It has been a long time since I have read such a shitty article. It is unclear why the author ignored the most recent published studies that directly refute such narrow views. We already have bioanthropological evidence from human skeletons found in Kurgans in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary demonstrating clear skeletal pathologies associated with habitual horsemanship, dating from 3000 to 2500 BC.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368986684_First_bioanthropological_evidence_for_Yamnaya_horsemanshipa recent article from 2026 proved that the Yamnaya culture already rode horses of the DOM2 genomic lineage (direct ancestor of modern domestic horses) and used horsemanship for pastoral mobility and horse raiding tactics long before the collapse of the Bronze Age. Why did they ignore this?https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady7336?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2FI'm not a linguistics expert, nor is it my field, but the linguistic juggling over the word for "horse" is comically cringe. They argue that "the PIE root for horse didn't originally mean horse" or that the Armenian eš changed to "donkey" because "real" horses only arrived later with the Mitanni...? It's a kind of irritating linguistic anachronism. They try to force the idea that the expansion of the domestic horse only "really happened" when specific genetic mutations spread en masse around 2200 BC, but as shown above, this is not true. The author seems to ignore that the Proto-Indo-European root *h1eḱwos was already linked to the handling, milk consumption, and riding of equines on the steppes since at least the fourth millennium BC. Perhaps the change to "donkey" in Armenia was a regional idiosyncrasy and not proof that the horse did not exist or was not domesticated before.
>>18708994The author is educated, experienced, and works in academia. What do you have? Send him an email and don't come crying here.
>>18708999>The author is educated, experienced, and works in academia.And he still lost. Amazing how that works.
>>18708999>The author is educated, experienced, and works in academiaThat would have been very compelling before the 2010's.
>>18708999What kind of argument is that? What is the age range of /his/? He is simply exemplifying the isolation that sometimes occurs between traditional historical linguistics and modern archaeogenetics. That's why any article on historical linguistics today must eventually be based on genetics as well.The author relies on a hyperspecific and outdated model to try to justify migration routes (via the Caucasus and Central Asia) based solely on Wanderwort vocabulary borrowings, while conveniently ignoring that ancient DNA data and human paleopathology have already rewritten this chronology. Do you understand this?
>>18709046>>18709035>>18709006You don't even need to disguise yourself to prove you're the same guy. See how the main points of the article haven't been refuted yet. You can't ride ponies smaller than skittish zebras. The author is correct in saying that the "horse" in PIE doesn't really mean horse. They were too useless to use and were only large enough in the Iranian period; before that they were like Botai, probably used for consumption.
>>18709046>>18708994Linguistics should've become a joke when Chomsky's theory floundered in face of the facts and he completely quit the field to make a living as a political pundit.
>>18709056I could say you're trolling, but no. I've debated with you here a few times and you're the same guy who insists on the same outdated arguments from Librado. You're completely ignoring the archaeological and genetic evidence that contradicts these ideas. See how you and the author completely ignore David Anthony's article? I linked both articles for you to read. Don't waste our time.>The finding that Yamnaya CPONT horses were in the same clade with DOM2-mod horses has stronger support than the claimed absence of DOM2 ancestry in CWC horses, which itself is at best an indirect indicator of whether Yamnaya people rode DOM2-clade or any other kinds of horses.>probably used for consumption.>They were too useless to use and were only large enough No.>As noted above, Liu etal. (3) found that selection began on the genetic loci controlling fear and back strength during or before the Yamnaya era when CPONT genomes shifted toward DOM2-mod values in MDS. Together, these methods show that Yamnaya horses were under selection for traits that facilitated riding and handling, suggesting some control over breeding.
>>18709065The real question is: why did the author do this? Instead of integrating genetic data from 2026 on horsemanship and the Yamnaya to adjust their models, they create hyper-complicated theories (like saying that "horse didn't mean horse"). An extremely outdated dogma. They use a semantic trick to salvage their hypothesis. It seems to me that the author of this text is trying to defend a specific theory that the Proto-Indo-European did not spread from the steppes (Yamnaya model), but rather from a region further south, near the Caucasus or Anatolia lol If the horse was domesticated and ridden on the steppes in 3000 BC by the Yamnaya (as science has proven), his theory dies and has no basis. The most dishonest and easy "solution" was to try to disconnect the word *h1eḱwos from the modern domestic horse. When it is stated that the original term meant only a generic equine (or that it became "donkey" in Armenian), he attempts to erase the horse from PIE culture. This opens the door to arguing and creating purely fanciful theories that the real expansion of the horse only occurred later, with the Iranian and Armenian branches coinciding with the southern route he wants to defend. I may be wrong, but it seems suspicious to me.
