Dating the final IE unity

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/31/00 10:20:09 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:

<<It is not explicit, but rather implicit in the claim that the words for
things like 'wheel' were borrowed into IE *after* it spread throughout
Europe - by over a thousand years!>>

The question you are addressing has to do with whether Renfrew ever said that
Celtic or pre-Celtic migrated to western Europe before 4000BC.  My
understanding is that he was simply saying that an early indo-european
language did, not that anything identifiably Celtic did.  Let me ask you how
your comment is relevant?

Regards,
Steve Long

PS - You wrote 'the claim that the words for things like 'wheel' were
borrowed into IE *after* it spread throughout Europe - by over a thousand
years.'

But actually if we give a generous 4000BC date to wheeled-transport (as
opposed to wheels in general or just plain round objects) and remember that
in Hittite the word for wheel is different - we can squeeze in a time spread
for the word that matches Renfrew's 4000BC date for western Europe to a 't' -
presumably before of course the specific sound changes observed in e.g.,
'*kweklo' occurred in the attested IE daughters.  Since those SPECIFIC
changes could have happened a bit later (I believe) - there wouldn't be
anything amazing about this, would there?