the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/8/00 7:45:50 AM, you wrote:

<<<< The domesticated horse is now at about 4000BC and horse bones are in the
food pits a thousand years before that.  >>

-- which indicates precisely... nothing at all.>>

It indicates that the horse would be an rather unlikely candidate for a
dating of PIE unity in the Ukraine later than 4000BC.  It may indicate that
the horse would a somewhat unlikely candidate for dating PIE unity - anywhere
the wild horse is found - after 5000BC.

<<Humans and pre-human hominids have been eating horses for more than 400,000
years, for God's sake! >.

Very well, then.  This makes the horse an unlikely candidate for dating PIE
unity after 400,000BC.

<<The evidence to date is that the horse was domesticated in the Ukraine,
around 4000 BCE, on a very small scale.>>

And of course the evidence to date is that livestock domestication
accompanied the rest of agriculture into the Ukraine at 4500BC or earlier.
So the it is reasonable to attribute the spread of domestication technology
into the Ukraine to the diffusion of agriculture at or before the time.

Regards,
Steve Long