Re: Odp: Odp: Cowboys on Horseback

Regarding evidence of Aryans connected with Chariot Warfare in the Near
East there are actually quite a lot of Aryan personal names in elite
contexts all over the Levant in the mid-second millenium BCE. A large
proportion of them contain "horse" (ashwa-) or "chariot" (-rat(t)a)
elements too. Robert Drews´"The Coming of the Greeks" (Princeton
University Press, 1988) contains a lot of interesting information on
the inception on chariot warfare, and the possible links of this to IE.

I would also like to comment on a digression of Mark Odegar a few
messages back, where he asked if there is any language that might be
the ancestor of a new branch of IE. I submit that there is one:
English. This is admittedly a West Germanic language, but it is very
different from its' nearest relatives, it has a largely non-germanic
vocabulary and has lost practically all traces of case inflections.

Also it has spread over large parts of the Earth and split into a large
number of dialects, some of which are well on their way to turning into
separate languages (and if You don't agree with that, just try to speak
to a native of Jamaica or some other West Indian Islands or, even
better, to sombody who speaks Tok Pisin).

Even with the stabilizing effect of writing it seems very likely to me
that in a millenium there will be an "Englic" branch of the IE family.