Book Review: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age
Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony
This may be the best book that integrates the linguistics
and archaeology of those people who spoke Proto-Indo-European languages. It
covers the vast and variable cultures and horizons that occupied the Eurasian
steppes and adjacent forests and river valley areas over a period of about 5000
years.
The author first notes that archaeology is a way to connect
to our far distant ancestors, as most of us have lost connection even with our
near ancestors. Our languages derive from the languages of ancestors and their
essence lives on in our words in a sense. Archaeology explores the daily life
of peoples of the past. Due to scant evidence, there is often much speculation
about the past but the speculation here is plausible and supported by evidence.
The author thinks it is now basically resolved: 1) who spoke
Proto-Indo-European, 2) where it was spoken, and 3) when it was spoken. He is
in agreement with several others that the so-called Indo-European homeland was
in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian
Seas in modern-day Ukraine and Russia .
He begins with a short history of IE studies including the
politics and search for an idealized ancient ethnicity among some biased
researchers and nationalists. Indo-European is not an ethnicity but rather a
series of related languages and cultural traditions. The various IE languages
branched off of PIE at different times and places and the author gives some
great cultural clues as to why, when, and where these splits may have occurred.
Many PIE root-words have been reconstructed based on linguistic principles.
Some of these have been more or less confirmed by archaeological evidence
through discovered inscriptions of early IE branches such as Hittite. Linguistics
in addition to archaeology has uncovered much about PIE speakers. The author
notes that the PIE lexicon suggests that they:
“… inherited their rights and duties through the father’s
bloodline only (patrilineal descent); probably lived with the husband’s family
after marriage (patrilocal residence); recognized the authority of chiefs who
acted as patrons and givers of hospitality for their clients; likely had
formally instituted warrior bands; practiced ritual sacrifices of horses and
cattle; drove wagons; recognized a male sky deity; probably avoided speaking
the name of the bear for ritual reasons; and recognized two senses of the
sacred (“that which is imbued with holiness” and “that which is forbidden”).
The big sky in the flat steppe lands may have inspired the
veneration of a sky god.
The evidence suggests that IE languages replaced non-IE
languages rather than mixing with them – likely for cultural necessity reasons,
including conquest. It also suggests that IE languages came from PIE as a
“mother tongue.” In order to solve these issues it has been necessary to
integrate linguistics and archaeology. Although it has been recognized that it
is difficult and often impossible to tie cultures to languages, according to
the author there are situations where they can be correlated, namely where a
material-cultural frontier overlaps a linguistic frontier over a long period of
time. These situations are probably rare but at the border areas to the
steppes, he argues, there was a long overlap. The people who spoke PIE, he
says, lived in a critical time in a strategic place.
The author also explores important technological and
cultural issues such as the domestication of the horse, the development of
spoked wheels, and of chariots used for warring.
Interestingly, he suggests that the loss of linguistic
diversity – and the success of IE languages – may have “narrowed and channeled
habits of perception in the modern world,” by making us pay attention to tense
and singular or plural with our words. That is how we frame our events when
speaking about them. Other languages frame events in different ways and such
framing becomes habitual.
The big question is how language changes through time. The
author refers to the work of James Mallory, trained in both linguistics and
archaeology, as one who has bridged the gap somewhat between the two
disciplines. Linguistics has revealed that there is order to language change
and how languages change can be predicted successfully. Syntax, morphology,
phonology, and lexicon (vocabulary) all influence the rules of language. Which
IE languages are older and which developed from which can be reasonably determined
through linguistics. The author goes into some detail about how PIE, a long
dead language, was reconstructed. Sounds need to be reconstructed as well as
meanings. Meanings of roots of a word can help verify the reconstruction. He
gives an interesting example of the etymology of the word “wheel” in IE
languages and shows how it developed from previous IE root words. Though he
does not think the PIE people invented the wheel, he thinks it likely that
their discovery of it involved only a brief encounter with another culture so
that they made their own word for it instead of adopting the word from others. IE
grammars have been found to be undoubtably related to a shared previous model
so there is little doubt about IE languages coming from one main PIE language,
although some certainly branched off at different times and so from different
time versions of PIE.
