RE Retroflex sounds

[T.I. Console]

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Michael Witzel wrote

>IEs had left the Panjab, which puts this emigration
>and sound change change (depending on your RV,4000 -8000 BC!) well into
>the stone age period, when even the word for dog/wolf were hardly
>differentiated and when they had no copper, pottery, not to speak about
>horses and chariots....

Although I am an advocate of the idea of migration INTO India, and not vice-versa,
I cannot agree with this statement. In neolithic times they already had domesticated
dogs, and they made pottery. In addition, they had a lot of artefacts made of fire stone, other
stones like calcareum, and of bones. They were not that barbarious. The same
is true for the Paleolithicum (8.000 BC and older), except maybe for the pottery. No
remains have been found, but that is no definite proof, as fossilization is a
difficult and rare phenomenon. As to horses and cariots you certainly are right.

>(NB someone some weeks ago mentioned the Siwalik type horse... That,
>unfortunately, belongs entirely to the realm of palaeo-zoology. Long gone
>before the Indus period, just as the palaeo-horse in the Anericas...)

To consolidate this observation: the Siwalik period of Pakistan belongs to the
Miocene, which is older than eigth MILLION of years.

Sandra van der Geer
Leiden
info at ticonsole.nl