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Do Basque words for domestic animals resemble Indo-European ones?
Jonathan Adams ((no email))
6 Nov 1996 20:04:37 GMT
The currently accepted view seems to be that the Indo-European languages were
carried west by the first agriculturalists into Europe, swamping out the
previously-existing languages of hunter-gatherers of which Basque is only a
remnant. I hear that domestic animal names (e.g. for sheep) have a common root
throughout the Indo-European language family.
If this is so, then the Basques must have got agriculture and herding from
the Indo-European speakers. So one might expect that many of their crop names
and domesticated animal names would show a resemblence to those used by
Indo-Europeans, who they had presumably traded with or learnt the methods of
agriculture from. Is there is in fact a resemblence in such words? If there is
not a resemblence, does that suggest that in fact the Basque-speakers were
actually the neolithic farmers and that Indo-European languages are the result
of a later wave of cultural or population movement? , sci.archaeology
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