Re: [tied] Re: Dravidian in Persia?

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001 21:20:19 -0000, VAgarwalV@... wrote:

>If the presence or absence or horse remains is used to deny or affirm
>the arrival of IA speakers around 1700 BCE, we must ask why the same
>logic should not be applied to areas further north?

Actually, what Piotr said was that there might be a link between
horses and the arrival of *Dravidian* [not Indo-Aryan] speakers in the
2nd millennium.

>Witzel refers to (pg. 15) to two articles (occurring in the same
>journal volume) by BOKONYI (1997) and MEADOW and PATEL (1997) to
>decide that the modern horse first appeared in South Asia at Pirak
>around 1700 BCE. Note the word 'modern'. The emphasis on 'modern'
>itself smacks of a wrong methodology because it amounts to imposition
>of a modern taxonomy on the ancients!

Well, the word 'modern horse' is routinely applied by biologists to
distinguish equus finds from other Old World equines (hipparion,
hypohippus, anchitherium), which, apart from some overlap, are usually
very much earlier.