At 9:01:13 AM on Wednesday, February 29, 2012,
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy wrote:
> You can't say that IE didn't exist 33,000 years BP; we
> simply don't know and can make hypotheses
Obviously the IE languages had a common ancestor 33,000
years ago, but in all likelihood that ancestor differs from
PIE more than present-day IE languages do. That, I expect,
was the point of Richard's question about Latin and French:
identifying PIE with its ancestor of 33,000 BP is like
referring to Latin as French.
Brian