Horses

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Paul K. Manansala" <kabalen at MAIL.JPS.NET> wrote:

>Modern Central Asians come in all types.  Most indigenous Central
>Asians (non-Russians) like the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Uighurs and
>so are Altaic peoples.

Altaic-speaking, yes.  So are the Turks of Turkey.  So are the Yakut
of Siberia.

>>What does
>> that have to do with the "original IE stock", whatever that means?
>
>The idea that started this thread is that the IE stock was somehow
>connected with a horse culture.  Thus, horses = IE migration.

And I agree that such an idea is false.  IEans have no monopoly on
horses.  FYI, neither do Altaic peoples.

>> Inscriptions, manuscripts, a body of literature...
>
>Could you give a reference?

"Compendium linguarum iranicarum", ed. R. Schmitt, Wiesbaden 1989 (E,
F and G) gives a description of all Iranian lgs.

>> >The evidence of Tocharian in the Tarim basin is fragmentary.
>>
>> No it isn't.  See: W. Krause/W. Thomas, "Tocharisches Elementarbuch",
>> 2 volumes, Heidelberg 160, 1964.
>
>Fully aware of this evidence and it is fragmentary. There is nothing
>to suggest the local people spoke Tocharian.

So whose language was it then?  It is found only in the Tarim basin,
and while there is evidence that Toch. A was not a living language
anymore at the time of our documents, there is every reason to assume
Tocharian B was the living language of the city of Kucha.

And how do you explain Ossetic and Yaghnobi?

>> There is no such thing as a Ural-Altaic family, that's a 19th century
>> construct that has been utterly disproved.  There may not even be an
>> Altaic family.
>
>There may not be an Indo-European family.

You wish.

>  Current consensus is that Mongol and Tungusic are
>> related, and probably further linked to Korean and Japanese.  The
>> similarities between Turkic and Mongol-Tungus(-Korean-Japanese) are
>> now thought to be due to areal diffusion.  Turkic is best treated as
>> an isolate for the time being.
>
>Just are simply modifying old "Aryan" racial theories.  Indo-European
>is all this and that, but we don't know about the rest.
>
>What about all these new theories connecting Altaic and Uralic, but
>under the great white Nostratic/Proto-World banner?

Yes, Uralic and Altaic (or Uralic, Turkic and Altaic, if one prefers)
are probably Nostratic languages, along with a few others.  There is
sufficient evidence for that, I think, although much work still needs
to be done.

Proto-World is nonsense, linguistically, but considering that its
proponents claim it was spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa 50-100,000 years
ago, and spread out from there all over the world, I can see what's
"great", but I don't quite see what's so "white" about it.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam