The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

by David W. Anthony

  CONCLUSION: THE EARLY WESTERN INDO–EUROPEAN

  LANGUAGES DISPERSE

  There was no Indo–European invasion of Europe. The spread of the Usatovo dialect up the Dniester valley, if it happened as I have suggested, was quite different from the Yamnaya migration into the Danube valley. But even that migration was not a coordinated military invasion. Instead, a succession of Pontic steppe tribal segments fissioned from their home clans and moved toward what they perceived as places with good pastures and opportunities for acquiring clients. The migrating Yamnaya chiefs then organized islands of authority and used their ritual and political institutions to establish control over the lands they appropriated for their herds, which required granting legal status to the local populations nearby, under patron–client contracts. Western Indo–European languages might well have remained confined to scattered islands across eastern and central Europe until after 2000 BCE, as Mallory has suggested.37 Nevertheless, the movements into the East Carpathians and up the Danube valley occurred in the right sequence, at the right time, and in the right directions to be connected with the detachment of Pre–Italic, Pre–Celtic, and Pre–Germanic—the branch that ultimately gave birth to English.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Chariot Warriors of the Northern Steppes

  The publication of the book Sintashta in 1992 (in Russian) opened a new era in steppe archaeology.1 Sintashta was a settlement east of the Ural Mountains in the northern steppes. The settlement and the cemeteries around it had been excavated by various archaeologists between 1972 and 1987. But only after 1992 did the significance of the site begin to become clear. Sintashta was a fortified circular town 140 m in diameter, surrounded by a timber-reinforced earthen wall with timber gate towers (figure 15.1). Outside the wall was a V-shaped ditch as deep as a man’s shoulders. The Sintashta River, a western tributary of the upper Tobol, had washed away half of it, but the ruins of thirty-one houses remained. The original town probably contained fifty or sixty. Fortified strongholds like this were unprecedented in the steppes. A few smaller fortified settlements had appeared west of the Don (Mikhailovka, for example) during the Yamnaya period. But the walls, gates, and houses of Sintashta were much more substantial than at any earlier fortified site in the steppes. And inside each and every house were the remains of metallurgical activity: slag, ovens, hearths, and copper. Sintashta was a fortified metallurgical industrial center.

  Outside the settlement were five funerary complexes that produced spectacular finds (figure 15.2). The most surprising discoveries were the remains of chariots, which radiocarbon dates showed were the oldest chariots known anywhere. They came from a cemetery of forty rectangular grave pits without an obvious kurgan labeled SM for Sintashta mogila, or Sintashta cemetery. The other four mortuary complexes were a mid-size kurgan (SI, for Sintashta I), 32 m in diameter and only 1 m high, that covered sixteen graves; a second flat or non-kurgan cemetery (SII) with ten graves; a second small kurgan (SIII), 16 m in diameter, that covered a single grave containing the partial remains of five individuals; and finally a huge kurgan, 85 m in diameter and 4.5 m high (SB, for Sintashta bolshoi kurgan), built over a central grave (robbed in antiquity) constructed of logs and sod on the original ground surface. The southern skirt of the SB kurgan covered, and so was later than, the northern edge of the SM cemetery, although the radiocarbon dates suggest that SM was only slightly older than SB. The forty SM graves contained astounding sacrifices that included whole horses, up to eight in and on a single grave (gr. 5), with bone disc-shaped cheekpieces, chariots with spoked wheels, copper and arsenical bronze axes and daggers, flint and bone projectile points, arsenical bronze socketed spearheads, polished stone mace heads, many ceramic pots, and a few small silver and gold ornaments (figure 15.3). What was impressive in these graves was weaponry, vehicles, and animal sacrifices, not crowns or jewelry.

  Figure 15.1 The Sintashta settlement: rectangular houses arranged in a circle within a timber-reinforced earthen wall, with excavators’ reconstruction of south gate tower and outer defense wall. After Gening, Zdanovich, and Gening 1992, figures 7 and 12.

  Figure 15.2 The Sintashta settlement landscape, with associated cemeteries, and detail of the SM cemetery. After Gening, Zdanovich, and Gening 1992, figures 2 and 42.

  Figure 15.3 Sintashta SM cemetery, grave 30, with chariot wheel impressions, skulls and lower leg bones of horse team, cheekpieces for bits, and weapons. After Gening, Zdanovich, and Gening, figures 111, 113, and 114.

