Re: Dates of IE and A-A

PIE has only a few words related to agriculture, domestication, and metals which, IMO, points to a late paleolithic/early neolithic date. So 7-8k BC seems reasonable.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Someone asked about dates of A-A and IE that I was using. Here's what "Afro-Asiatic" on Wikipedia has to say.
> There is certainly leeway regarding the dates. For IE, I usually see 3-4 K BCE, for Uralic 2-4 K BCE and I'd guess 9-11 K BCE for Afro-Asiatic --which supposedly corresponds to the rise and spread of agriculture and then pastoralism in the Middle East and, later, into North Africa.
> If someone has better dates, speak up and justify them.
>
> Date of Afroasiatic
> Afroasiatic is one of the oldest language families of the world that is generally accepted by linguists as securely established. The earliest written evidence for an Afroasiatic language is from an Ancient Egyptian inscription of c. 3400 BC (5400 years ago).[3] Symbols on Gerzean pottery resembling Egyptian hieroglyphsdate back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting a still earlier possible date. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from Proto-Afroasiatic (Trombetti 1905: 1â€"2), and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7500 BC (9,500 years ago) and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. According to Christopher Ehret (2002: 35â€"36), Proto-Afroasiatic
> was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. By any current estimate, Afroasiatic is a language family considerably older thanIndo-European (c. 4000 BC according to David Anthony 2007: 48).
>