In order to find who were the last speakers of PIE the
author delves more into linguistics and glottochronology – the speed at which
language changes. There is much debate about this. Research from rate of change
of what is thought to be core PIE vocabulary suggests that PIE first split
around 3000 BC. However, the author notes that the Anatolian branch consisting
of Hittite, Luwian, and Pallaic probably branched off earlier – 3500-4500 BC, although
some favor the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. This suggests that the Anatolian branch
split even earlier from a pre-PIE language. The evidence is mainly linguistic
and grammar peculiarities. Inscriptions of Mycenaean Greek and Old Indic in the
late 1400s BC show that those languages were well aged by then. Indo-Iranian is
thought to be older than Old Indic, harkening back to a point when the two
cultures were one and the same before the Zoroastrian split between 1200 and
1000 BC when Avestan language branched off. If Old Indic was extant by 1500 BC
then Indo-Iranian must be older. Proto Indo-Iranian is dated 2000 BC or
earlier. Pre-Indo-Iranian is thought to have been an eastern dialect of PIE and
probably existed by 2400 BC. The terminal date of PIE is thought to be about
2500 BC. Interestingly, heroic poetry of the Indo-Iranians and Greeks shows
some near-identical features such as the notion of the sacrifice of a hundred
cattle and the archetypal warrior with a club (Indra, Herakles), the sacred
twins, the horse goddess, the hell hound, and the god of flocks – all of which
shared cognates in their names. The language tree given suggests that Anatolian
branched, then Tocharian, then Italo-Celtic, then Germanic/Baltic/Slavic, then
Greek, then Indo-Iranian.
IE and reconstructed PIE words for wool and wheel are
examined in order to determine when the wheel was invented, when woven wool
came about (likely from the Caucasus area), and the earliest date for PIE. He
shows that the words for wheel are probably better at dating than those for
wool. He suggests that wheeled vehicles were not around before 4000 BC and
likely came about around 3500 BC. The cultural significance of the wheeled
vehicle is that it allowed hauling of grain, manure, hay, firewood, lumber,
clay, hides, leather, and people. Wagons allowed much to be moved and likely
helped in making megaliths and earthworks which also show community cohesion.
On the steppes, wagons allowed animal herders to move the camps easier and so
tend larger herds. The invention of wheeled vehicles has been classified as
part of the Andrew Sherratt’s Secondary Products Revolution (SPR) that is given
for 3500-3000 BC. The plow, wool sheep, dairying, and the beginning of horse
transport are also part of the SPR. Sherratt thought that all these innovations
began and spread from the Near East but that
is not the case. Horse domestication, as the author later demonstrates, was a
local innovation in the steppes. Much older plows have been found. By 3000 BC,
wheel and axle technology was all over Europe .
It was Colin Renfrew who proposed that Indo-Hittite was
spoken by the first wave of agriculturalists that came to Greece and lands north from Anatolia
beginning around 6500 BC. While this would explain some of the archaic conventions
of the Anatolian branch of IE it is not generally accepted seriously. The
author criticizes Renfrew’s farmer language dispersal hypothesis as did many
others including James Mallory. Anthony here shows through accepted linguistic
principles that the terminology for wagons indicates that these words had to
come about before the splitting of PIE. He picks apart Renfrew’s hypothesis and
shows why the bulk of it is not plausible. One key debunker of Renfrew’s
hypothesis is the wagon vocabulary of PIE which had to have occurred millennia
later than Renfrew’s ideas suggest. Anthony gives the window of 4500 BC to 2500
BC for when PIE was spoken. He suggests an Archaic PIE was spoken before 4000
BC that is partly preserved in the Anatolian branch. Early PIE was spoken
between 4000 and 3500 BC and is partly preserved in Tocharian. Late PIE was
spoken between 3500 and 3000 BC and is responsible for the Italic and Celtic
wagon wheel vocabularies. Pre-Germanic split around 3300 BC, pre-Greek split
about 2500 BC, pre-Baltic split from pre-Slavic about 2500 BC, and
pre-Indo-Iranian developed between 2500 and 2200 BC from northern dialects.
