From: Tavi
Message: 68826
Date: 2012-03-08
>Starostin's PNEC reconstruction is *h\y[n]tSwi (~ -e-) 'horse', reflected in e.g. Sumerian anse 'donkey'. So IMHO the IE word is a late loanword reflecting the domestication of the animal in the Pontic-Caspian Steppes. Sound correspondences are trivial, with the sibilant affricate *tS corresponding to a dorso-palatal stop *k´.
> > It seems to me that we hashed this out around 10 years ago or so.
> > Native European horses, as I understand, were either ponies or draft
> > horses --used for pulling carts. >Riding horses, as I remember reading
> > in various posts, were introduced from Eurasia, from the area between
> > the Caucasus and China.
> > Just as we have a separate name for pony, it
> > would have made sense to have a separate name for a riding horse --horsa
>
> Ok, but as Germanic has its own 'horse' word, we must assume their
> riding horses had a different origin than common IE *h1ek´w-o-, of
> Caucasian origin.
>