Dating the final IE unity (was: Re: GREEK PREHISTORY ANDLANGUAGE)

[Vidhyanath Rao]

<JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:

>> sarima at ix.netcom.com writes:

>> The appearance of horse-bits (for riding) in the Sredny-Stog culture is quit
>> telling here.  (Mallory does not actually mention this, as it was not yet
>> known when he wrote his book).>>

> -- very true; they showed up just where he predicted them.

I will apreciate references to this (to publications on the finds of
>actual bits<).

> Likewise, efforts to show that chariots are not associated with IE-speakers
> (or at least early Indo-Iranians) have pretty well collapsed now that recent
> excavations have shown the earliest chariots to be placed not in the middle
> east or Anatolia in the 2nd millenium BCE, but in the southern Ural area and
> no later than the 20th century BCE.

If we use chariots to mean >highly maneuverable< light two wheeled
vehicles, the jury is still out. The Shintasha burial simply left
impressions of spoked wheels. There is no evidence for the
``transmission'' that marks the true chariot. There is at least one point
in which the Shintasha evidence fails. See the article by Littuer and
Crowell in Antiquity (1996 or 1997).

Putting spoked wheels and horses on ox-carts does not make a chariot
anymore than putting an internal combustion engine and mag wheels in an
horse carriage will make it a racer. The transmission must match the
source of motive power or else it will just slef-destruct.