1 Jun
2010
1 Jun
'10
8:46 p.m.
Rich Alderson wrote:
Oh, that's simply nonsense, and I doubt that you
read that. (You may have
misunderstood something you read to say that, I'll grant.) The horse was
domesticated roughly 7,500 years ago, or anywhere from 7 to 25 times more
recently than language in humans.
I think that was about 10k to 15k BP. I don't have the the original
doc's to prove on way or the other as I read this third hand.
I do know it was historical fiction, but the facts seem reasonable
in context. Piers Anthony was the writer. The time period was the
just after last melting of the great ice sheets in Europe, thus
any record would have been lost as seas and lakes changed water
levels. The other factor is soft materials like rope or leather
needed for hard evidence, does not survive over time.
The one factor is that prehistoric man, was smarter in some ways
than we think.The hard part is figuring out why they died out
when we have so little knowledge of what the newer version of
man had improved over time.
Are you refering to _The Horse, the Wheel, and
Language_? The author is
an archaeological anthropologist, and both his linguistics and his use of
Zoroastrian mythology is shaky (to be kind). I can only hope that the
archaeology holds up better than the other two; I'm not qualified to judge
its merits (only one arch. anthro. course in college).
A proper report lets you judge one way or the other.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/