The Horse, The Wheel, and Language

[arth_frown]

Anyone reccommend this book? The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

www.amazon.co.uk/Horse-Wheel-Language-Bronze-Age-Eurasian/dp/0691058873/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250804027&sr=8-1

[megli]

Looks sensible to me.

[Lee]

looks interesting... found a couple of things which might set alarm bells ringing:

Other scholars remain unconvinced, given the small samples. Anthony attributes some of that skepticism to the hothouse world of archaeozoology. “Dory and I are seen as interlopers—neither of us is a trained zoologist—and we have had a hard time getting accepted.”

Yet Anthony is also not a linguist or zoologist; his excavations have been mainly at North American prehistoric sites, and he claims not to know how to even ride a horse

i think i would need to read a lot more into this subject as there are different views, this guy essentially says: PIE slowly spread over time through a combination of assimilation domination and conquests, using PIE as a type of networking language whereas one amazon review says that : It is particularly good in its refutation of the woolly notions of certain archaeologists like Renfrew, Cunliffe and Pryor who would have us believe that the Indo-Europeans spread throughout Europe with farming.

so this book offers a radically different view. i have some loosely formed ideas about how this new idea might have flaws but i think waiting till i have slept is a good idea

[Tegernacus]

I'm wary of "radical views" that are both semi-anonymous and not known in a wider context (there is usually a reason for that)

Genetics shows that a large bulk of European people came from the Eastern European area, the Black sea etc. I don't think you can trace people by the spread of a language though, as these things were more often down to trade than anything ("type of networking language" sounds about right). There WAS mass-movement (as in large family groups) since the stoneage, and they did bring take farming from Syria etc, so in a sense, BOTH of the points of view are correct. So if it is setting out to refute "the wooly notions of Renfrew, Cunfliffe and Pryor" - well, best it can do is add to the picture.

Interesting though, I'll put it on the to-read list.

[megli]

Aug 22, 2009 0:06:44 GMT -1 Lee said:

looks interesting... found a couple of things which might set alarm bells ringing:

Other scholars remain unconvinced, given the small samples. Anthony attributes some of that skepticism to the hothouse world of archaeozoology. “Dory and I are seen as interlopers—neither of us is a trained zoologist—and we have had a hard time getting accepted.”

Yet Anthony is also not a linguist or zoologist; his excavations have been mainly at North American prehistoric sites, and he claims not to know how to even ride a horse

i think i would need to read a lot more into this subject as there are different views, this guy essentially says: PIE slowly spread over time through a combination of assimilation domination and conquests, using PIE as a type of networking language whereas one amazon review says that : It is particularly good in its refutation of the woolly notions of certain archaeologists like Renfrew, Cunliffe and Pryor who would have us believe that the Indo-Europeans spread throughout Europe with farming.

so this book offers a radically different view.

This is actually a restatement of the old-fashioned--and in my opinion, correct--view, that PIE was a hunter-horseman language from around the Black sea, which spread down to india, iran, Turkey and Europe. Renfrew's PIE-is-the-language-of-the-first-farmers-in-the-middle-east was a new idea when he first proposed it.

[megli]

A good book which many of you might enjoy---but it's academic, I should point out--- is M L West, 'Indo-European Poetry and Myth'. Quite new, not so hot on Celtic things, but very good on other areas.

[Lee]

i tend to find that when two acdemic views are held up in opposition - it turns out both are correct and the 'truth' lies somewhere in between the two.

certainly when it comes to palaeontology.

[Lee]

i went and ordered this seeing as i just got paid, also:

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0500276161/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

we shall see how they go

[megli]

Very famous book, that.

[Lee]

famous good or famous bad?

[megli]

famous good.

[deiniol]

Hope you're not bored by archaeology, though. He devotes a lot of time to the "homeland question". But there is a nice little bit on PIE religion in it.