  The radiocarbon dates for both the cemeteries and the settlement at Sintashta were worryingly diverse, from about 2800–2700 BCE (4200 + 100 BP), for wood from grave 11 in the SM cemetery, to about 1800–1600 BCE (3340 + 60BP), for wood from grave 5 in the SII cemetery. Probably there was an older Poltavka component at Sintashta, as later was found at many other sites of the Sintashta type, accounting for the older dates. Wood from the central grave of the large kurgan (SB) yielded consistent dates (3520 + 65, 3570 + 60, and 3720 + 120), or about 2100–1800 BCE. The same age range was produced by radiocarbon dates from the similar settlement at Arkaim, from several Sintashta cemeteries (Krivoe Ozero, Kammeny Ambar), and from the closely related graves of the Potapovka type in the middle Volga region (table 15.1).

  The details of the funeral sacrifices at Sintashta showed startling parallels with the sacrificial funeral rituals of the Rig Veda. The industrial scale of metallurgical production suggested a new organization of steppe mining and metallurgy and a greatly heightened demand for copper and bronze. The substantial fortifications implied surprisingly large and determined attacking forces. And the appearance of Pontic-Caspian kurgan rituals, vehicle burials, and weapon types in the steppes east of the Ural River indicated that the Ural frontier had finally been erased.

  After 1992 the flow of information about the Sintashta culture grew to a torrent, almost all of it in Russian and much of it still undigested or actively debated as I write.2 Sintashta was just one of more than twenty related fortified settlements located in a compact region of rolling steppes between the upper Ural River on the west and the upper Tobol River on the east, southeast of the Ural Mountains. The settlement at Arkaim, excavated by G. B. Zdanovich, was not damaged by erosion, and twenty-seven of its fifty to sixty structures were exposed (figure 15.4). All the houses at Arkaim contained metallurgical production facilities. It has become a conference center and national historic monument. Sintashta and Arkaim raised many intriguing questions. Why did these fortified metal-producing towns appear in that place at that time? Why the heavy fortifications—who were they afraid of? Was there an increased demand for copper or just a new organization of copper working and mining or both? Did the people who built these strongholds invent chariots? And were they the original Aryans, the ancestors of the people who later composed the Rig Veda and the Avesta?3

  THE END OF THE FOREST FRONTIER: CORDED WARE HERDERS IN THE FOREST

  To understand the origins of the Sintashta culture we have to begin far to the west. In what had been the Tripolye region between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers, the interaction between Corded Ware, Globular Amphorae, and Yamnaya populations between 2800 and 2600 BCE produced a complicated checkerboard of regional cultures covering the rolling hills and valleys of the forest-steppe zone (figure 15.5). To the south, in the steppes, late Yamnaya and a few late Usatovo groups continued to erect kurgan cemeteries. Some late Yamnaya groups penetrated northward into the forest-steppe, up the Dniester, South Bug, and Dnieper valleys. Eastern Carpathian groups making Globular Amphorae pottery moved from the upper Dniester region around Lvov eastward into the forest-steppe around Kiev, and then retreated back to the Dniester. Corded Ware groups from southern Poland replaced them around Kiev. Under the influence of this combined Globular Amphorae and Corded Ware expansion to the east, the already complex mixture of Yamnaya-influenced Late Tripolye people in the Middle Dnieper valley created the Middle Dnieper culture in the forest-steppe region around Kiev. This was the first food-producing, herding cultur
e to push into the Russian forests north of Kiev.4

  TABLE 15.1

  Selected radiocarbon dates for the Sintashta- Arkaim (S) and Potapovka (P) cultures in the south Ural steppes and middle Volga steppes.

  The Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo Cultures

  The people of the Middle Dnieper culture carried stockbreeding economies (cattle, sheep, and pigs, depending on the region) north into the forest zone, up the Dnieper and Desna into what is now Belarus (figure 15.5). They followed marshes, open lakes, and riverine floodplains where there were natural openings in the forest. These open places had grass and reeds for the animals, and the rivers supplied plentiful fish. The earliest Middle Dnieper sites are dated about 2800–2600 BCE; the latest ones continued to about 1900–1800 BCE.5 Early Middle Dnieper pottery showed clear similarities with Carpathian and eastern Polish Corded Ware pottery, and Middle Dnieper pots have been found in Corded Ware graves near Grzeda Sokalska between the upper Dniester and the upper Vistula.6 Some late Sredni Stog or Yamnaya elements also appeared in Middle Dnieper ceramics (figure 15.6). Middle Dnieper cemeteries contained both kurgans and flat-graves, both inhumation burials and cremations, with hollow-based flint arrowheads like those of the Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures, large trapezoidal flint axes like Globular Amphorae, and drilled stone “battle-axes” like those of the Corded Ware cultures. The Middle Dnieper culture clearly emerged from a series of encounters and exchanges between steppe and forest-steppe groups around Kiev, near the strategic fords over the Dnieper.7

