----- Original Message -----
From: "jdcroft" <jdcroft@...>
To: <nostratic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 7:49 PM
Subject: [nostratic] Re: Problems with Bomhard


...
> The shift to bow and arrow technology is a lot "patchier". In some
> areas at atlatl (throwing stick) gave hunting spears a superiority
> over early bows and arrows (esp. in places like Australia).
> Nevertheless, in eastern and central Eurasia and North America the
> bow and arrow is associuated with the appearance dog, which was first
> domesticated in roughly the area Bomhard gives for the centre for
> distribution of Nostratic languages (the Kebaran-Zarzian area).


It seems to me that dogs were domesticated independently twice.

1- Dog as a helper in hunting. It happend in Late Paleolitic and spread in
Western and Northern Eurasia. I don't think that the word "domestication" is
a good term here - rather it was a kind of symbiosis between Homo and Canis.
Hunting strategies of packs of wolves and bands of Paleolithic peoples were
similar - they made big game animals to move in a place where it was easy to
kill them. A large number of hunters was needed. If people and wolves
coordinated the efforts, the result was bigger than all of them together
were able to eat.
It is important, that in hunter societies eating dogs is almost as uncommon
as cannibalism.

2 - Dog as a meat product. It happend in Neolithic in South East Asia and
spread in East Asia, Polynesia, New Guinea. Dogs and pigs were domesticated
there as "normal" animals to be eaten. Everywhere meat dog and eastern pig
were accompanied by eastern root-crops - yams and taro. Therefore dog had to
be domesticated there after roots but before cereals (Chinese millet and
rice) - somewhen 9000 - 7000 BC. This agricultural complex - dog+pig and
yams+taro - is native for a group of folks representing some linguistic
families: Chino-Tibetan (+ millet as cereals), Austro-Asiatic (+ rice as
cereals), Austronesian (millet and rice - later acquisitions in some
branches), farmers in New Guinea (no cereals). I think this fact is a hint
for searching distant linguistic relationships in this part of the world.


Alexander