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

by David W. Anthony

  There were no wild horses in Central Asia. The native equids were onagers. Wild horses had not previously strayed south of what is today central Kazakhstan. Any horses found in BMAC sites must have been traded in from the steppes far off to the north. The animal bones discarded in and near BMAC settlements contained no horse bones. Hunters occasionally killed wild onagers but not horses. Most of the bones recovered from the settlement trash deposits were from sheep or goats. Asian zebu cattle and domesticated Bactrian camels also appeared. They were shown pulling wagons and carts in BMAC artwork. Small funeral wagons with solid wooden-plank wheels and bronze-studded tires were buried in royal graves associated with the first building phase, dated about 2100–2000 BCE, at Gonur in Margiana (called Gonur North, because the oldest phase was found at the northern end of the modern ruins).

  Figure 16.5 Artifacts of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, 2100–1800 BCE: (top left) a sample of BMAC stamp seals, adapted after Salvatori 2000, and Hiebert 1994; (top center) cast silver pin head from Gonur North showing a goddess in a ritual dress, after Klochkov 1998, figure 3; (top right) ceramic female figurines from Gonur North, after Hiebert 1994; (center left) crested shaft-hole axes from the art market, probably from BMAC sites, with a possible horse-head on the lower one, after Aruz 1998, figure 24; and Amiet 1986, figure 167; (center right) a crested axe with eye amulet, and a copper mirror and dagger excavated from Gonur North, after Hiebert 1994; and Sarianidi 1995, figure 22; (bottom) ceramic vessel shapes from Gonur, after Hiebert 1994.

  In these graves at Gonur, associated with the early settlement of Gonur North, one horse was found. A brick-lined grave pit contained the contorted bodies of ten adult humans who were apparently killed in the grave itself, one of whom fell across a small funeral wagon with solid wooden wheels. The grave also contained a whole dog, a whole camel, and the decapitated body of a horse foal (the reverse of an Aryan horse sacrifice). This grave is thought to have been a sacrificial offering that accompanied a nearby “royal” tomb. The royal tomb contained funeral gifts that included a bronze image of a horse head, probably a pommel decoration on a wooden staff. Another horse head image appeared as a decoration on a crested copper axe of the BMAC type, unfortunately obtained on the art market and now housed in the Louvre. Finally, a BMAC-style seal probably looted from a BMAC cemetery in Bactria (Afghanistan) showed a man riding a galloping equid that looks very much like a horse (see figure 16.3). The design was similar to the contemporary galloping-horse-and-rider image on the Ur III seal of Abbakalla, dated 2040–2050 BCE. Both seals showed a galloping horse, a rider with a hair-knot on the back of his head, and a man walking.

  These finds suggest that horses began to appear in Central Asia about 2100–2000 BCE but never were used for food. They appeared only as decorative symbols on high-status objects and, in one case, in a funeral sacrifice. Given their simultaneous appearance across Iran and Mesopotamia, and the position of BMAC between the steppes and the southern civilizations, horses were probably a trade commodity. After chariots were introduced to the princes of the BMAC, Iran, and the Near East around 2000–1900 BCE, the demand for horses could easily have been on the order of tens of thousands of animals annually.17

  Steppe Immigrants in Central Asia

  Fred Hiebert’s excavations at the walled town of Gonur North in Margiana, dated 2100–2000 BCE, turned up a few sherds of strange pottery, unlike any other pottery at Gonur. It was made with a paddle-and-anvil technique on a cloth-lined form—the clay was pounded over an upright cloth-covered pot to make the basic shape, and then was removed and finished. This is how Sintashta pottery was made. These strange sherds were imported from the steppe. At this stage (equivalent to early Sintashta) there was very little steppe pottery at Gonur, but it was there, at the same time a horse foal was thrown into a sacrificial pit in the Gonur North cemetery. Another possible trace of this early phase of contact were “Abashevo-like” pottery sherds decorated with horizontal channels, found at the tin miners’ camp at Karnab on the lower Zeravshan. Late Abashevo was contemporary with Sintashta.

