I know this story but refuse to take it
seriously. The article contains a number of errors, and unjustified
interpretations and inferences concerning biological and palaeontological
questions (but the opinions of two experts cited there are entirely reliable and
worth reading _carefully_ -- thanks for eliciting them). The evidence
promised in the title is not given anywhere; the terminology used in the article
is loose and betrays lack of deeper familiarity with the relevant fields of
biology (for example, Equidae is a family, not a species; Caspians and Shetland
ponies are members of _Equus caballus_, not separate taxa).
The fact that modern horses may have 34-38
(canonically, 36) ribs simply means that the species shows some
genetic variability in this respect, _not_ that it derives partly from an
(unknown) ancestor with 17 pairs of ribs. Genetic variation (reflected in
anatomical variation, among other things) is what we _normally_ find in any gene
pool. Evolution would be impossible without it. It results from random
mutations, not from mixed descent.
_Equus sivalensis_ could not be renamed
"Hipparion sivalensis" by any horse expert in his right mind: to a
palaeontologist, hipparions are not even remotely confusible with any
_Equus_ species. Anyway, as far as is known, hipparions (which died out in the
lower Pleistocene, more than a million years ago) also had 36 ribs _on the
average_, though the number could perhaps vary slightly in the same way as it
does in modern horses. Even if the number were different, the genera
_Hipparion_ and _Equus_ -- the latter including all the living equids, i.e. true
horses, asses, hemiones (onagers, kulans and khurs), kiangs, zebras and
quaggas -- belong to different branches in the family tree of horses:
they separated much earlier than, say, humans and gorillas. The
Rigveda does not say anywhere that horses have three digits on each leg, does
it?
One of the experts quoted on your page says
that all equids more recent than 20 million years ago seem to have had 36 ribs
(sporadic mutations apart). This is probably true of _E. sivalensis_ as well,
though I doubt if there are enough postcranial skeletal remains to make sure
(many fossil species are known from scant material, typically teeth,
skulls and fragmentary limb bones but no dorsal vertebrae or ribs). But
there is no reason to assume, on wishful thinking alone, that the rib count was
different from that found in all other _Equus_ species. The idea that
_E. sivalensis_ (or _E. namadicus_, or any of their cousins) had 34 ribs is
therefore just a myth. Anyway, if a different equid species was domesticated in
India so recently, what's happened to it? (And how did true horses get to
India?)
The only other equid that <as'va->
could conceivably stand for, is _Equus hemionus_. Unfortunately, a typical hemione has 36 ribs, just
like a typical horse. The prehistoric range of onagers extended from Ukraine to
South Asia. However, <as'va-> derives from PIE *(h1)ek^wos, a word which
stands for domestic horses (and presumably stood for their wild ancestors, such
as steppe and forest tarpans) in all the branches of IE in which it
survives (including Indo-Aryan, of course, but also Iranian, Baltic, Germanic,
Celtic, Italic and Greek). It is not applied to onagers, kulans, asses, etc. --
not even to mules and hinnies, and not even among those IEs who must been
been familiar with other equids. Douglas Q. Adams tentatively reconstructs an IE
"ass ~ onager" word based on Skt. gardabHa- and Tocharian B kercapo- (if
real, it might also refer to the now extinct European wild ass _E.
hydruntinus_).
Regards,
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 2:05 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Dravidian in Persia?
It is an elaborate story discussed on another list. The
context is the equus species with 34 ribs (not caballus). One URL:
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/horse5.htm