THE
HORSE
THE
WHEEL
AND
LANGUAGE
HOW
BRONZE-AGE RIDERS
FROM THE
EURASIAN STEPPES
SHAPED THE
MODERN WORLD
DAVID W. ANTHONY
Princeton University Press
Princeton and oxford
Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-05887-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007932082
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
Language and Archaeology
Chapter One
The Promise and Politics of the Mother Tongue
Ancestors
Linguists and Chauvinists
The Lure of the Mother Tongue
A New Solution for an Old Problem
Language Extinction and Thought
Chapter Two
How to Reconstruct a Dead Language
Language Change and Time
Phonology: How to Reconstruct a Dead Sound
The Lexicon: How to Reconstruct Dead Meanings
Syntax and Morphology: The Shape of a Dead Language
Conclusion: Raising a Language from the Dead
Chapter Three
Language and Time 1:
The Last Speakers of Proto-Indo-European
The Size of the Chronological Window:
How Long Do Languages Last?
The Terminal Date for Proto-Indo-European:
The Mother Becomes Her Daughters
The Oldest and Strangest Daughter (or Cousin?):
Anatolian
The Next Oldest Inscriptions: Greek and Old Indic
Counting the Relatives: How Many in 1500 BCE?
Chapter Four
Language and Time 2:
Wool, Wheels, and Proto-Indo-European
The Wool Vocabulary
The Wheel Vocabulary
When Was the Wheel Invented
The Significance of the Wheel
Wagons and the Anatolian Homeland Hypothesis
The Birth and Death of Proto-Indo-European
Chapter Five
Language and Place:
The Location of the Proto-Indo-European Homeland
Problems with the Concept of “the Homeland”
Finding the Homeland: Ecology and Environment
Finding the Homeland: The Economic and Social Setting
Finding the Homeland: Uralic and Caucasian Connections
The Location of the Proto-Indo-European Homeland
Chapter Six
The Archaeology of Language
Persistent Frontiers
Migration as a Cause of Persistent Material-Culture Frontiers
Ecological Frontiers: Different Ways of Making a Living
Small-scale Migrations, Elite Recruitment, and Language Shift
PART TWO
The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes
Chapter Seven
How to Reconstruct a Dead Culture
The Three Ages in the Pontic-Caspian Steppes
Dating and the Radiocarbon Revolution
What Did They Eat?
Archaeological Cultures and Living Cultures
The Big Questions Ahead
Chapter Eight
First Farmers and Herders: The Pontic-Caspian Neolithic
Domesticated Animals and Pontic-Caspian Ecology
The First Farmer-Forager Frontier in the Pontic-Caspian Region
Farmer Meets Forager: The Bug-Dniester Culture
Beyond the Frontier: Pontic-Caspian Foragers before Cattle Arrived
The Gods Give Cattle
Chapter Nine
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs
The Early Copper Age in Old Europe
The Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture
The Dnieper-Donets II Culture
The Khvalynsk Culture on the Volga
Nalchik and North Caucasian Cultures
The Lower Don and North Caspian Steppes
The Forest Frontier: The Samara Culture
Cows, Social Power, and the Emergence of Tribes
Chapter Ten
The Domestication of the Horse and the Origins of Riding: The Tale of the Teeth
Where Were Horses First Domesticated?
Why Were Horses Domesticated?
What Is a Domesticated Horse?
Bit Wear and Horseback Riding
Indo-European Migrations and Bit Wear at Dereivka
Botai and Eneolithic Horseback Riding
The Origin of Horseback Riding
The Economic and Military Effects of Horseback Riding
Chapter Eleven
The End of Old Europe and the Rise of the Steppe
Warfare and Alliance:
The Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture and the Steppes
The Sredni Stog Culture: Horses and Rituals from the East
Migrations into the Danube Valley: The Suvorovo-Novodanilovka Complex
Warfare, Climate Change, and Language Shift in the Lower Danube Valley
After the Collapse
Chapter Twelve
Seeds of Change on the Steppe Borders: Maikop Chiefs and Tripolye Towns
The Five Cultures of the Final Eneolithic in the Steppes
Crisis and Change on the Tripolye Frontier: Towns Bigger Than Cities
The First Cities and Their Connection to the Steppes
The North Caucasus Piedmont: Eneolithic Farmers before Maikop
The Maikop Culture
Maikop-Novosvobodnaya in the Steppes: Contacts with the North
Proto-Indo-European as a Regional Language in a Changing World
Chapter Thirteen
Wagon Dwellers of the Steppe: The Speakers of Proto-Indo-European
Why Not a Kurgan Culture?
Beyond the Eastern Frontier: The Afanasievo Migration to the Altai
Wagon Graves in the Steppes
Where Did the Yamnaya Horizon Begin?
When Did the Yamnaya Horizon Begin?
Were the Yamnaya People Nomads?
