Dating the final IE unity, in particular the word for "horse"

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>But aren't there extraneous ideological interpretations on the other side as
>well? The archaeological buzzword is "process archaeology", which seems to
>claim that, in general, populations may go through major changes in pottery,
>burial customs, agriculture and housing without any major change in their
>ethnic identity (including language).

-- exactly.  It's a wholly unwarranted assumption; and it severely
contradicts what we'd argue by analogy from the historical record.  Pure
ideological imposition.

>Insofar as Gimbutas's idealization of Old Europe is concerned, I am
>skeptical.

-- me too.  In fact, what really strikes me as "stretching" in Gimbutas is
the extreme over-elaboration of the hypothesis, attempting a precision (with
the various 'waves' and whatnot) that, at this distance in time, just isn't
possible.