He notes that the idea of a PIE “homeland” is a bit
deceiving as it may change through time. Most research suggests a “homeland”
across the Pontic-Caspian steppes and adjacent areas of modern day Ukraine and Southern Russia
between 3500 and 3000 BC for late-PIE. Pontic refers to the area north of the Black Sea . He goes through PIE words relating to biology
and geography to define the area. Loan words into Uralic languages help to
define one of the boundaries – the Ural Mountains
to the east. PIE and Uralic languages are linked in several ways which suggests
long periods of commingling and possibly a distant past shared mother tongue.
Techniques, features, strengths, and weaknesses of both
archaeology and linguistics are explored. An ecotone, an ecological boundary is compared to what the author
calls a – persistent frontier, which is thought to be rare, but in the case of
PIE the borders of the steps may have been a robust, persistent
material-culture and ethno-linguistic frontier. He explores migrations, both
ancient and more recent and their relationship to persistent frontiers and
languages. Elite recruitment, where small elite groups migrate to new areas,
keep their language and culture fairly intact in the new area, and go through
language shift – is another topic he explores. The first frontier on the
southern steppe margins came about when the first farmers (and herders) came from
the south around 5800 BC and interacted with foraging peoples to the north on
the steppes. By 5200-5000 BC the foragers (around the Dneiper River
Delving into archaeology, the author notes that the Bronze
Age began much earlier near the steppes than in central and western Europe
since copper was mined nearby and alloyed with arsenic in the earliest bronze.
He gives three ages in the Pontic-Caspian steppes: Bronze metallurgy first
appeared in Eastern Europe near the Caucasus
around 3700 BC. Before this was an age in the region called the Eneolithic,
which was the first metal age, an age of unalloyed copper. Before that was the
Neolithic. He also goes through archaeological techniques and notes that the radiocarbon
revolution that made dating much more precise has led to much discovery. He
defines the archaeological horizon as
artifact type(s) that spread over a wide geographical area. A horizon is not
equivalent to a culture but he notes that horizons were very significant in the
prehistoric Eurasian steppes.
The influence of the first farmers from the south who
introduced animal herding to Eurasian foragers may be what is recounted in the
widespread IE myth of man and twin (Yama/Yima, etc), the cow of abundance, and
the “third man,” the warrior who provides. Cattle provided generosity to man and
sons were valued in this male-centered sky god culture. Ancient farmer-herders
came from Anatolia, arrived in Greece
and Macedonia by 6500 BC and
came to lands bordering the steppes from the Danube Valley Black Sea . Here was a narrow passage to
the steppes to the north. Here begins in the book a series of several dating
charts and maps of archaeological sites. The foragers of the Bug-Dneister
culture were neighbors to the north of the Cris and there is much distinction
of the two cultures. Although some have speculated that the Cris may have been
locals that were taught farming but the author demonstrates the likelihood that
they were the farming migrants who taught the steppe foragers to the north. The
Cris who ultimately came from Anatolia less
than a thousand years earlier likely spoke an Afro-Asiatic language. Some
consider that the PIE term for bull, *tawro-s,
was borrowed from that Afro-Asiatic language. The Elshanka culture along the
middle Volga River
Valley of the Pontic-Caspian region
made the oldest clay fired pottery in all of Europe .
This early Neolithic pottery was widespread among foragers before the arrival
of the farming cultures from the south. The Bug-Dniester culture adopted
pottery making around 6200 BC and the Cris culture appeared as their neighbors
around 5800 BC. This was the beginning of a frontier that would exist for millennia.
Foragers adjacent to the Cris culture partially adopted farming and herding but
remained separate from them. By 5200 BC as population increased the farming
cultures moved northeast into the Bug and Dniester
valleys.
PIE words for chief/king and IE myth suggest that chiefs
and/or priest-kings were very powerful and socially venerated and sponsored
feasts where gifts and food were distributed. These feasts also likely reified
the concepts of social hierarchy and later pan-tribal affiliation and military
protection. In the archaeological record chiefs first appeared with the
adoption of animal domestication. This is logical since agricultural and
herding communities support larger populations and trade surpluses so division
of labor and social hierarchy occurs where it does not among hunter-gatherers.
