the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
>It does not matter if they occured otherwise.  The question is WHEN they
>occurred.  None of this dates these changes back to PIE dispersal.  The wheel
>may have been introduced BEFORE PIE *k ==> Germanic 'h' occurred BUT
>AFTER IE dispersal.

In a message dated 2/3/00 3:02:06 AM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:
<<In each individual case, yes.  But by the time you add in ALL of the shared
words for late Neolithic technology found in IE languages, you have almost
all of the major sound changes represented.  This puts the origin of these
words back to a time when virtually *none* of sound changes had occurred.
This is, by definition, prior to the loss of unity. >>

I simply MUST point out what is happening here.
Much of your 'late Neolithic technology' - aside from the wheel - no longer
supports the unity dates they once did and they do not necessarily refute the
neolithic hypothesis regarding PIE.

in the Ukraine, metal smelting appears about 4500BC - hammered  metal appears
well before that.  The domesticated horse is now at about 4000BC and horse
bones are in the food pits a thousand years before that.   Alot of this
'late' neolithic technology is now arriving in the Ukraine with neolithicism
or just afterwards.

The list of objects that will establish PIE unity in say 3300BC in the
Ukraine is now fast dwindling.  Heck, even red ochre graves were identified
in the Bug-Dniestr sites dating before 4500BC.

Now the question becomes - if all of these other objects with any confidence
can only hold a last date of say 4500BC - how can wheeled transport still be
used to preserve PIE unity as much as 1500 years later?  And that is why the
relative dates of the sound changes of wheeled transport ALONE do matter -
because they almost ALONE argue for a later last date of unity than
neolithicism.  BUT they can only really be used to establish that the wheel
came before those sound changes occurred - not necessarily establish the last
days of PIE unity.  And in the process they may suggest other locations where
an earlier PIE unity occurred.

Regards,
Steve Long