Arr the call for incredulity, such a great defence for theories with big names but no evidence.
Science may have a hard time accepting paradigm changes, yeah, but as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, and I find evidence in this case extraordinarily lacking. If you want a name I might suggest Leo Caesius.
The relationship between germanic languages already is totally messed up the most similar languages to English are Friesian and West Flemish, not Saxon or Danish where the Anglo Saxons are suposed to of come from and they already had considerable diferences a few short centuries after there suposed comon origin.
In addition to what archaeogeek said, I would add this:
- Oppenheimer is a geneticist, not a linguist. And even there, his views are practically outdated, especially the whole idea of continuity since the end of the last ice age. There is this gem:
Now, what the picture calls "Ruisko", "Ivan" and Rostov" are
presumably corresponding with Y-Haplogroups
R1b,
I and
R1a1a.
R1b was - until recently - commonly associated with the Iberian glacial refuge due to it's high concentration in Atlantic Europe (especially with the Basques), however then it was noticed that all the
ancient subclades of R1b are all found outside of Europe (R1b-V88 in the Levante and Africa, R1b-M73 in Central Asia), and that the wholly Western European clade of R1b (R1b-P310, aka R1b-L11) is only about 4000 years old, which - given the dominance of R1b in Western Europe suggests a massive population replacement taking place either in the late Neolithic or at the start of the Bronze Age. It should also be noted (interestingly) that the R1b subclades commonly found amongst the Basques (most importantly R1b-M153) are rare outside of Basque-speaking or formerly Basque/Aquitanian-speaking areas (Gascogne).
Haplogroup I is thought to be the only Y-Haplogroup to be of European origin, however the peak in the western Balkans can be explained as a result of a founder effect of the Slavic migrations, because the local Haplogroup I subclades in the western Balkans are comparably young.
Now, Haplogroup R1a probably arrived with the Indo-European migrations: it has been found in graves from the Corded Ware culture (exclusively), the Andronovo culture, graves of the early Tocharians, the Proto-Scythian Tagar culture, and it's been also found in Urnfrield culture (the latter shouldn't surprise anybody). The case for the Indo-European migrations is a very strong one, which of course has as the consequence that a massive population replacement took place, and there's nothing much of continuity.
- apart from Caesar's
claim about the "Germanic" nature of several Belgic tribes (which, in my opinion can be much better explained if you take "Germanic" as a geographic concept - and then assume that they originally lived on the right side of the Rhine), there's no evidence whatsoever that Germanic was spoken in Gallia Belgica. What does it tell you when a purportedly "Germanic" tribe is called "Eburones" (compare "Eboracum" (later York), "Eburovici" (in Normandy), "Eburodunum" (later Brno, Czechia), "Eburodunum" (Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland) and "Eborodunum" (Embrun, Upper Alps department, France )) and has a chieftain named "Ambiorix"?
- In addition to the Angles, Frisians and Saxons, there was another tribe, the Jutes. Take a wild guess where the name "
Jutland" comes from.
- Another linguistic argument would be: if "English" split from the rest of the Germanic language before Roman times, shouldn't it be (at least) as divergent from the rest of the Germanic languages as East Germanic (ie, Gothic, Vandalic, etc.)?