Wheeled Vehicles.

JoatSimeon at aol.com JoatSimeon at aol.com
Wed Oct 20 04:37:53 UTC 1999


>Odegard at means.net writes:

> ca. 3500 and 1000 BC and not be detected as a loan word.

-- at a minimum, the wheeled-vehicle terminology must have been acquired
before Tocharian or Indo-Aryan split from the main body.  That's certainly no
later that 2000 BCE, and probably a good deal earlier.

For that matter, the light, spoke-wheeled, bentwood-and-wicker chariot was
pretty fully developed in the 21st century BCE, and in the traditional
Androvonovo area.

And that's merely the _latest_ date for it; a classic 'absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence'.  Since it was already in a high state of
development at that time and in that area, it's quite possible it was present
in more rudimentary forms much earlier, and we simply haven't found the
evidence yet (or it hasn't survived -- light wooden constructions generally
don't).

Horse domestication on the Eurasian steppe can be placed to around 4000 BCE,
and equipment _very similar_ to that used in the early Ural-Kazakhstan
chariots (Antler and bone cheekpieces, riding-crop caps, etc.) can be found
from the Urals to
Hungary very early -- earlier than the chariot burials.

Incidentally, chariots feature in Scandinavian rock-art as early as the
1300's BCE.

>>From this we can see that while the shared wheeled vehicle terminology
>cannot be explained as loan words between individual Indo-European
>languages, they also need not be explained as the fourth millennium BC terms
>either -- they could have diffused later. [pp. 15-16]

-- that depends on assuming an implausibly late and large area for PIE.

>The second is tools, at least copper tools, and for a really good cart
>that makes judicious use of hardwood, probably bronze tools.

-- no, I'm afraid this is not so.  Woodworking with Neolithic tools is
perfectly satisfactory for hardwoods, as the evidence of the 'lake villages'
and other neolitic settlements shows.  It's slower and more difficult, but
you can get very much the same results.



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