasteful to delete Jorge Stolfi's sensible commentary. The rest, however, is as quaint as phrenology. Wetman 02:26, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

As Levzur notes, indeed I am not a linguist, so I have to trust the opinions of reputable linguists; and they seem to be completely at odds with the view presented in the "Ibero-Caucasian" pages.
For instance, those pages state that Laz, Svan, and Mingrelian are "dialects of Georgian". Yet all sources that I have seen state that those languages, while clearly related, are not mutually intelligible [1]. According to this source (which can hardly be suspected of anti-Georgian prejudice), linguists believe that Svan and Georgian split from the parent language no later than the 2nd millenium BC i.e. at leat 1500 years before the Romance languages split from Latin; and Georgian split from Megrelian no later that the 1st millenium BC. Here you will find translations of the "Lord's Prayer" into Svan and Georgian.
While all this is hardly scientific proof of anything, methinks that it puts the burden of proof on the other side.
The more I read, the more it seems that including the North Caucasian languages in the "Ibero-Caucasian family" is like saying that Greek a member of the "Ottoman-European family", or that Polish is a "Prussian-European language".
That is, "Ibero-Caucasian" seems to be a rather chauvinistic (and, to English readers, quite misleading) name for a politically motivated linguistic theory that is not supported by any concrete evidence. In fact, I even doubt that the scholars at the Georgian "Ibero-Caucasian Linguistsics Institute" still claim to see any linguistic connection between North and South Caucasian.
As for the ethnic classification given in Ibero-Caucasian peoples, I see no reason to trust it any more than the linguistic classification. In fact, there are many hints that make it suspicious: the apparent assumption that language = genetics = ethnicity, the reliance on 18th-19th century racial theories (see for example Levzur's version of the Caucasian page), and the attempt to label the peoples of the Caucasus into "indigenous" and "intruders". (Ossetians, according to what I read, are descendants of Scythians, and have been in the North Caucasus since the 1st millenium BC, at least.)
For instance, the statement that Svan and Megrelian are "ethnic Georgians" may be true, but coming from an assumed Georgian nationalist it carries no weight -- one ought to hear those people's opinions.
All the best,
Jorge Stolfi 13:35, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

End discussion