Horses

[Rick Mc Callister]

	The word presumibly could have applied to other equids.
	I don't know if wild asses were present in Anatolia at that time
but they were present in nearby Mesopotamia and Iran.
	The weakness, of course, is that words derived from *ekwos almost
invariably apply to the horse.

>A few months ago, I made a post to the list in which I stated that the PIE
>word *ekwos "horse" is not probative in the question of the PIE homeland,
>since one need not have domesticated the horse to have a word for it.
>
>I want to retract that post.  Beekes (1995) reports that horses (wild or
>domesticated) were not found in Anatolia in the period which Renfrew
>claims for the final IE unity, and Ringe (personal communication) has
>corroborated this claim.  This is an important incongruity between the
>firmly reconstructed IE vocabulary and the homeland which Renfrew posits;
>it is a strong argument against Renfrew.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701