SV: Paired Horse and PIE breakup

[Lars Martin Fosse]

     Paired Horse and PIE breakup
     ****************************

Sintashta chariots are the World's earliest chariots. They are
dated to 2000 B.C. Littauer calls them protochariots.....

I see a slight logical problem here. The claim that Sintashta chariots are the World's earliest chariots should be modified to a statement like this: "Sintashta chariots are the earliest chariots to be found in the World YET." Or something to that effect. 

The problem with archaeology is that we are continuously sampling an enormous field of as yet undiscovered material. There may, in principle, be thousands of chariots out there that have not yet been discovered, and some of them may conceivably be older than the Sintashta ones. Not to mention all the material that once was there, but that we shall never be able to find because it is irretrievably lost. Archaeology does not lend itself to strong, generalizing statements like the one given above.

Lars Martin Fosse




Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo
Phone: +47 22 32 12 19
Fax:      +47 22 32 12 19
Email: lmfosse at online.no

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: attachment.bin
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 1992 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/19981103/32d390c6/attachment.bin>