Re: The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

> > Did the words replaced lost I.-E. words or were new concepts?
>
> I severely doubt that IE didn't have words for "six" and "seven"
> before it borrowed them from Semitic. For some reason, many
> people seem to still think that hunter-gatherers are mathematical
> dolts that can't possibly count up to ten.

Although they can count cognitively it's not at all uncommon that
hunter-gatherer cultures don't have counting _words_ over a certain
limit which is usually 2, 3, 4, 5. Most languages in Australia are
like this, as well as many in Tasmania, the Amazonas, several Khoisan,
several Papuan, a couple of Khmuic ... There are also languages
with no counting words at all and all of these mentioned are indeed
hunter-gatherer cultures. But there are of course h-g cultures with
higher numerals as well.