Re: IE right & 10

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> The funny thing is that it's _not_ surprising to me but what I'm

saying

> is that just because you have a hunter-gatherer society doesn't

guarantee

> that they _don't_ have a number system. You can have lots of

hunter-

> gatherer societies that don't have a developped system at all, and

I

> accept that. I just don't accept the common view that somehow

proto-

> languages older than IE or Semitic can't possibly have them just

because

> the people who would have spoken these languages were hunter-

gatherers.

>
> Otherwise, Proto-Algonquian wouldn't have a number system. Nor

Proto-

> Austronesian. Don't think those guys and gals were farmers.

My understanding is that the Proto-Austronesian speakers grew
*pajei 'rice'. (Earliest known rice cultivation is 5000 BC across
the strait in Zhejiang, and the Proto-Austronesian split is dated to
c. 4000 BC.)

Proto-Algonquian agriculture seems to have been limited to raising
gourds.

Richard.