Re: Cowboys on Horseback

Piotr wrote:

 

<< I suggest, instead, that PIE was spoken as a relatively homogeneous language some 7500 years ago in the Danubian area (certainly "within credible boundaries"), from which the bearers of the Linear Pottery culture took its descendants to northern Europe, and from which its other descendants spread to Anatolia and to the steppes.>>

 

According to this, the scheme of the initial IE branching must look like the following, must not it?

               

                                                P I E

                                                /      \

                                              /          \

                                     Northerh       Southern

                                      branch          branch      

     (apparently Germano-Balto-Slavic)     /       \

                                                         /           \

                                             Anatolian      Steppe groups

                                                                  (all other IE)

 

If so, the degree of similarity of, say, Indic and Slavic languages must be less, than of Indic and Anatolian and much less, than of Indic and Celtic. Does linguistics confirm this?

 

<<... some distinctly "Indic" Aryas were present in Anatolia and Babylonia before 1500 BC.>>

 

Do you mean anything besides (and earlier than) Mitanni Aryas? I'm ready to expect some Aryas there about 18th c. BC but have no evidence. 

 

<<By the way, the neolithic cattle of central and northern Europe were derived from the native subspecies of the aurochs, different from the one domesticated in Anatolia and brought from there to Greece (while sheep and goats were simply imported).>>

 

Very interesting! Does this conclusion made on the base of genetic investigations? Could you supply us with the relevant references and/or quote the principal propositions? Do the authors mention cattle of the Saharan origin? Do you have data on pigs? 

Alexander Stolbov