In the Pontic-Caspian steppe region the foragers only partially adopted herding
and small-scale agriculture – keeping most of their diet to fish and hunting,
particularly of wild horses. They did, apparently, adopt the social hierarchy
of the agriculturalists, and expanded on it.
Copper mining and trading began in the Balkans around
5200-5000 BC in Bulgaria ,
the heart of Old Europe. By 4600 BC copper was traded in the steppe-regions.
Balkan smiths began to make copper tools and weapons around 4800-4600 BC.
Metallurgy developed from pottery kilning. Larger communities and expanded
kilning and smelting reduced the forest cover of southeastern Europe ,
as pollen cores indicate. The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture occupied the frontier
area between Old Europe and the steppes from about 5200 BC to later than 3000
BC. About 2700 sites have been identified. These are the Danubian peoples of Romania , Bulgaria ,
and Ukraine ,
and the goddess-oriented Old Europe studied by Marija Gimbutas. No burials have
been found of Cris or Cucuteni-Tripolye peoples which suggests they practiced a
form of “sky burial” where corpses were offered to birds, perhaps vultures, to
carry away their souls. This may have been a practice of far older Anatolian
cultures such as those at Gobleki Tepe. It was/is also a practice of some
Siberian cultures and also persists among Zoroastrians and Tibetans. Another
early culture on the forest-steppe frontier was the Dneiper-Donets II culture.
These people were thought to descend from foragers but adopted some herding and
agriculture. They are the first known in the area to make cemeteries for the
dead. The dead were buried in communal pits, some in the flesh and some in bone
form after exposure. There is some evidence for cremation as well. Their
communal grave model with grave goods including pottery and red ochre, spread
across the steppe regions. Tripolye pottery was found in a few graves. DD II
burials were different than DD I burials and strongly suggest adoption of
social hierarchy. Body ornamentation likely symbolized social status. The
Khvalynsk culture (4700-3800 BC) further east along the Volga
river was a little different than DD II, having smaller burials rather than
communal pits but their burials contained more animal sacrifices. Sheep/goats,
cattle, and horses were predominant. It is interesting that the horse, presumably
not yet domesticated, was lumped with domesticated animals as sacrifice to the
gods. The horse became symbolic much as domesticated animals were symbolic of
economic and ceremonial prestige. Domesticated animals served as a kind of
currency tied to rituals, says the author. He goes through other regional
cultures examining their burials and artifacts as well to support his ideas.
The cultures that did not adopt animal domestication and agriculture tended to
diverge from those that did.
He states that surprisingly little is known about the
domestication of the horse and the beginnings of horse riding. The author and
his wife did extensive studies on bit wear on the teeth of horses from the
earliest type of rope or leather bits. The goal was to find evidence for horse
domestication where there were horse remains in burial complexes, since wild
and domesticated horses were difficult to distinguish from bones. Genetically,
it has been demonstrated that early domesticators of the horse bred wild mares
and mostly discarded the males. It is likely that few or even possibly a single
wild stallion was domesticated and all modern domesticated horses are a
descendent of that few or one. Horses have a dominant stallion which a harem of
mares follows and it is thought that mares are thus more disposed to be
domesticated by humans. Interestingly, the males that are not leaders of a
harem, dwell on the outskirts of the group in “bachelor bands.” Although not
mentioned, such groups are oddly similar to Indo-European war bands, usually
groups of young male bachelors off on their own to learn cattle raiding. The
Eurasian steppes contained the largest groups of ancestors to the modern horse
compared to other areas. There were other wild horses and wild asses in areas
like Anatolia , Iran ,
and Western Europe . These horses were hunted
for millennia on the steppes which made the hunters familiar with their habits,
which suggests that these people might be the ones to domesticate them. Another
method to date horse domestication is by size as domesticated horses became
larger. By this method horse domestication is dated to about 2500 BC. The
author reasons that the size-variability method is not a good indicator of
early domestication but may indicate later developments. Studies of horses at
sites in the Ukraine
(4200-3700 BC) and Botai in northern Kazakhstan (3700-3000 BC) concluded
that the horses were wild. The author disputes these findings. He notes that
the killing mainly of prime stallions in these places suggests that
domestication may have begun. Bit wear indicates horse riding of course and the
author goes into some detail of their bit wear studies. Studies of the Botai
and Tersek cutures of northern Kazakhstan
dated 3700-3000 BC show bit wear consistent with horse riding. They give other
evidence of horse domestication in this area between 3700 and 3500 BC. This is
much earlier than the previous direct evidence dating to about 2500 BC. The author
thinks that horses were actually domesticated centuries earlier by herding peoples
of the steppes west of the foraging Botai-Tersek people.
