Re: [tied] Latin versus *Proto-Romance

Steve,

Indeed, it is entirely possible that horses came into
Indian subcontinent before the coming of the
Indo-Aryan speakers. However, it is indisputable that
the domesticated horse and chariot were part of the
�Vedic Aryan� culture, as revealed RigVeda.
Conversely, there is no indisputable evidence that the
domesticated horse and chariot would have belonged to
the culture of the Harappan civilization (say, from
2600 BCE to 1900 BCE). A little bit of logic suggests,
assuming that our evidence can be trusted here (hence
removing the familiar problems concerning substitution
in epistemic contexts) that these cultures were
different and hence the Harappans were not Vedic
Aryans.

The same goes for your analogies: Cervantes surely was
not a Pre-Columbian Indian author because Cervantes
certainly knew something they did not know �the
domesticated horse.

Cheers, Juha Savolainen


--- x99lynx@... wrote:

> ��I wrote:
> (One of my favorite positions is Witzel's statement
> that'Harappan' could not
> be 'Vedic' because 'Harappan' did not have the horse
> -- which seems like
> saying that 'cowboys' were not 'American' because
> 'cowboys' did not use
> automobiles.)
>
> Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...> wrote:
> <<Your analogy is misleading. An correct analogy
> would state, say, that the
> Pre-Columbian Indians could not have been
> conquistadors because former did
> not know the horse���>>
>
> Juha,
> Sorry, but I'd suggest you are illustrating the
> power of the presumption.
> There's no clear evidence that the horse and Vedic
> showed up at the same
> time. There is nothing in the Vedas that says, "hey,
> we brought the first
> horses into town." Unless you can C-14 the sound
> changes, it's just as easy
> to assume that IE was in India long before the horse
> arrived -- and the
> evidence does not entirely exclude the possibility
> IE arrived long after.
>
> Maybe the better analogy would be like saying that
> Thomas Jefferson wasn't
> American because he didn't have rock 'n roll (with a
> pace to those who think
> rock 'n roll has always been with us.)
>
> Steve Long
>

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