IE, dates, etc.

[Jacob Baltuch]

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It is a pleasure to watch a civil debate on the problems of dating
(the breakup of) PIE, even if PIE only came up as an example in a
broader discussion. Of the 4 arguments given by Johanna Nichols
namely
 
       a/ terms for wheleed transportation
       b/ glottochronology
       c/ apparent depth of the family at -1500
       d/ Iranian loans into FU
 
only the first argument seems to have had any kind of general success:
not many people seem to believe in glottochronology, the estimate of the
3rd one is considered to be of an impressionistic nature and the 4th one
may say something about the breakup of Indo-Iranian but apparently nothing
about the breakup of IE.
 
There's two points I didn't see mentioned that I'd like to ask about:
 
For argument a/ everybody saw as a possible problem with it only gaps
in the archeological record. Nobody questioned the reconstructions and
especially the meanings they might have had at the PIE level. Should I
conclude that these are generally accepted? This is odd, since that'd
seem to be the only serious way to allow for PIE the possibility of
a substantially earlier date. Isn't an archeological gap of 2000 years
a bit much to assume?
 
For argument c/ those people who criticized it only saw its lack of
rigor. Yet an implicit assumption in this argument is that the lowest
common node above Hittite, Vedic Sk and Mycenian Gk was PIE. Given the
lack of universal agreement re: the problem of subgrouping I was surprised
even people who did not like the argument didn't find this particular
problem with it. Or is it just that this argument seemed so weak it
wasn't worth worrying about additional problems it might have?
 
Finally I don't know if this is only my impression but there was a much
broader range of cultural elements people felt needed to be posited
for the speakers of PIE (based on the common lexicon) that nobody seems
to mention any more. Have those gone out the window one by one until
only `wheeled transportation' remained? It would be interesting to watch
a discussion of the history of this, if only to see if that could not
occur some day to `wheel' too.