  During the classic phase of the BMAC, 2000–1800 BCE, contact with steppe people became much more visible. Steppe pots were brought into the rural stronghold at Togolok 1 in Margiana, inside the larger palace/temple at Togolok 21, inside the central citadel at Gonur South, and inside the walled palace/temple at Djarkutan in Bactria (figure 16.6). These sherds were clearly from steppe cultures. Similar designs can be found on Sintashta pots at Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 3; k. 10, gr. 13) but were more common on pottery of early Andronovo (Alakul variant) type, dated after 1900–1800 BCE—pottery like that used by the Andronovo miners at Karnab. Although the amount of steppe pottery in classic BMAC sites is small, it is widespread, and there is no doubt that it derived from northern steppe cultures. In these contexts, dated 2000–1800 BCE, the most likely steppe sources were the Petrovka culture at Tugai or the first Alakul-Andronovo tin miners at Karnab, both located in the Zeravshan valley.18

  The Petrovka settlement at Tugai appeared just 27 km downstream (west) of Sarazm, not far from the later site of Samarkand, the greatest caravan trading city of medieval Central Asia. Perhaps Tugai had a similar, if more modest, function in an early north-south trade network. The Petrovka culture (see below) was an eastern offshoot of Sintashta. The Petrovka people at Tugai constructed two copper-smelting ovens, crucibles with copper slag, and at least one dwelling. Their pottery included at least twenty-two pots made with the paddle-and-anvil technique on a cloth-lined form. Most of them were made of clay tempered with crushed shell, the standard mixture for Petrovka potters, but two were tempered with crushed talc/steatite minerals. Talc-tempered clays were typical of Sintashta, Abashevo, and even forest-zone pottery of Ural forager cultures, so these two pots probably were carried to the Zeravshan from the Ural steppes. The pottery shapes and impressed designs were classic early Petrovka (figure 16.7). A substantial group of Petrovka people apparently moved from the Ural-Ishim steppes to Tugai, probably in wagons loaded with pottery and other possessions. They left garbage middens with the bones of cattle, sheep, and goats, but they did not eat horses—although their Petrovka relatives in the northern steppes did. Tugai also contained sherds of wheel-made cups in red-polished and black-polished fabrics typical of the latest phase at Sarazm (IV). The principal activity identified in the small excavated area was copper smelting.19

  Figure 16.6 A whole steppe pot found inside the walls of the Gonur South town, after Hiebert 1994; steppe sherds with zig-zag decoration found inside the walls of Togolok 1, after Kuzmina 2003; and similar motifs on Sintashta sherds from graves at Krivoe Ozero, Ural steppes, after Vinogradov 2003, figures 39 and 74.

  Figure 16.7 The Petrovka settlement at Tugai on the Zeravshan River: (top) plan of excavation; (center left) imported redware pottery like that of Sarazm IV; (center right) two coarse ceramic crucibles from the metal-working area; (bottom) Petrovka pottery. Adapted from Avanessova 1996.

  The steppe immigrants at Tugai brought chariots with them. A grave at Zardcha-Khalifa 1 km east of Sarazm contained a male buried in a contracted pose on his right side, head to the northwest, in a large oval pit, 3.2 m by 2.1 m, with the skeleton of a ram.20 The grave gifts included three wheel-made Namazga VI ceramic pots, typical of the wares made in Bactrian sites of the BMAC such as Sappali and Dzharkutan; a trough-spouted bronze vessel (typical of BMAC) and fragments of two others; a pair of gold trumpet-shaped earrings; a gold button; a bronze straight-pin with a small cast horse on one end; a stone pestle; two bronze bar bits with looped ends; and two largely complete bone disc-shaped cheekpieces of the Sintashta type, with fragments of two others (figure 16.8). The two bronze bar bits are the oldest known metal bits anywhere. With the four cheekpieces they suggest equipment for a chariot team. The cheekpieces were a specific Sintashta type (the raised bump around the central hole is the key typological detail), though disc-shaped studded cheekpieces also appeared in many Petrovka graves. Stone pestles also frequently app
eared in Sintashta and Petrovka graves. The Zardcha-Khalifa grave probably was that of an immigrant from the north who had acquired many BMAC luxury objects. He was buried with the only known BMAC-made pin with the figure of a horse—perhaps made just for him. The Zardcha-Khalifa chief may have been a horse dealer. The Zeravshan valley and the Ferghana valley just to the north might have become the breeding ground at this time for the fine horses for which they were known in later antiquity.