  Figure 15.4 Arkaim settlement, house plan, and artifacts, including a mold for casting curved sickle or knife blades. After Zdanovich 1995, figure 6.

  Figure 15.5 Culture groups of the Middle Bronze Age, 2800–2200 BCE.

  A second culture, Fatyanovo, emerged at the northeastern edge of the Middle Dnieper culture. After the cattle herders moved out of the south-flowing Dnieper drainage and into the north-flowing rivers such as the Oka that coursed through the pine-oak-birch forests to the Upper Volga, they began to make pottery in distinctive Fatyanovo forms. But Fatyanovo pottery still showed mixed Corded Ware/Globular Amphorae traits, and the Fatyanovo culture probably was derived from an early variant of the Middle Dnieper culture. Ultimately Fatyanovo-type pottery, graves, and the cattle-raising economy spread over almost the entire Upper Volga basin. In the enormous western part of the Fatyanovo territory, from the Dvina to the Oka, very few Fatyanovo settlements are known, but more than three hundred large Fatyanovo flat-grave cemeteries, without kurgans, have been found on hills overlooking rivers or marshes. The Late Eneolithic Volosovo culture of the indigenous forest foragers was quite different in its pottery, economy, and mortuary customs. It disappeared when the Fatyanovo pioneers pushed into the Upper and Middle Volga basin.

  The Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo migrations overlapped the region where river and lake names in Baltic dialects, related to Latvian and Lithuanian, have been mapped by linguists: through the upper and middle Dnieper basin and the upper Volga as far east as the Oka. These names indicate the former extent of Baltic-speaking populations, which once occupied an area much larger than the area they occupy today. The Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo migrations probably established the populations that spoke pre-Baltic dialects in the Upper Volga basin. Pre-Slavic probably developed between the middle Dnieper and upper Dniester among the populations that stayed behind.8

  As Fatyanovo groups spread eastward down the Volga they discovered the copper ores of the western Ural foothills, and in this region, around the lower Kama River, they created long-term settlements. The Volga-Kama region, which became the metallurgical heartland for almost all Fatyanovo metallurgy, has been separated from the rest of Fatyanovo and designated the Balanovo culture. Balanovo seems to be the settled, metal-working aspect of eastern Fatyanovo. At the southern fringe of Balanovo territory, in the forest-steppe zone of the middle Volga and upper Don where the rivers again flowed south, a fourth group emerged (after Middle Dnieper, Fatyanovo, and Balanovo). This was Abashevo, the easternmost of the Russian forest-zone cultures that were descended from Corded Ware ceramic traditions. The Abashevo culture played an important role in the origin of Sintashta.

  Figure 15.6 Ceramics and stone tools of the Middle Dnieper culture from sites in Belarus. After Kryvaltsevich and Kovalyukh 1999, figures 2 and 3.

  The Abashevo Culture

  Abashevo probably began about 2500 BCE or a little later. A late Abashevo kurgan at Pepkino on the middle Volga is dated 2400–2200 BCE (3850 ± 95, Ki-7665); I would guess that the grave actually was created closer to 2200 BCE. Late Abashevo traditions persisted west of the Urals probably as late as 1900 BCE, definitely into the Sintashta period, since late Abashevo vessels are found in Sintashta and Potapovka graves. Early Abashevo ceramic styles strongly influenced Sintashta ceramics.