>>18708994>OP forgetting that linguistards are more biased than the haploautists in academia.
>>18709056>>18708999Did the author pay idiots to come and defend this piece of crap article?
This article was likely published in a journal or book edited by colleagues who share the same outdated theoretical line.
>>18708994>donkey of the mountainscan also mean 'donkey from abroad', with no reference to actual mountains.
>>18708994>They argue that "the PIE root for horse didn't originally mean horse" or that the Armenian eš changed to "donkey" because "real" horses only arrived later with the Mitanni...?If this is the author's reasoning, it would be a fallacious use of linguistics. An original application of the word to horses is confirmed by every major Indo-European branch, including ones that split off early like Anatolian and Tocharian. The idea that Armenian has an isolated archaism in its reference to donkeys is absurd. It is explainable as a trivial innovation by Armenian and the fact that both horses and donkeys are equines. Donkeys may have been very popular for the mountainous terrain of the Caucasus and Anatolia.As for the meaning of the horse word, *h1éḱu̯os is morphologically transparent through Indo-European derivational processes. E.g.,*h1eḱu̯ós (adj.) "having swiftness; speedy"=> *h1éḱu̯os (n.) "one having swiftness; a horse"The application of an adjective pertaining to quickness to horses is straightforward and intuitive.Höfler, S. (2024). Linnaean linguistics: ‘Bear’, ‘horse’, ‘wolf’ and the Indo-European phylogeny from a zoographical perspective. In Indo-European Interfaces. Stockholm University Press.https://doi.org/10.16993/bcn.dI have a question about the picture of the paper. It says:>which allows us to dispel the idea that Proto-Indo-European *h1eḱʷos did not, in fact, mean 'horse'.The author wants to dispel the notion that *h1eḱʷos did NOT mean horse? hmm. Did he mean he intends to dispel the notion that *h1eḱʷos DID mean horse? Also worrisome is the fact that he spells *h1eḱʷos rather than *h1éḱu̯os. There's no palatolabiovelar (palatalized and labialized velar) reconstructed for PIE. One might wonder if this is a person who is very unfamiliar with linguistics who could not be bothered to consult with a historical linguist to at least proofread his paper or sanity check his claims.
>>18709267You lost
>>18709267
>>18709272
>>18709117>>18709065Is the author even a linguist though?
>>18709271No. YOU lost. And you will continue to lose until you stop clinging to any garbage you read on the internet, like the existence of horses in the Indus Valley. You lost again.>>18709267Thank you very much for the linguistic clarification. I really couldn't delve deeper into the subject due to my ignorance in the area. But you don't need to be an expert to realize how fallacious the author's argument is.>The idea that Armenian has an isolated archaism in its reference to donkeys is absurdThe worst part is that I searched for other, more recent authors who have already postulated this, and I really didn't find any of them. That's strange, isn't it? The core of the argument is that the Indo-European root for 'horse' did not originally mean horse, and that Armenian _eš_ shifted to 'donkey' simply because real horses only arrived later with the Mitanni. No serious linguist would argue that, as the genomic evidence for the presence of horses is clear. Since the third millennium BC, steppe cultures have ridden horses of the DOM2 genomic lineage and used horsemanship for pastoral purposes. He simply ignored Anthony et al.'s article. As I said here>>18709107 unfortunately I am forced to assume that the author is ideologically motivated. >As for the meaning of the horse word, *h1éḱu̯os is morphologically transparent through Indo-European derivational processes. E.g.,*h1eḱu̯ós (adj.) "having swiftness; speedy"=> *h1éḱu̯os (n.) "one having swiftness; a horse"This.
>>18709275>>18709272>>18709100caused by people riding cows, bulls, or oxen People rode on the cattle and a ceramic figurine of a human/boy riding a bull/ox was found at the archaeological site of Kapitan Andreevono. Several authors have already spoken about this, without conclusive evidence that they had horses to ride.
