Talk:Gustaf Kossinna
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This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
"Kosinna's Smile"
The article entirely distorts and misrepresents the role of modern genetic studies in relation to Kosinna. In fact, they have not validated but refuted him once and for all. Kosinna was a proponent of the North European hypothesis, which was opposed to what is now Gimbuta's Kurgan hypothesis, originally proposed by scholars such as Otto Schrader (philologist) and fiercely denied by Kosinna, Penka, Hirt, and other nationalist and racist pseudoscientists of the time when the two main proposals for the PIE homeland (Northern Europe vs. Pontic Steppes) were originally brought forth during the second half of the 19th century. The genetic studies of the 2010s confirm Schrader and Gimbuta's Kurgan hypothesis, further debunking the North European hypothesis held by Kosinna.
The only reason why modern commentators mess it all up is because in Europe, Kosinna's North European hypothesis was embraced by central and northern-European racists, nationalists, and especially by nazism, and with the eventual defeat of nazism and its ideology in 1945, not only the North European hypothesis, but the entire subject of Indo-European and proto-Indo-European studies beyond what may be called "coincidental linguistic similarities" became regarded as to be identical with debunked nazist and racist ideology, especially the assumption or hypothesis that such a thing as a PIE people had existed in the flesh as a distinguishable ethnic group with an original homeground from whence they had migrated to other regions. In other words, if you spoke of an actual, tangible PIE people and its homeland in Europe after 1945, you were considered a racist, nazi nutcase because people confused you for those frauds, racists, and nationalists such as Kosinna who had brought forth the pseudoscientific North European hypothesis. That's why all genetic evidence for PIE speakers, as by these recent 2010s studies, is often mistakenly taken for a late "re-appreciation" or "confirmation" of people who held the pseudoscientific North European hypothesis such as Kosinna.
On the other hand, in America the entire subject of Proto-Indo-European studies beyond mere linguistics was only popularized as late as by Gimbutas after 1945, who used to be despised as a supposed pseudoscientific radical feminist for decades by the scientific mainstream (especially outside purely linguistic research, that is among historians, archaeologists, geneticists, etc.) due to her related theses on Old Europe (archaeology) prior to PIE invasion/migration, and only recently has won more renown due to said recent genetic studies proving her Kurgan hypothesis. As said, these recent studies have only validated Schrader and Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis of a Pontic Steppes homeland, which was opposed to the pseudoscientific North European hypothesis held by Kosinna! It doesn't validate Kosinna simply because now people suddenly take the idea of an actual PIE people and homeland serious again. --2003:DA:CF4C:7500:352E:684:3B03:54E3 (talk) 18:58, 5 April 2020 (UTC)