  Abashevo sites are found predominantly in the forest-steppe zone, although a few extended into the northern steppes of the middle Volga. Within the forest-steppe, they are distributed between the upper Don on the west, a region with many Abashevo settlements (e.g., Kondrashovka); the middle Volga region in the center, represented largely by kurgan cemeteries (including the type-site, the Abashevo kurgan cemetery); and up the Belaya River into the copper-rich southwestern foothills of the Urals on the east, again with many settlements (like Balanbash, with plentiful evidence of copper smelting). More than two hundred Abashevo settlements are recorded; only two were clearly fortified, and many seem to have been occupied briefly. The easternmost Abashevo sites wrapped around the southern slopes of the Urals and extended into the Upper Ural basin, and it is these sites in particular that played a role in the origins of Sintashta.9

  Some of the Volosovo foragers who had occupied these regions before 2500 BCE were absorbed into the Abashevo population, and others moved north. At the northern border of Abashevo territory, cord-impressed Abashevo and comb-stamped Volosovo ceramics are occasionally found inside the same structures at sites such as Bolshaya Gora.10 Contact between late Volosovo and Abashevo populations west of the Urals probably helped to spread cattle-breeding economies and metallurgy into transitional northern forest cultures such as Chirkovska.

  Whereas early Abashevo pottery looked somewhat like Fatyanovo/Balanovo Corded Ware, early Abashevo graves were covered by kurgans, unlike Fatyanovo flat cemeteries. Abashevo kurgans were surrounded by a circular ditch, the grave pit had ledges at the edges, and the body position was either contracted on the side or supine with raised knees—funeral customs derived from the Poltavka culture on the Volga. Abashevo ceramics also showed increasing decorative influences from steppe Catacomb-culture ceramic traditions, in both motifs (horizontal line-and-dot, horizontal fluting) and technology (shell tempering). Some Abashevo metal types such as waisted knives copied Catacomb and Poltavka types. A. D. Pryakhin, the preeminent expert on the Abashevo culture, concluded that it originated from contacts between Fatyanovo/Balanovo and Catacomb/Poltavka populations in the southern forest-steppe. In many ways, the Abashevo culture was a conduit through which steppe customs spread northward into the forest-steppe. Most Russian archaeologists interpret the Abashevo culture as a border culture associated with Indo-Iranian speakers, unlike Fatyanovo.11

  Abashevo settlements in the Belaya River valley such as Balanbash contained crucibles, slag, and casting waste. Cast shaft-hole axes, knives, socketed spears, and socketed chisels were made by Abashevo metalsmiths. About half of all analyzed Abashevo metal objects were made of pure copper from southwestern Ural sandstone ores (particularly ornaments), and about half were arsenical bronze thought to have been made from southeastern Ural quartzitic ores (particularly tools and weapons), the same ores later exploited by Sintashta miners. High-status Abashevo graves contained copper and silver ornaments, semicircular solid copper and silver bracelets, cast shaft-hole axes, and waisted knives (figure 15.7). High-status Abashevo women wore distinctive headbands decorated with rows of flat and tubular beads interspersed with suspended double-spiral and cast rosette pen
dants, made of copper and silver. These headbands were unique to the Abashevo culture and probably were signals of ethnic as well as political status.12

  The clear signaling of identity seen in Abashevo womens’ headbands occurred in a context of intense warfare—not just raiding but actual warfare. At the cemetery of Pepkino, near the northern limit of Abashevo territory on the lower Sura River, a single grave pit 11 m long contained the bodies of twenty-eight young men, eighteen of them decapitated, others with axe wounds to the head, axe wounds on the arms, and dismembered extremities. This mass grave, probably dated about 2200 BCE, also contained Abashevo pottery, a two-part mold for making a shaft-hole axe of Chernykh’s Type V, and a crucible. It was covered by a single kurgan and so probably reflected a single event, clearly a serious battle or massacre. The absence of women or children in the grave indicates that it was not a settlement massacre. If it was the result of a battle, it implies a force of 280 to 560 on the Abashevo side alone, because deaths in tribal battles rarely reached 10% of the fighting force and usually were more like 5%.13 Forces this size would require a considerable degree of inter-regional political integration. Intense warfare, perhaps on a surprising scale, was part of the political landscape during the late Abashevo era. In this context, the fortifications around Sintashta settlements and the invention of new fighting technologies—including the chariot—begin to make sense.

  Figure 15.7 Abashevo culture graves and metal objects from the middle Volga forest-steppe (upper left), including distinctive cast copper rosettes; and ceramics from the south Ural region (lower right). After O. V. Kuzmina 1999, figures 23 and 24 (ceramics); and Bol’shov 1995, figure 13 (grave goods).