It is fairly certain that adoption of horseback riding
allowed herders to manage larger herds over greater distances. Horse-pulled
wagons permitted people to travel with their herds with their belongings and so
have large and healthy herds. Riding also led to greater ease of stealing
cattle and this may have led to more skirmishes over cattle stealing. Raiding
and quick retreating were easy via horseback. Anthony suggests that increased
boundary conflicts of this sort led to the development of gift-exchanging
feasts where pacts of cooperation were made. This may also have led to
increased long-distance trade. Mounted archery probably did not occur until
around 1000 BC in the Iron Age when shorter bows began to be used. It is likely
too that horses were ridden to hunt horses and other game.
By 4200-4100 BC when Old Europe was at its height there
began a climate change called the Piora Oscillation, where temperatures
decreased and alpine glaciers grew. A bitter cold period came a few centuries
later and by about 3760 the climate returned to a milder state. The time of the
cold period coincided with the abandoning and burning of many of the villages
of Old Europe. Female figurines likely associated with domestic rituals were no
longer found after this. Mediterranean-derived ornaments disappeared. The
period that began around 6200 BC with the Starcevo-Cris farmers was now at an
end. This mostly occurred in the lower Danube
valley. It is not known what caused the warfare, possibly made by horse-raiders
from the steppes. The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture to the north that bordered the
steppes did not suffer so much and the author speculates that they merged
somewhat with the steppe cultures who likely spoke an archaic type of IE
language. He suggests that raids were small and mostly done for “glory” as
hero’s tales seem to recount. They were not mounted cavalry of nomads like the
Huns or Mongols of much later times, he notes. The Sredni-Stog culture from the
Dniepper valley were given by Marija Gimbutas as the pastoral IE kurgan raiders
who overran Old Europe. Skull types suggest that people emmigrated from the Volga region (Khvalynsk) to join or become the
Sredni-Stog people. It is still speculative whether they rode horses but they
did have new kinds of burial. They did have polished stone horse-headed maces
which would become a prominent status symbol of steppe peoples. The marshes to
the south near the Danube valley and places near the Black
Sea were excellent places for winter forage for horses and as the
winters got colder he speculates that the steppe herders utilized them. There was
probably some migration to the copper producing towns too. The Suvorovo culture
of herders moved south into the Danube and the
Balkans around 4200-4000 BC. The author speculates that they brought
pre-Anatolian IE languages, eventually migrating further south into Anatolia around 3000 BC and being the ancestors of the
Hittites. Interestingly he notes a Hittite sun god, Sius, being cognate with the Greek Zeus, said to rise from the sea
– which suggests that the Hittite ancestors once lives to the west of a great
sea (Black Sea?).
First contact between people of the steppe margins and the
southern cities of Mesopotamia is thought to have occurred from 3700-3500 BC
when Maikop chiefs of the Caucasus mountains
area developed a taste for bronze weapons and tools and ostentatious funerals.
They were traders. The Maikop also had kurgans and new funerary customs
compared to the previous farming peoples there. They stayed in the Caucuses
area but likely traded with steppe peoples from the north, perhaps introducing
them to wagons and wheeled carts. They may have gotten cannabis from them to
trade, and possibly even horses. Maikop chiefs were buried with metal lions and
bulls, symbols of power among Mesopotamians and their accumulation of these
exotic objects perhaps gave them a sense of awe. Around 3600-3400 BC the
Tripolye C1 towns around the South Bug River
north of the Black Sea grew in size to become
briefly the largest towns in the known world. By 3300 BC these towns of
Tripolye farmers were gone. From 3800-3300 BC there was much change – the
Tripolye farmers reduced, migrants to the east to the Altai mountains formed
the Afanasievo culture, and the Botai-Tersek culture of Kazakhstan rode horses- though the
author thinks horse riding occurred several centuries previous across the
steppes. It is likely that Tripolye farmers intermarried much over centuries
with steppe herders.
