Subsistence
Proto-Indo-European society depended on animal husbandry. Cattle (*péḱu - Vedic Sanskrit páśu, Latin pecu- *gʷōus - Sanskrit go, Latin bo-) were the most important animals to them, and a man's wealth would be measured by the number of cows he owned (Latin pecunia 'money' from pecus). Sheep (*h₃ówis) and goats (*gʰáidos) were also kept, presumably by the less wealthy. Agriculture and catching fish (*písḱos) were also practiced.
The domestication of the horse (*h₁eḱuos - Vedic Sanskrit áśvas, Latin equus, Greek hippos) (see Tarpan) may have been an innovation of this people and is sometimes invoked as a factor contributing to their rapid expansion.
Read more about this topic: Proto-Indo-European Society
Famous quotes containing the word subsistence:
“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, “All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.” And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper—just running down the edges of different countries and continents, “looking for something” ... having spent most of my life timorously seeking for subsistence along the coastlines of the world.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)