the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: X99Lynx at aol.com <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Date: Saturday, December 18, 1999 5:21 AM

[snip]
>Starting with the linguistic side - very clearly, there are cases where
>technological and cultural innovations carry their own terminology with them
>and enter different languages with a common name long after those languages
>have separated.  (In some cases, they have even been conformed after the fact
>to the local sound rules.)  IE speakers could have become "acquainted" with
>the wheel after they separated and adopted the traveling wagoneer's,
>wheelwright's or merchant's word for the item.

>And let me question whether the universal shared character of the attested
>words for the wheel is even accurate.

>What was the Hittite word for wheel?

>Awhiles back, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote (3/9/99 12:12:33 AM):
><<The other words related to horse technology yield no Hittite
>cognates (Hittite "wheel" is not *kwekwlo- or *rotHo- but
><hurki>, related only to Tocharian <wa"rka"nt> "circle, wheel"),
>except for two curious items: "shaft/pole", Hittite hissa ~ Skt.
>i:s.a:, Grk. oie:ks, Slav. oje(s)- and "(to) harness", Hittite
>turiia- ~ Skt. dhu:r-,...>>

>And, BTW, how does Greek or Mycenaean jive with the statement that wheel has
>a shared form in all IE languages?

>Miguel wrote to me:
><<AFAIK, "horse" in Mycenaean is i-qo (Class. Greek hippos), not a regular
>reflex of PIE *ek^wos.  "Wheel" is a-mo (Cl. Greek harma "chariot").>>

>And a simple reading of the Illiad (as Chapman noted a long time ago and Buck
>gave a nod to) makes it rather clear that Homer's specific word for a wheel,
>a chariot wheel, a potter's wheel, wheel tracks and a spinning wheel is
><trochos>.  What is equally pretty clear is that <kuklos> refers not
>specifically to a wheel, but to anything circular, including a circle of
>counselors or the walls surrounding a town.

>If <kuklos> did in fact originally refer to a circle (rather than
>specifically to a wheel) then there is no surprise that the word would trace
>back to PIE long before the wheel - and the fact of the wheel's introduction
>would only reflect a later shift in semantic meaning of <kuklos>.  <*rotHo>,
>the other supposed IE universal, does not even approach the meaning "wheel"
>in Homer.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Steven has made a number of very good points here.  Carrying the argument even
further:

What if all the IE words like *kwekwlo- or *rotHo- , and Gr. trochos are older
than the wheel/chariot/wagon, and represent only new uses as required by the
emergence of new technology? (cf. German Rechner = computer, a new use of a
much older word).  My suggestions would be the following:

Tro'chos/trocho's: maybe a variant (Mycenean inspired? cf. iqo - hippo's)
related to Tro'pos/tropo's, meaning 'turn, return'
*kwekwlo-, Gr. kyklos: circle, round.
*rotHo- : rotate, turn around, revolve, spin.

That would mean various things:

1. IE languages had a choice among pre-existing semantically related roots for
the new technology.

2. Even if they had all chosen the same root, quod non, this would still not be
proof of IE unity at the moment the wheel was invented or became known to IE
lgs. speaking peoples.

Just a thought...

Ed.