The thriving Mesopotamina cities wanted gold, silver,
copper, metals, and precious stones and traded far. Uruk expanded outward and toward
sources of copper in the Caucusus from 3700-3100 BC. Around 3100 BC the trade
between Mesopotamians and Maikop (and through them some steppe people to the
north) had stopped for unknown reasons. Uruk expansion had stopped. Maikop
culture changed. Maikops traded with steppe peoples and spoke a Caucasian
language. During these times it is thought that loan words between this
language and PIE were exchanged. People were likely distinct and there were
likely many languages but changes would soon make culture more uniform:
“The Yamnaya horizon, the material expression of the late
{PIE} community, grew from an eastern origin in the Don-Volga steppes and
spread across the Pontic-Caspian steppes after about 3300 BC.”
Pollen studies indicate that the steppes were drier from
3500-3000 BC. Migrant herding made possible by the wagon was likely a new way
of life on the steppes and allowed people to keep larger herds and travel over
wide areas. The author believes this new way of life of mobile pastoralism
basically created the Yamnaya horizon which is dated 3300-2500 BC. Fast transport was likely via
horse and slow movement with the herds via wagon. One interesting feature from
the new steppe-mobility nobility, according to the author, is the guest-host
relationship:
“The two social roles opposed in English guest and host were originally two reciprocal aspects of the same
relationship. The late {PIE} guest-host relationship required that
“hospitality,” … and “friendship” should be extended by hosts to guests in the
knowledge that the receiver and giver of “hospitality” could later reverse
roles. The social meaning of these words was then more demanding than modern
customs would suggest. The guest-host relationship was bounded by oaths and
sacrifices so serious that Homer’s warriors, Glaukos and Diomedes, stopped
fighting and presented gifts to each other when they learned that their grandfathers had shared a guest-host
relationship. This mutual obligation to provide “hospitality” functioned as a
bridge between social units (tribes, clans) that had originally restricted
these obligations to their kin or co-residents. Guest-host relationship would
have been very useful in a mobile herding economy, as a way of separating
people who were moving through your territory with your assent from those who
were unwelcome, unregulated, and therefore unprotected. The guest-host
institution might have been among the critical identity-defining innovations
that spread with the Yamnaya horizon.”
The eastern Yamnaya people (from the Don river to the Ural
river were likely more mobile as no settlements have been found but many
kurgans. The western Yamnaya lived in settlements, farmed, likely shared words
from the presumed Afro-Asiatic language of the Tripolye peoples, and favored
female deities more than the eastern Yamnaya.
“In western Indo-European branches the spirit of the
domestic hearth was female (Hestia, the Vestal Virgins), and in Indo-Iranian it
was male (Agni). Western Indo-European mythologies included strong female
deities such as Queen Magb and the Valkyries, whereas in Indo-Iranian the
furies of war were male Maruts.”
The Yamnaya horizon or “cultural-historical community” as
Slavic archaeologists refer to it seems to be a good fit with late PIE.
Between 3700 and 3400 BC the Afanasievo culture migrated far
eastward from the Don-Volga steppes to the Altai mountains .
This, suggests the author, is the source of the Tocharian branch of IE. They
also brought Yamnaya customs.
Kinship was patri-centered among the Yamnaya. Mostly males
were buried in kurgans but some prominent females as well. It is thought that
kurgans were visible tribal claims to territory. Yamnaya chiefs were buried in
kurgans and likely venerated with praise poetry. Metal smithing improved under
the Yamnaya chiefs.
The Kemi-Oba culture of the Crimean peninsula and the
Novosvobodnaya culture used stone stelae, painted and carved with geometric
designs and artwork, in their kurgans. Similar stelae of similar age were found
at Troy I and in Tuscany
– which suggests maritime trade across the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean .
Anthony lists five factors that likely enhanced the status
of IE languages relative to other ones that became stigmatized: 1) they got
wealthy from trading horses, 2) horseback riding gave them war advantages, 3)
PIE societies emphasized oaths and contracts (even with the gods) which may
have led them to develop patron-client relationships and protect their clients
for fealty, 4) the new mobile economy developed the guest-host ritualism and obligations.
The author suggests this was a Yamnyaya development since the root words are
not found in the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, 5) elaborate funerals and
ceremonies of gift exchange and displays of wealth. He mentions Calvert
Watkins’s observation of an IE poetic trend called “praise of the gift.”
Anthony sees the IE success in subjugating others as more of a franchise rather
than military conquest though some military actions certainly occurred.
He suggests that pre-Italic, pre-Celtic, and pre-Germanic
separated from PIE in the same time period (3300-2500 BC). Each of these
separations was likely associated with migrations of Yamnaya peoples from the
steppe borderlands.
The steppe Usatovo peoples were likely patrons of upper Tripolye
farm townspeople. Usatovo chiefs also traded long-distance by sea. He
speculates that Tripolye clients may have wanted to get their own clients
eventually (as apparently is common among patron-client systems) so they
migrated northwestward and took pre-Germanic with them. Eventually they reached
the later Corded-Ware horizon where pre-Germanic spread out much more. Other
Yamnaya people likely migrated south into the Danube valley and west to Hungary as
archaeology suggests. The Corded Ware horizon (2900-2600 BC) had some
similarities in grave style and lack of settlements to the Yamnaya horizon. The
Corded Ware horizon was a prime opportunity for language spread:
“Indo-European speech probably was emulated because the
chiefs who spoke it had larger herds of cattle and sheep and more horses than
could be raised in northern Europe, and they had a politico-religious culture
already adapted to territorial expansion.”
He speculates that Yamnaya immigrants to Bulgaria spoke
pre-Greek, pre-Phrygian, and pre-Armenian languages. These likely descended
from a previous IE, rather than straight from PIE language along with
Indo-Iranian to the east. He suggests the Catacomb culture as pre-Greek
(2500-2000 BC).
The Sintashta culture just east of the Ural
mountains appeared around 2900 BC and lasted till around 1700 BC.
Here were strongly walled and fortified settlements with much metal working and
weaponry. These were the chariot warriors of the northern steppes and likely
the precursor to the Vedic Aryans and the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European. The
Ural foothills were a new source of copper. Concurrent with the Sintashta
culture was the Abashevo culture adjacent to them on the west from about 2500
BC. This was a forest-northern-steppe border culture who may have been Indo-Iranian
speakers. The author thinks the late Abashevo period was one of intense warfare
– actual planned warfare rather than tribal conflicts. He also thinks that
Abashevo contact with Volosovo forest foragers to the north resulted in loan
words shared among Indo-Iranian and Finno-Ugric languages. Sintashta people
practiced horse sacrifice. By 2200-2100 BC the Sintashta would influence forest
foraging cultures to the north. The Sintashta chose ideal winter foraging
grounds – marshy lands near rivers – for their fortifications. The steppes may
have been colder and drier during this time period. They invented new and more
powerful weapons. The author thinks they developed chariot warfare as well. He
notes that new information suggests that chariots may not have been invented in
the Near East circa 1900-1800 BC but a bit earlier in the eastern steppes. Much
of the information and excavations of the Sintashta is brand knew – from the
1990’s. Sintashta and Petrovka (a contemporary culture to the south in Kazakhstan )
have many chariot graves with weapons. The author speculates that they may have
used javelins instead of archers which were developed later. Mycenaean chariot
warfare was well-developed by 1650 BC but may have post dated
Sintashta-Petrovka chariot warfare. He thinks chariots were developed here
before 2000 BC while the earliest eveidence in the Near
East are depictions on Syrian seals dated to 1800 BC. There were
battle carts/battle wagons used by Akkadian warriors form about 2900 BC but
these were not very maneuverable – but they did utilize javelin-throwing
warriors. The Mitanni of
northern Syria
(1500-1350 BC) were definitely Indo-Aryan speakers who excelled at chariot
warfare. Warring from these wheeled vehicles required much skill and specially
trained horses so that the occupation of warrior became more specialized.
