John F. Sowa wrote: (01)
> The estimated date for PIE is about 4000 to 6000 BC, probably
> somewhere south-east of the Black Sea. The oldest known version
> of PIE is Hittite, which is recorded in cuneiform from about
> 1800 BC. It split off much earlier than the other branches
> of PIE and diverges the most from them. (02)
I recently saw a PBS special about an archeological discovery somewhere
along the silk road in what is now Tadzhikistan (I think). It is a
bronze-age PIE site, and they believe it may have been the
birthplace/home of the people whose language came to dominate much of
Eurasia. But that makes it c.2000 B.C., not 4000 B.C. Further, the
program postulated that the eventual dominance of the the Indo-Europeans
was based on a superior technology -- the domesticated horse. This is
apparently one of the oldest known sites showing clear evidence of
domesticated horses. (03)
And, matching John's observation, horse-drawn vehicles were brought into
northern India and Mesopotamia around 1800 B.C. by an invading people.
Whether the horse people that invaded Mesopotamia was the people we
historically call the Hittites (who horse-drawn chariots were the top
military technology of the period 1600-1100 B.C.) is a whole different
historical can of worms. The cuneiform record that John refers to
doesn't date to 1800 B.C., and there are arguments about the dating, and
about the identification of certain ancient peoples. But the Hittite
language was an early Indo-European language, and the Hittites did have
the advantage of the domesticated horse. (04)
I find it amusing to note that the PIE word for "horse", however, which
is presumed to be "ekwos", or something the like, is not the base of the
word for horse in any of the Celtic, Greek, Slavic or Germanic
languages. And while "equus" was the Latin word for horse, the Roman
farmers used the (Etruscan?) word "caval" and that is the word that has
survived in modern Romance languages. By comparison, the PIE word for
sheep ("evos" or "ovos") is identifiable in many modern languages,
including English "ewe". (05)
> In Europe, the non-Indo-European languages include two members
> of the Finno-Ugric group (Finnish and Hungarian) (06)
And, I am given to understand (by my Finnish colleagues), Estonian,
which is apparently a cross between a Baltic tongue and a Suomo-Ugric
tongue, much as English is a cross between a Germanic tongue
(Anglo-Saxon) and a Romance tongue (Norman French). (07)
> and Basque, which has no known relationship to any other language. (08)
Basque (Bizkaian/Viscayan) is assumed to be an Iberian language, named
for the peoples who inhabited the Atlantic coast of Europe before the
Celtic invasions of the 5th century BC. The people the Romans called
Picti (painted) in what is now Scotland were probably also Iberians, and
there was an Iberian people in Cornwall until at least the 1st century.
I don't know that the Iberian people had any written language. (09)
There are also only a handful of surviving Celtic languages (and most
of those are artificially maintained) even though the Celtic peoples
dominated a much larger area for 500 years. I can't find a model for
the domination of language that explains the diverse effects of the
Roman occupation of the Celt-Iberian region and the subsequent Germanic
invasions in both France and England. What they have in common is the
displacement of the Celt-Iberian languages, but one of them ended up
with a Romance language and the other with a Germanic language. (010)
-Ed (011)
P.S. Like John, I've always found this stuff to be interesting, but it
is not at all clear what value it may have to formulating ontologies. ;-) (012)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (013)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (014)
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