On 2007-07-03 20:40, alexandru_mg3 wrote:
> I don't see what argument can add to our discussion : this taxonomy of
> subspecies, species , group of species that can interbreed, etc...
>
> The real split is defined today Only using the genetic markers.
Marius,
The original question was not how we define a species but whether
genetic studies suggest that cats were domesticted more than 100,000
years ago. The answer is "no". The author of the BBC News article
misunderstood and, consequently, misrepresented the findings reported in
Science. Both genetics and archaeology roughly agree in dating the
domestication of cats to the early Holocene (some 10,000 yers ago) and
locating it in the Middle East. Of course that's still makes
domesticated cats much older than PIE, and even if the IEs had no
contact with peoples who kept cats, they certainly lived somewhere
within the range of the wildcat, must have been aware of the animal's
existence, and presumably had a name for it. Whether such a name is
reconstructible is a different matter.
Piotr