>>18709310>because real horses only arrived later with the MitanniIt's only an overactive imagination that comes up with the idea that the meaning "horse" as applied to the horse word could be a late development. If something like that were true, I would expect a new wanderwort and not something inherited from PIE through regular sound change, and I would not expect every major branch to corroborate "horse" for the exact same word, espcially not Anatolian and Tocharian.
>>18709318>caused by people riding cows, bulls, or oxen You're changing the subject. But I'm willing to discuss this, I'm off work today and have all the time in the world. But if you bothered to read the article I linked, you'd know that ironically Anthony already responded to these accusations. See pic. Cattle are not suited for riding like horses: broad and weak backs, slow and wild. Short rides happen, but they don't cause "the rider syndrome" found in PIE cultures.>Several authors have already spoken about thisWhich authors, for example? Did you realize that so far you're the only one who hasn't been able to give a useful answer? And you haven't been able to cite anything at all. Try a little harder.
>without conclusive evidence that they had horses to ride.
>>18709372
>>18709056Didn't the Botai literally ride horses (ironically simply to hunt other horses)?
>>18709377
>>18709380Therefore, we are dealing here with multidisciplinary evidence — genetic, archaeological, bioanthropological, and linguistic>>18709267>>18709272>>18709275 which renders any counterargument exceedingly difficult. The multi-species mobile pastoralism that emerged with the early Yamnaya and around 3200 BCE already required domesticated horses, mainly in the drier/semi-desert south during winter, to control large herds and clear paths through the snow for sheep and cattle to graze. today we clearly know that the Yamnaya horses, called CPONT/TURG, were already part of the DOM2 clade and contributed 95% of the ancestry of all DOM2 after 2200-2100 BCE. In other words, Yamnaya horses are direct ancestors of all modern domestic horses. Thanks
>>18709379>Botai not very relevant to the domestication of the horse. In Botai, horses were corralled, milked, and slaughtered. their manure was collected in pits, and they were slaughtered within the settlement itself, constituting a large percentage of the fauna consumed. But Taylor and Barrón-Ortiz dismissed all this evidence and returned to arguing that they were merely wild horses victims of mass hunting by ambush.
>>18709414>merely wild horses victims of mass hunting by ambush.This kind of practice has been going on probably since the mesolithic and paleolithic. I don't know what the Botai would do, but hunter gatherers have setup "drive lanes" made of stone for millennia in order to corral big game and ambush them. It would not surprise me if a lot of megafauna went extinct because hunter gatherers became too efficient at mass slaughter.https://record.umich.edu/articles/prehistoric-caribou-hunting-structure-discovered-beneath-lake-huron/
>>18709430>It would not surprise me if a lot of megafauna went extinct because hunter gatherers became too efficient at mass slaughterGood point
>>18709275Wouldn't the Anatolian branches be considered pre-Indo-European ("PIA") due to their lack of PIE-type ancestry from the steppes?
>>18709291
>>18709485NTA.It's just a question of the terminology you choose. The language before Anatolian split is called Indo-Anatolian, Early PIE, or even simply PIE. The language after the Tocharian split is called PIE, Core PIE, Late PIE, or even Indo-Germanic.I personally prefer Early/Late PIE, but the choice of the terminology doesn't affect anything important.
>>18709489This is the most bizarre part of the article.
>>18709496NTA I agree as well. "PIA" is somewhat redundant. The point is that the Anatolian samples do not show ancestry derived from Yamnaya or Corded Ware, but rather from earlier steppe groups. However, there remains a significant sampling gap in the region, so skepticism is warranted. At least for me.But we do have archaeological evidence linking Proto-Anatolian to groups associated with the Cernavodă culture, which is central to the Western Route hypothesis for the origin of the Anatolian languages. This culture shows similarities to Sredny Stog, which could be what is called "early PIE". Sredny Stog was not particularly homogeneous, and only a few isolated groups from this horizon would become the PIEs.
>>18709485The arrival of the Proto-Hittites to C.Anatolia should be at the end of the 3rd millenium as their vocabulary shows that they weren't accustomed to the political climate of the city-states of the Near East.
