Now the more sophisticated among us could easily object here that it would take a great deal of naivete on the part of linguistic palaeontologists to… - Ernst Pulgram

It is an elementary mistake to equate common Indo-European words with Proto-Indo- European words and to base thereon conclusions concerning the Proto-European Urvolk or Urheimat. Yet this is precisely what has often been done. . . . impassioned linguistic palaeontologists have gone even further. From the existence of certain items of vocabulary in all or a majority of the extant Indo-European languages, and blandly ignoring all the pitfalls just noted, they even fabricated conclusions concerning the social organization, the religion, the mores, the race of the Proto-Indo-European.

We now find ourselves in possession of two entirely different items, both of which we call Proto-Indo-European: one, a set of reconstructed formulae not representative of any reality; the other, an undiscovered (possibly undiscoverable) language of whose reality we may be certain.

Arguing about 'Proto-Indo-European' can be meaningful and fruitful . . . if we always explain whether we are talking about the one or the other— which, as we well know, we do not do.