Horses

Sean Crist kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu
Tue Dec 21 06:09:34 UTC 1999


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.

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