From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 16556
Date: 2002-10-30
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 1:02 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: OE *picga
> There were several different centres of pig domestication.
> Yes? Based on?
The genetic complexity of domestic pigs (with the contribution of at least three [sub]species of the wild boar) and the early archaeological attestation of pigs over much of Eurasia. In Europe domestic swine were already present, though not very common, in the earliest Neolithic cultures such as the LBK (in the 6th millennium BC). That's later than the domestication of swine in China, but considerably earlier than the initial dispersal of the Austronesian languages beyond Taiwan (ca. 3500-3300 BC). Given all this, the assumption of multiregionality looks sounder than that of a single domestication event.
> Occam said: Entia non sunt multiplicanda (sine ratione). Most people leave out the last part.
He said "praeter necessitatem" (beyond necessity), which is not. Since you stress the importance of the last part, don't misquote it. Now, what particular _entities_ does Waruno Mahdi multiplicate beyond necessity?
> Mahdi's explanation lacks the reason (well, a sound one), since he is trying to preserve a theory (Austronesian out-of-Taiwan) that doesn't have much going for it, since it seems to forget that geography was much different, when the events in it should have taken place.
The geography was not much different in the fourth millennium BC and later, when the Austronesian dispersal was happening according to the scenario accepted by Mahdi (as for the out-of-Taiwan theory of Austronesian _linguistic_ origins and as for dating the submergence of Sundaland, I have nothing to add to what I have already said on this list). Waruno Mahdi is a member of the Austronesian e-group, and if you feel brave enough to take on a real expert in the field, go there and discuss things with him and with other professional Austronesianists. What's keeping you?
> That doesn't mean that I reject this type of explanation on principle. But I think I read somewhere that european pigs had Asian genes in them.
_Some_ Asian genes, which is hardly surprising after so many millennia of pig breeding.
> What does "uninformative" mean?
Providing no clue; not enlightening.
> BTW, what is *bairaz supposed to be in PIE, and can it be analysed there?
It's (West) Germanic only, so it isn't supposed to be anything in PIE, which had a different word for "boar" (preserved also in Germanic as *eburaz). My personal guess is that *baira- < *bHoi-só-, possibly from the root meaning 'fight, strike', or perhaps the similar one meaning 'fear', cf. Lith. bhaisa`s 'fright'.
Piotr