  The fabric-impressed pottery and the sacrificed horse foal at Gonur North and perhaps the Abashevo (?) sherds at Karnab represent the exploratory phase of contact and trade between the northern steppes and the southern urban civilizations about 2100–2000 BCE, during the period when the kings of Ur III still dominated Elam. Information and perhaps even cult practices from the south flowed back to early Sintashta societies. On the eastern frontier in Kazakhstan, where Petrovka was budding off from Sintashta, the lure of the south prompted a migration across more than a thousand kilometers of hostile desert. The establishment of the Petrovka metal-working colony at Tugai, probably around 1900 BCE, was the beginning of the second phase, marked by the actual migration of chariot-driving tribes from the north into Central Asia. Sarazm and the irrigation-fed Zaman-Baba villages were abandoned about when the Petrovka miners arrived at Tugai. The steppe tribes quickly appropriated the ore sources of the Zeravshan, and their horses and chariots might have made it impossible for the men of Sarazm to defend themselves.

  Figure 16.8 Objects from the grave at Zardcha-Khalifa on the Zeravshan River. The trough-spouted bronze vessel and ceramic pots are typical of the BMAC, 2000–1800 BCE; the cast copper horse pin shows BMAC casting methods; the bronze bar bits are the first ones dated this early; and the stone pestle, trumpet-shaped earring, and bone cheekpieces are steppe types. After Bobomulloev 1997, figures 2, 3, and 4.

  Central Asian Trade Goods in the Steppes

  Did any BMAC products appear in Sintashta or Petrovka settlements? Only a few hints of a return trade can be identified. One intriguing innovation was a new design motif, the stepped pyramid or crenellation. Stepped pyramids or crenellations appeared on the pottery of Sintashta, Potapovka, and Petrovka. The stepped pyramid was the basic element in the decorative artwork on Namazga, Sarazm, and BMAC pottery, jewelry, metalwork, and even in a mural painted on the Proto-Elamite palace wall at Malyan (figure 16.9, bottom). Repeated horizontally, the stepped pyramid became a line of crenellated designs; repeated on four sides, it became a stepped cross. This motif had not appeared in any earlier pottery in the steppes, neither in the Bronze Age nor the Eneolithic. Charts of design motifs are regularly published in Russian archaeological ceramic studies. I have scanned these charts for years and have not found the stepped pyramid in any assemblage earlier than Sintashta. Stepped pyramids appeared for the first time on northern steppe pottery just when northern steppe pottery first showed up in BMAC sites. It was seen first on a small percentage (< 5%) of Potapovka pottery on the middle Volga (single vessels in Potapovka kurgans 1, 2, 3, and 5) and at about the same frequency on Sintashta pottery in the Ural-Tobol steppes; later it became a standard design element in Petrovka and Andronovo pottery (but not in Srubnaya pottery, west of the Urals). Although no Sarazm or BMAC pottery has been found in Sintashta contexts, the design could have been conveyed to the northern steppes on textiles—perhaps the commodity exchanged for northern metal. I would guess that Sintashta potters copied the design from imported BMAC textiles.

  There are other indications of contact. A lead wire made of two braided strands was found among the metal objects in the Sintashta settlement of Kuisak. Lead had never before appeared in the northern steppes as a pure metal, whereas a single ingot of lead weighing 10 kg was found at Sarazm. The Kuishak lead wire probably was an import from the Zeravshan. A lapis lazuli bead from Afghanistan was found at Sintashta. A Bactrian-handled bronze mirror was found in a Sintashta grave at Krasnoe Znamya.21 Finally, the technique of lost-wax metal casting first appeared in the north during the Sintashta period, in metal objects of Seima-Turbino type (described in more detail below). Lost-wax casting was familiar to BMAC metalsmiths. Southern decorative motifs (stepped pyramids), raw materials (lead and lapis lazuli), one mirror, and metal-working techniques (lost-wax casting) appeared in the north just when northern pottery, chariot-driving cheekpieces, bit wear, and horse bones appeared in the south.