Yamnaya Social Organization
The Stone Stelae of the North Pontic Steppes
Chapter Fourteen
The Western Indo-European Languages
The End of the Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture and the Roots of the Western Branches
Steppe Overlords and Tripolye Clients: The Usatovo Culture
The Yamnaya Migration up the Danube Valley
Yamnaya Contacts with the Corded Ware Horizon
The Origins of Greek
Conclusion: The Early Western Indo-European Languages Disperse
Chapter Fifteen
Chariot Warriors of the Northern Steppes
The End of the Forest Frontier: Corded Ware Herders in the Forest
Pre-Sintashta Cultures of the Eastern Steppe
s
The Origin of the Sintashta Culture
Warfare in the Sintashta Culture: Fortifications and Weapons
Tournaments of Value
Sintashta and the Origins of the Aryans
Chapter Sixteen
The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes
Bronze Age Empires and the Horse Trade
The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes
The Srubnaya Culture: Herding and Gathering in the Western Steppes
East of the Urals, Phase I: The Petrovka Culture
The Seima-Turbino Horizon in the Forest-Steppe Zone
East of the Urals, Phase II: The Andronovo Horizon
Proto-Vedic Cultures in the Central Asian Contact Zone
The Steppes Become a Bridge across Eurasia
Chapter Seventeen
Words and Deeds
The Horse and the Wheel
Archaeology and Language
Appendix: Author’s Note on Radiocarbon Dates
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been written without the love and support of my mother and father, David F. and Laura B. Anthony. Laura B. Anthony read and commented on every chapter. Bernard Wailes drew me into the University of Pennsylvania, led me into my first archaeological excavation, and taught me to respect the facts of archaeology. I am blessed with Dorcas Brown as my partner, editor, critic, fellow archaeologist, field excavation co-director, lab director, illustrator, spouse, and best friend through thick and thin. She edited every chapter multiple times. All the maps and figures are by D. Brown. Much of the content in chapter 10 and chapter 16 was the product of our joint research, published over many years. Dorcas’s brother, Dr. Ben Brown, also helped to read and edit the ms.
The bit-wear research described in chapter 10 and the field work associated with the Samara Valley Project (chapter 16) was supported by grants from Hartwick College, the Freedman and Fortis Foundations, the American Philosophical Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Russian Institute of Archaeology (Moscow), the Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga (Samara), and the National Science Foundation (United States), with assistance for chapter 10 from the State University of New York at Cobleskill. We are particularly grateful to the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Support to write this book was provided by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1999–2000 and a membership in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, New Jersey, in 2006, where Nicola DiCosmo and Patricia Crone made us welcome. The term at the IAS was crucial.
People who have helped me in numerous different ways include:
Near East and East Asia: Kathy Linduff, Victor Mair, Oscar Muscarella, Karen Rubinson, Chris Thornton, Lauren Zych, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Fred Hiebert, Phil Kohl, Greg Possehl, Glenn Schwartz, David Owen, Mitchell Rothman, Emmy Bunker, Nicola DiCosmo, and Peter Golden.
Horses and wheeled vehicles: Dexter Perkins and Pat Daly; Şandor Bökönyi, Sandra Olsen, Mary Littauer and Joost Crouwel (my instructors in ancient transport); and Peter Raulwing, Norbert Benecke, and Mindy Zeder.
Bit wear and the riding experiment: Mindy Zeder, Ron Keiper; the Bureau of Land Management, Winnemucca, Nevada; Cornell University Veterinary School; University of Pennsylvania New Bolton Center; the Assateague Island Wildlife Refuge; and, at the State University of New York at Cobleskill, Steve MacKenzie, Stephanie Skargensky, and Michelle Beyea.
Linguistics: Ward Goodenough, Edgar Polomé, Richard Diebold, Winfrid Lehmann, Alexander Lubotsky, Don Ringe, Stefan Zimmer, and Eric Hamp. A special thanks to Johanna Nichols, who helped edit chapter 5, and J. Bill Darden and Jim Mallory, who reviewed the first draft.
Eastern European archaeology: Petar Glumac (who made me believe I could read Russian-language sources), Peter Bogucki, Douglass Bailey (who reviewed chapter 11), Ruth Tringham (who gave me my first field experience in Eastern Europe), Victor Shnirelman (our first guide in Russia), Dimitri Telegin (my first source on steppe archaeology), Natalya Belan, Oleg Zhuravlev, Yuri Rassamakin, Mikhail Videiko, Igor Vasiliev, Pavel Kuznetsov, Oleg Mochalov, Aleksandr Khokhlov, Pavel Kosintsev, Elena Kuzmina, Sergei Korenevskii, Evgeni Chernykh, R. Munchaev, Nikolai Vinogradov, Victor Zaibert, Stanislav Grigoriev, Andrei Epimakhov, Valentin Dergachev, and Ludmila Koryakova. Of these I owe the deepest debts to Telegin (my first guide) and my colleagues in Samara: Vasiliev, Kuznetsov, Mochalov, Khokhlov, and (honorary Samaran) Kosintsev.
The errors I have made are mine alone; these people tried their best.
