Seeing language from the DNA

[Jaska]

JonikW:

At the same time I'd be amazed if we were to find skeletal remains of an I1 individual (to take a subject I know) anywhere in Europe in 10 CE who was also of exclusively NW European autosomal ancestry but who didn't turn out to be a speaker of a Germanic language or whose very recent ancestors weren't speakers of one if we could magically lift the lid on all the facts.
To that extent, at least, I think language can be seen in the genes.

I agree. The reason is that historical linguistics tells us that Germanic language was spoken then and there, and genetics tells us that NW European ancestry and paternal haplogroup I1 were present at that time at that place. So, when somewhere else appears an individual who originates then and there, that interdisciplinary crossroad comes along.

I emphasize that I have only been opposing the method in which one ignores the linguistic results and thinks that language can be better assessed from the DNA. 
 
JonikW:

There will always be egos though and I doubt whether these competing fields are capable of reaching a useful consensus most of the time because we all like to feel we're right. The other person has devoted their time to the less informative discipline but we picked exactly the right one.

Well, I do not think that it is a competition about more valuable discipline, but only about drawing the lines of credible science. For some reason it is always archaeologists or geneticists who erroneously believe that they can reach language by the methods of their own discipline. Never have I heard about a modern linguist who claims to reach genetic ancestry or material culture only by the means of linguistics. 

Sure, one hundred years ago there were linguists who believed that they could see the race of people from the language they spoke: the Finns were considered a mongoloid people because of their Uralic language. For some reason this delusion about one common research object ("people"), which could be reached by methods of different disciplines, never was and still is not consciously rejected in the education of archaeologists and geneticists. 

No wonder, then, that also many laymen believe in such an unscientific "total object" and that language can be predicted from the DNA or from (the continuity of) material remains alone.