Dates for "PIE technology"

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/11/00 1:31:47 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<And a whole great slew of other stuff relating to wheeled vehicles, plows,
metal, weaving, milking and milk products, etc.>>

I thought twice about responding.  But I also thought that members of the
list may be interested in how this "great slew" of items affects the latest
dating of PIE.

JUST HOW LATE A DATE DO THESE ITEMS SUPPLY FOR PIE UNITY?

Using mainly my Harper Collins Atlas of Archaeology (1997 Borders Press)
w/intro by Colin Renfrew, we might DATE THE ABOVE TECHNOLOGIES AS FOLLOWS:

- Evidence of the PLOW in Mesopotamia and Lower Danube by 4500BC.  Evidence
of horticultural implements that would have functioned as "short plows" and
been called plows, @7000BC at Ain Mallaha in the Levant; 5500BC in the Danube
basin.

- Evidence of METALWORK (copper beads and jewelry) at Catal Huyuk in Anatolia
(possible IE homeland) circa 7000BC.  Recently discovered evidence of arsenic
and tin bronze being made in Thailand @8000BC.  First casting technology,
Anatolia and SE Europe, 7000-6000BC, by 4400BC along the Dnieper, in
Scandinavia and the Italian Penisula.  Earliest tin/bronze metallurgy:
Anatolia, southern Caucasus @ 5000BC.

- Evidence of the WEAVING dates back to paleolithic times (e.g., among the
Swiss lake dwellers).

- With regard to the WEAVING of fine cloth... "Fragments of simple linen
burial cloths prove that circa 6,000 B.C. weaving with flax existed in Catal
Huyuk,... In Jarmo in northeast Iraq there is evidence of woven cloth circa
7,000 B.C., while in Nahal Hemar in the Judean desert there is proof of woven
cloth circa 6,500 B.C" Also as to the WEIGHTED LOOM, "The discovery at Catal
Huyuk of what seem to be ceramic warp weights and a heading band seems to
prove the existence of the warp-weighted loom in early Neolithic Anatolia."

- With regard to MILKING AND MILK PRODUCTS, I have these citations:  earliest
evidence for regular goat herd milking, North Africa @7000BC (SFEC 11/2/97
Z1, page 6).  Earliest representational evidence of cheese-making 4000BC
(HFA, 1996, p.121) (Historielärarnas Förenings Arsskrift, Uppsala, Sweden).
A. Sherrat's "secondary product revolution" premised on the surplus economy
first developed during Bandkeramik period (@5500-4000BC).

(I'll put off the wheel for another occasion.)

Not one of these items argues for a date after 4500BC.  Most leave open the
possibility that PIE speakers could have come in contact with these items -
enough to name them - thousands of years before the arbirary date of 3500BC.

<<Any _one_ item might be wrong, but it's vanishingly unlikely that they are as
a group.  The balance of probabilities, therefore, would be that it reflects a
common inheritance, from the late Neolithic or the Copper Age.>>

QUITE TO THE CONTRARY, as a group they seem to suggest that PIE could have
been exposed to these items about 5000BC or earlier if it was anywhere in the
vicinity of Europe or Anatolia.  There is hardly any definite conclusion to
be drawn from them together or separately, except that they won't support
anything like a Copper Age date for PIE.  Far from it.

Steve Long