PART ONE
Language and Archaeology
CHAPTER ONE
The Promise and Politics of the Mother Tongue
ANCESTORS
When you look in the mirror you see not just your face but a museum. Although your face, in one sense, is your own, it is composed of a collage of features you have inherited from your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. The lips and eyes that either bother or please you are not yours alone but are also features of your ancestors, long dead perhaps as individuals but still very much alive as fragments in you. Even complex qualities such as your sense of balance, musical abilities, shyness in crowds, or susceptibility to sickness have been lived before. We carry the past around with us all the time, and not just in our bodies. It lives also in our customs, including the way we speak. The past is a set of invisible lenses we wear constantly, and through these we perceive the world and the world perceives us. We stand always on the shoulders of our ancestors, whether or not we look down to acknowledge them.
It is disconcerting to realize how few of our ancestors most of us can recognize or even name. You have four great-grandmothers, women sufficiently close to you genetically that you see elements of their faces, and skin, and hair each time you see your reflection. Each had a maiden name she heard spoken thousands of times, and yet you probably cannot recall any one of their maiden names. If we are lucky, we may find their birth names in genealogies or documents, although war, migration, and destroyed records have made that impossible for many Americans. Our four great-grandmothers had full lives, families, and bequeathed to us many of our most personal qualities, but we have lost these ancestors so completely that we cannot even name them. How many of us can imagine being so utterly forgotten just three generations from now by our own descendents that they remember nothing of us—not even our names?
In traditional societies, where life is still structured around family, extended kin, and the village, people often are more conscious of the debts they owe their ancestors, even of the power of their ghosts and spirits. Zafimaniry women in rural Madagascar weave complicated patterns on their hats, which they learned from their mothers and aunts. The patterns differ significantly between villages. The women in one village told the anthropologist Maurice Bloch that the designs were “pearls from the ancestors.” Even ordinary Zafimaniry houses are seen as temples to the spirits of the people who made them.1 This constant acknowledgment of the power of those who lived before is not part of the thinking of most modern, consumer cultures. We live in a world that depends for its economic survival on the constant adoption and consumption of new things. Archaeology, history, genealogy, and prayer are the overflowing drawers into which we throw our thoughts of earlier generations.
Archaeology is one way to acknowledge the humanity and importance of the people who lived before us and, obliquely, of ourselves. It is the only discipline that investigates the daily texture of past lives not described in writing, indeed the great majority of the lives humans have lived. Archaeologists have wrested surprisingly intimate details out of the silent remains of the preliterate past, but there are limits to what we can know about people who have left no written accounts of their opinions, their conversations, or their names.
Is there a way to overcome
those limits and recover the values and beliefs that were central to how prehistoric people really lived their lives? Did they leave clues in some other medium? Many linguists believe they did, and that the medium is the very language we use every day. Our language contains a great many fossils that are the remnants of surprisingly ancient speakers. Our teachers tell us that these linguistic fossils are “irregular” forms, and we just learn them without thinking. We all know that a past tense is usually constructed by adding -t or -ed to the verb (kick-kicked, miss-missed) and that some verbs require a change in the vowel in the middle of the stem (run-ran, sing-sang). We are generally not told, however, that this vowel change was the older, original way of making a past tense. In fact, changing a vowel in the verb stem was the usual way to form a past tense probably about five thousand years ago. Still, this does not tell us much about what people were thinking then.
Are the words we use today actually fossils of people’s vocabulary of about five thousand years ago? A vocabulary list would shine a bright light on many obscure parts of the past. As the linguist Edward Sapir observed, “The complete vocabulary of a language may indeed be looked upon as a complex inventory of all the ideas, interests, and occupations that take up the attention of the community.”2 In fact, a substantial vocabulary list has been reconstructed for one of the languages spoken about five thousand years ago. That language is the ancestor of modern English as well as many other modern and ancient languages. All the languages that are descended from this same mother tongue belong to one family, that of the Indo-European languages. Today Indo-European languages are spoken by about three billion people—more than speak the languages of any other language family. The vocabulary of the mother tongue, called “Proto-Indo-European”, has been studied for about two hundred years, and in those two centuries fierce disagreements have continued about almost every aspect of Indo-European studies.
But disagreement produces light as well as heat. This book argues that it is now possible to solve the central puzzle surrounding Proto-Indo-European, namely, who spoke it, where was it spoken, and when. Generations of archaeologists and linguists have argued bitterly about the “homeland” question. Many doubt the wisdom of even pursuing it. In the past, nationalists and dictators have insisted that the homeland was in their country and belonged to their own superior “race.” But today Indo-European linguists are improving their methods and making new discoveries. They have reconstructed the basic forms and meanings of thousands of words from the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary—itself an astonishing feat. Those words can be analyzed to describe the thoughts, values, concerns, family relations, and religious beliefs of the people who spoke them. But first we have to figure out where and when they lived. If we can combine the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary with a specific set of archaeological remains, it might be possible to move beyond the usual limitations of archaeological knowledge and achieve a much richer knowledge of these particular ancestors.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Page 1