Sintashta funerals seem to parallel funeral hymns in the Rig Veda. There is
good evidence that the Sintashta later became the Indo-Aryans. Excavation of a
Srubnaya site (related to Sintashta) revealed a midwinter dog sacrifice. Such
is depicted in the Rig Veda associated with the Vratya (war band) young male
initiations. The Vratya were also called “dog-priests.” Dogs were associated
with death. The new warriors would feed the “dogs of death.” Guardians of the
underworld like Cerberus or Saranyu. Oddly, there is also a midwinter dog
sacrifice among some Eastern Native American tribes.
Horseback warfare was depicted on Akkadian seals from around
2300 BC. They likely traded for horses from steppe peoples. Sargon of Akkad
united the cities into an empire and traded much with the Elamites from Iran . It was
after this period around 2100-2000 BC that horses began to appear more in
cemeteries in the Near East . Elamite-Shaimaski
alliance defeated the Ur
kings and were the most powerful culture from 2000-1700 BC. They may have
gotten horses from the Sintashta and traded them. The author even speculates
that Sintashta mercenaries could have aided the Elamites in defeating the king
of Ur .
Tin to make copper-tin alloys for the metalsmith (easier to
cast) was in high demand in the Near East and sources were in the East, likely
the Indus Valley Elam
and the Indus Valley Iran
and eventually India .
Some people began to be more settled in the steppes which suggests more
adoption of agriculture but not in all areas. Climate change may have been a
factor in some deciding to migrate and settle. Akkadian and Harappan/Indus
Valley cultures were also affected by the same climate change factors –
coolness and aridity. Another source of tin and possibly the first of the tin
alloy bronzes was the foothills of the Altai mountains
where the Petrovka culture dwelled. They had similar habits to the Sintashta
and are considered an eastern offshoot of the Sintashta, dated 1900-1750 BC.
Like the Sintashta they were great metalworkers.
The Andronovo horizon developed across the eastern steppes
and south into Central Asia (1800-1200 BC).
This is the time period, he says, when proto-Vedic cultures were establishing
south into Central Asia . The trading cities in
Bactria-Margiana were abandoned around 1600 BC. Some Andronovo-and steppe
migrant hybrid cultures were likely the closest ancestors to the Vedic culture
of the Rig Veda. Mitanni rulers that migrated to Syria circa 1500 BC were
clearly Vedic and migration occurred into the Punjab where the Rig Veda was
compiled likely between 1500-1300 BC. The author states that Indra and Soma,
two of the chief deities of the Rig Veda, were not Indo-Iranian names so were
likely derived from others in the contact zone. He thinks that Iranian dialects
developed northward along the steppes in the Andronovo/Shrubnaya times while
Indic dialects developed further south along the contact zone with Central Asia . Studies of loan words and linguistics
suggest that Indo-Iranian and Old Indic both had contact with the same
different language with which they got loan words. This was likely from people
of the BMAC.
The author notes that modern advances in linguistics and
archaeology as well as recent discoveries and excavations have aided
deciphering of Indo-European origins. He also notes differences between Western
archaeologists who discount migration and Eastern ones who overemphasize it. He
suggests that a middle ground is closer to reality. Regarding the horse and the
wheel he notes that advances in transportation technology are “among the most
powerful causes of change in human social and political life.”
“The reconstructed {PIE} vocabulary and comparative IE
mythology reveal what two of those important integrative institutions were: the
oath-bound relationship between patrons and clients, which regulated the
reciprocal obligations between the strong and the weak, between gods and
humans; and the guest-host relationship, which extended these and other
protections to people outside the ordinary social circle. The first
institution, legalizing inequality, probably was very old, going back to the
initial acceptance of the herding economy, about 5200-5000 BCE, and the first
appearance of pronounced differences in wealth. The second might have developed
to regulate migrations into unregulated geographic and social space at the
beginning of the Yamnaya horizon.”
This big book really is a fantastic, thorough, and insightful
one that integrates linguistics and archaeology in myriad ways.
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