The Horse, the Wheel, and Language traces the spread of horse riding and the use of war chariots from the Eurasian steppe across Mesopotamia and into Western Europe. The author links the proliferation of these revolutionary technologies with the expansion and transformation of Indo-European languages. Over six thousand years ago, pastoral nomads on the Eurasian steppe started riding horses (as early as 4200 BCE). The domesticated horse was central to the steppe nomad culture. Unlike cattle and sheep, horses will use their hooves to scrape through snow and ice to find forage, making horses ideally suited to survive the harsh winters of the Eurasian steppe. |
The pastoral lifestyle also gave rise to reciprocal relationships: “Herders who lose animals always borrow from those who still have them. Those who loaned animals acquired power over those who borrowed from them, [just as] those who sponsored feasts obligated their guests.” Horses had a lot of meat, which also made them “ suitable animals for extraordinary ritual sacrifices.” Evidence of horse sacrifices are common in the graves of high-ranking nomads across the steppe. |
“About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian “warrior graves” on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle.”
“In the steppes north of the North Caucasus…females and males appeared about equally in central graves and in kurgan [vaulted] graves generally.”
“cooler, more arid climate affected the Eurasian steppes after about 2500 BCE, reaching a peak of aridity around 2000 BCE…Intensified fighting encouraged tactical innovations, most important the invention of the light war chariot…This escalation of conflict and competition between rival tribal groups was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies and feasts at funerals [including] potlatch-type excesses such as the sacrifice of chariots and whole horses."
"The invention of the short, recurved, compound bow (the “cupid” bow) around 1000 BCE made it possible for riders to carry a powerful bow short enough to swing over the horse’s rear. " Bow technology also encouraged the inclusion of female warriors, because bows favor skill over brute upper-body strength. |
“Tribal warfare generally was conducted by forces that never drilled as a unit, often could choose to ignore their leaders, and valued personal bravery above following orders.”
But warriors could be bribed. During the Iron Age, “intensified warfare led to the establishment of permanent bodyguards [or herd-guards] around rival chiefs, and these grew in size until they became armies.” This gave rise to “patron-client reciprocity” where powerful chieftains cultivated loyalty through elaborate gift-giving, which drove long-distance trade or plundering rival tribes and sedentary cultures for wealth. According to the author, “between about 1900 and 1800 BCE, for the first time in history a chain of broadly similar cultures extended from the edges of China to the frontiers of Europe.” |
In the sedentary European cultures of the Balkans, “Household cults symbolized by broad-hipped female figurines were practiced everywhere.” These Europeans lived in large, solid timber and mud-plaster houses in agricultural villages, “set in cleared and cultivated landscapes surrounded by herds of cattle, pigs, and sheep.” The migrating nomads, wearing bright colors and ostentatious gold ornamentation, would have put on elaborate feasts with poets praising their exploits. They also brought their “ideology of political clientage.” Imagine a young potter practicing the same craft as generations of their family, choosing to swear loyalty to one of these exotic nomadic chieftains. |
A radical departure from the stable social structure of farming communities.
“speakers of Indo-European languages habitually frame all events in terms of when they occurred [tense] and whether they involved multiple actors [singular or plural]. In Anatolia, for example, the language had two tenses, present and past, and nouns were either animate or inanimate. Thus in Anatolian, “chief” or “king” would not have designated male or female gender. Some later European languages ascribed gender to nouns (male, female, or neuter), and used three tenses: past, present, and future. |