Criticism
An argument against the Anatolian hypothesis is that PIE contains words for technologies that make their first appearance in the archaeological record in the Late Neolithic, in some cases bordering on the early Bronze Age, and that some of these words belong to the oldest layers of PIE. The lexicon includes words relating to agriculture (7500 BCE), metallurgy (7500 BCE), stockbreeding (6500 BCE) the plow (4500 BCE), gold (4500 BCE), domesticated horses (4000–3500 BCE) and wheeled vehicles (4000–3400 BCE). Horse breeding is thought to have originated with the Sredny Stog culture, semi-nomadic pastoralist living in the forest-steppe zone in what is now Ukraine. Wheeled vehicles are thought to have originated with Funnelbeaker culture in what is now Poland, Belarus, and parts of Ukraine.
Many Indo-European languages have cognate words meaning axle, for example, Latin axis, Lithuanian ašis, Russian os', and Sanskrit ákṣa. (In some, a similar root is used for the word armpit: eaxl in Old English, axilla in Latin, and kaksa in Sanskrit.) All these are linked to the PIE root ak's-. The reconstructed PIE root i̯eu-g- gives rise to German joch, Hittite iukan, and Sanskrit yugá(m), all meaning yoke. Words wheel and cart/wagon/chariot take one of two common forms, thought to be linked with two PIE roots: the root kvel- becomes hvel (wheel) in Old Icelandic, kolo (wheel, circle) in Old Church Slavonic, kyklo (wheel, circle) in Greek, cakka/cakra (wheel) in Pali and Sanskrit, and kukäl (wagon, chariot) in Tocharian A. The root ret(h)- becomes rad (wheel) in Old High German, rota (wheel) in Latin, rãtas (wheel) in Lithuanian, and ratha (wagon, chariot) in Sanskrit.
Most estimates from Indo-Europeanists date PIE between 4500 and 2500 BC, with the most probable date falling right around 3700 BC. It is unlikely that late PIE (even after the separation of the Anatolian branch) post-dates 2500 BC, since Proto-Indo-Iranian is usually dated to just before 2000 BC. On the other hand, it is not very likely that early PIE predates 4500 BC, because the reconstructed vocabulary strongly suggests a culture of the terminal phase of the Neolithic bordering the early Bronze Age.
Read more about this topic: Anatolian Hypothesis
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