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Hmmm . . . I have a couple of degrees in linguistics and have had several classes in historical linguistics. I even addressed the possibility of improved reconstruction methods in my Masters thesis. So, just based on what I've read, lectures I've attended, and research I've conducted, I have a couple of serious doubts.

First, the 8100 BC date seems way out of line. Most Indo-Europeanists agree that the Indo-European diaspora began 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. To suggest that a proto-Celtic appeared some 10,000 years ago is stretching things beyond the bounds of credibility. I don't know of any archeological data that would back up such a claim.

Second, basing such a conjecture on a mere 30 words is extremely doubtful. In linguistics, we have something called the Swadesh List (named after Maurice Swadesh, a linguist who first came up with the idea). The Swadesh List is a listing of either 100 or 200 of the most commonly used words in a language. The usefulness of a Swadesh List to a historical linguist is this list of words will have a greater retention time in a language than other, less used words will. Even if these 30 words were absolutely the most common words used in ancient Celtic -- extremely doubtful -- the total number of them is so small that there is a significant chance that loss due to language change would have reduced any sample to the level of background noise in only a few millenia. And given the almost certainty that these 30 words were simply those that were available due to archeological discovery, it once again stretches the bounds of credibility beyond the breaking point.

Dr MacMahon sounded like she was being polite and non-confrontational. When stating that it was reasonable to base a language family tree on a few well chosen words, she was most likely referring to the Swadesh list. Not 30 words that were unearthed by chance.

It bears pointing out that Merrit Ruhlen is not a mainstream historical linguist. Known as one of the "Long Rangers" for his claims of being able to reconstruct protoforms back into the very distant past, his views on language reconstruction vary starkly from almost all other historical linguists.

It is likely -- virtually certain -- that Drs. Foster and Toth's research will be shredded to pieces in the process of peer review.