the Wheel and Dating PIE

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>g_sandi at hotmail.com writes:

>The writing system of Linear B is so difficult

-- this is a severe handicap, granted.  The Linear B script is vilely
unsuited to writing Greek, or any inflected language, for that matter.

>I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek and Vedic
>Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any case, most
>of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts, hardly
>comparable to Vedic texts.

-- true, but one can compare some lexical items.  Eg., Mycenaean *gous
(Homeric and later Greek "bous"), which compares closely to Sanskrit 'gav'
and Avestan 'gaus'. (Or PIE *gwous, for that matter.)

>but even there I doubt that it is possible to read continuous text in one,
>if you only know the other.

-- I've been told that it's possible to puzzle out the general meaning; it
would be going to far to say that one could "read".