A. Richard Diebold Jr.

"IE linguistics can agree on the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European etyma "ekwos 'horse'. . . . But let us note [that] the animal terms tell us, in and of themselves, nothing about the cultural uses of those animals or even whether they were domesticated; but only that Proto- Indo-European speakers knew of some kind of horse . . . although not which equid. . . . The fact that the equid *ekwos was the domesticated Equus cabailus spp. Linnaeus . . . come[s] not from etymology but rather from archaeology and paleontology. The most we can do with these prehistoric etyma and their reconstructed proto-meanings, without archaeological and paleontological evidence (which does indeed implicate domestication), is to aver a Proto-Indo-European familiarity with these beasts."