--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> --- Daniel Koechlin <d.koechlin@...> wrote:
>
> Anyway,
> > the domestication of
> > the horse was first achieved in the southern urals
> > around 3500 BC.
>
> ****GK: Cf. also
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sredny_Stog_culture****
In this connection I would like to draw attention to an article by
Marsha Levine that is very relevant to the points we are struggling
with:
http://www3.vet.upenn.edu/labs/equinebehavior//hvnwkshp/hv02/levine.htm
She points out that there is a fundamental difference between on the
one hand taming and on the other domestication. Taming is usually done
by capturing young animals and training them to perform actions we
humans deem useful. However, it differs from domestication in that
everything connected with reproduction is done in the wild, thereby
excluding two important possibilities humans may like to take advantage
of: first the possibility to practice selective breeding (e.g. for
size, in the case of horses), second the possibility to move out of the
geographical range where the animal occurs naturally.
As is well known, horses respond very well to taming. But domesticating
the animal is entirely different because their reproductive behaviour
is apparently complex and very tricky to manage unless you know exactly
what you are doing. You can't just pick the stallion and the mare with
the properties closest to the ones you desire and tell them to mate and
produce offspring. They won't and if by some miracle they do, you can't
repeat the trick and infanticide is a real possibility. Organizers of
breeding programs for Przewalski horses discovered all this to their
horror.
Thus, the presence of bitmarks and similar tell-tale evidence in
Dereivka or elsewhere within the natural range of the horse does not
necessarily point to domestication. It does show that people had at
least started taming horses and begun to use them for riding or similar
purposes, which is an essential first step.
On the other hand we can be sure domestication had taken place by the
time horses appear outside their natural range, for instance to draw
chariots in Anatolia (which, by the way, also implies that selective
breeding had produced larger animals). But that is, unless I'm
mistaken, an early 2d millennium phenomenon.
So whereas it may well be correct to say that speakers of PIE were the
first to tame horses, it is likely that the first to domesticate the
beast were speakers of Indo-Iranian or neighbouring IE dialects (or non-
IE languages) well after the break-up of the linguistic unity of IE.
W.
Willem