--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:> There's a minority opinion
that is developing however that thinks that maybe > IE languages
spread when people learned to do more than just gather wild
> plants and wild game for food and started planting food and raising
animals. > This happened in Europe mainly in the period between
6000BC and 3000BC. This > is not completely inconsistent with the
horse and chariot theory, because you > can't have a domesticated
horse or a chariot until you have agriculture.
>
> Now, in other areas, agriculture was of course spread by people
speaking > other languages, and horses and chariots were used by
speakers of other > languages, too. So we have to be careful that we
don't make these connection > too universal.
A remarkable, cute little book has recently been published. KS
Valdiya, 2002, Saraswati: the river that disappeared, Hyderabad,
Universities Press. "The discovery of burnt stubbles of cereal plants
along with cutigens in the pollens, trapped in the sediments of the
lakes of Lunkaransar and Didwana_ in western Ra_jastha_n, shows that
the people of Saraswati domain had taken to agriculture in the early
Holocene time. This is borne out from the charcoal that gives a date
of 9400 to 8000 yr BP (Singh et al, 1974, Late Quaternary history of
vegetation and climate of the Rajasthan desert, India, Philos. Trans.
Royal Soc. London, 267B: 467-50; Bryson and Swain, 1981, Holocene
variations of monsoon rainfall in Rajasthan, Quat. Research, 16: 135-
145)."
Could this explain why Masica had to postulate a Language X?