IE numbers

From: MCLSSAA2@...
Message: 7056
Date: 2001-04-10

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal and Glen Gordon wrote
comparing IE and Semitic forms of "six".

Are the IE numbers from 4 up likely to be as old as when the ancestors
of IE and Semitic separated? That would have been at the end of thwe
Ice Age when the steppes became more habitable and encouraged
northward migration from the Middle East. Some of the IE numbers seem
to have clear etymiologies from, non-number words:-
4: Latin "quattuor", etc: "the corners number, the amound of corners
things tend to have": compare Latin "quetrum" = "corner"
5: *penqwe: compare the Germanic words "finger" and "fist" from IE
*penqwros, *penkwstos; "the fingers number".
8: *okto: "two sets of four, twice the amount of (ordinary) fingers
on a hand", compare the Avestic word "a^sti".
etc. There are even now some tribal languages with amazingly
deficient counting systems. Before people started farming or owning
livestock, or carrying valuables such as silver that were no direct
use, they did not have anything like as much need to count. IE may
have invented all its numbers from 4 up after it separated from
Semitic. I suppose that it might have taken "6" from Semitic from
trade etc; compare that Russian for the multiples of 10 has the usual
words from IE, except for the intrusion "sorok" = 40, and a book "The
Russian Language" that I saw guessed that "sorok" meant otigianlly
"the hides number, the amount of animal hides usually sent as tribute
to the Rurikid Viking rulers" from Old Norse "serk".