Re: Horse Sense (was: [tied] Re: Hachmann versus Kossack?)

From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57326
Date: 2008-04-15

----- Original Message -----
From: "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_horse
>
> Before you go round and round, and laughable and laughable,

I'm not the one who is laughable here, and "round and round"
was an allusion to the circularity of your arguments.
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I thought about horses training,
they usually go round and round.
Arnaud
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> You can check basic references like wikipedia.

Which proves nothing, since the Proto-Indo-Europeans wouldn't
have needed to have domesticated horses before they could have
a word for them. Did you truly fail to understand my example
of the bear?
David
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People who have heard about an animal, usually have a word for it,
but if they have never seen it, they usually have fairly crazy ideas what it
really looks like,
Maybe Greek Centauros is a good indication Greek speakers had never seen a
horse, when they borrowed (h)ippos from Tocharian.

Like the word olifant, applying to either elephants or camels.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaure
L'origine de leur représentation est généralement expliquée ainsi : le
cheval a été introduit en Grèce dès le XVIe siècle av. J.-C., mais n'était
alors utilisé que comme bête d'attelage ; les centaures représenteraient,
dans les légendes de l'Âge héroïque, les premiers cavaliers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur
The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first
reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world, to nomads
who were mounted on horses. The theory goes that such riders would appear as
half-man, half-animal (Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs had
this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen).[4] Horse taming and
horseback culture arose first in the southern steppe grasslands of Central
Asia, perhaps approximately in modern Kazakhstan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuckalavee
He resembles a centaur whose legs are part fin; he has an enormous gaping
mouth, and a single giant eye, which burns with a red flame.

As regards bears,
PIE speakers had a clear idea what a bear is,
there is no half-bear, half-human creature.

Arnaud

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