czwartek, 16 kwietnia 2020

Updating picture from Anthony
Slavic kolo 'wheel' (< PIE *kʷóles)


I am a great admirer of the Proto-Indo-European studies. And I like very much David W. Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel and Language (How Bronze Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes shaped the Modern World), Princeton and Oxford 2007. Recently I have read an updatet article by Anthony: Anthony and Ringe 2015 The Indo-European homeland from linguistic and archaeological evidence (see its PDF here). 

The picture above comes from the latter text. It is entitled: Wheel terms found in Indo-European branches. Modified with permission from Anthony (1995).

I am interested here especially in this what is labelled Balto-Slavic. As a Slav with partly Baltic roots (my Y-DNA) I am always interested in new conceptions concerning the beginnings of our branch of the Indo-European family.

I had to update the updated picture. Why? The most interesting word here is of course 'wheel', in Proto Slavic *kolo. It does not look very distinct from the PIE form *kʷekʷlos, 'wheel' which is here indicated with the symbol ◯. But Anthony forgot about our term!

And in fact it is not so very much not-related to the PIE term. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, Oxford University Press 2006, pp. 247-250 we can find the PIE terms connected with transport. Mallory interprets the PIE 'wheel' as *kʷekʷlóm, from which are derived the wheel terms in Germanic (e.g. English wheel), Phrygian (kíklēn 'a chariot') and Indo-Iranian (e.g. Av čaxra- and Skt cakrá-). Another PIE term according to Mallory is *kʷókʷlos found in Greek kúklos 'wheel', and in Tocharian B kokale 'a wagon'.

The PIE word is derived from *kʷel- 'turn' after reduplication. According to Mallory in some languages we find it without the reduplication, e.g. *kʷólos undelies OIr cul 'wagon', while *kʷóles yealds OCS kolo 'wheel'. In Polish it sounds koło, and very similarly in other Slavic (Tolkien would say Slavonic) languages! This is why I have added the symbol ◯ to the drawing from Anthony.

In fact in Balto-Slavic languages we have the whole set of the PIE transport derivatives like Iranian and Indic, and like Tocharian! 

In Polish they are: koło 'wheel' (< PIE *kʷóles), wieźć 'to convey in a vehicle' (< PIE *wéģh-e-ti) and wóz 'wagon' (< PIE *weģh-), wojnica, woje 'thill' (< PIE *H2/3eyH-os) and 'axle' (< PIE *h2eks-). In Baltic Lithuanian we have rãtas 'wheel' (< PIE *Hrot-os).  
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The wheels were known in today's Poland among my ancestors as early as 3500 BCE! Earlier then the Indo-European invasion. Anthony wrote on p. 67:
A two-dimensional image that seems to protray a four-wheeled wagon, harness pole, and yoke was incised on the surface of a decorated clay mug of the Trichterbecker (TRB) culture found at the settlement of Bronocice in southern Poland, dated about 3500-3350 BCE. (...) The Bronocice wagon image is the oldest well-dated image of a wheeled vehicle in the world. 
This is the Bronocice pot:


And this is the reconstuction of the wagon from the Pre-Indo-European times and from the territory of today's Poland:


1 komentarz:

  1. WRoTa, WRo'C', o+BRo'T, o+BRo'C', itp. Nie tylko tzw. Bałtowie znali pojęcie obracającego się koła...

    Pozdrawiam.
    SKRiBHa

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