  Figure 16.9 Stepped pyramid or crenellation motifs on steppe pottery and on Central Asian pottery: (top row and left pot in second row) Potapovka graves, middle Volga region, 2100–1800 BCE, after Vasiliev, Kuznetsov, and Semenova 1994, figures 20 and 22; (middle row, remaining pots) Sintashta SII cemetery, grave 1, after Gening, Zdanovich and Gening 1992, figure 172; (bottom left) Sarazm, level II, 3000–2500 BCE, after Lyonnet 1996, figures 4 and 12; (bottom right) Altyn-Depe, excavation 1, burial 296, after Masson 1988, plate 27.

  The sudden shift to large-scale copper production that began about 2100–2000 BCE in the earliest Sintashta settlements must have been stimulated by a sharp increase in demand. Central Asia is the most likely source. The increase in metal production deeply affected the internal politics of northern steppe societies, which quickly became accustomed to using and consuming large quantities of bronze. Although the northern steppe producers probably had direct contact with the Central Asian market only for a short time, internal demand in the steppes remained high throughout the LBA. Once the metallurgical pump was primed, so to speak, it continued to flow. The priming happened because of contact with urban markets, but the flow after that raised the usage of metal in the steppes and in the forest zone to the north, starting an internal European cycle of exchange that would lead to a metal boom in the Eurasian steppes after 2100 BCE.

  After 1900 BCE a contact zone developed in the Zeravshan valley and extended southward to include the central citadels in the BMAC towns. In the Zeravshan, migrants from the northern steppes mixed with late Kelteminar and BMAC-derived populations. The Old Indic dialects probably evolved and separated from the developing Iranian dialects in this setting. To understand how the Zeravshan-Bactrian contact zone separated itself from the northern steppes, we need to examine what happened in the northern steppes after the end of the Sintashta culture.

  THE OPENING OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES

  The Srubnaya (or Timber-Grave) culture was the most important LBA culture of the western steppes, from the Urals to the Dnieper (figure 16.10). The Andronovo horizon was the primary LBA complex of the eastern steppes, from the Urals to the Altai and the Tien Shan. Both grew from the Potapovka-Sintashta complex between the middle Volga and the Tobol. With the appearance of Srubnaya and Andronovo 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. Innovations and raw materials began to move across the continent. The steppe world was not just a conduit, it also became an innovating center, particularly in bronze metallurgy and chariot warfare. The chariot-driving Shang kings of China and the Mycenaean princes of Greece, contemporaries at opposite ends of the ancient world at about 1500 BCE, shared a common technological debt to the LBA herders of the Eurasian steppes.

  Figure 16.10 The Late Bronze Age cultures of the Eurasian steppes, 1900–1 500 BCE.

  THE SRUBNAYA CULTURE: HERDING AND GATHERING IN THE WESTERN STEPPES

  West of the Ural Mountains, the Potapovka and late Abashevo groups of the middle Volga region developed into the Pokrovka complex, dated about 1900–1750 BCE. Pokrovka was a proto-Srubnaya phase that rapidly developed directly into the Srubnaya (or Timber-Grave) culture (1800–1200 BCE). Srubnaya material culture spread as far west as the Dnieper valley. One of the most prominent features of the Srubnaya culture was the appearance of hundreds of small settlement sites, most of them containing just a few houses, across the northern steppe and the southern forest-steppe, from the Urals to the Dnieper. Although settlements had reappeared in a few places east of the Don River during the late Catacomb cult
ure, 2400–2100 BCE, and were even more numerous in Ukraine west of the Don during the Mnogovalikovaya (MVK) period (2100–1800 BCE), the Srubnaya period was the first time since the Eneolithic that settlements appeared across the entire northern steppe zone from the Dnieper to the southern Urals and beyond into northern Kazakhstan.

  The reason for this shift back to living in permanent homes is unclear. Most Srubnaya settlements were not fortified or defended. Most were small individual homesteads or extended family ranches rather than nucleated villages. The herding pattern seems to have been localized rather than migratory. During the Samara Valley Project, in 1999–2001, we studied the local Srubnaya herding pattern by excavating a series of Srubnaya herding camps that extended up a tributary stream valley, Peschanyi Dol, from the Srubnaya settlement at Barinovka, near the mouth of the valley on the Samara (figure 16.11). The largest herding camps (PD1 and 2) were those closest to the home settlement, within 4–6 km of Barinovka. Farther upstream the Srubnaya camps were smaller with fewer pottery sherds, and beyond about 10–12 km upstream from Barinovka we found no LBA herding camps at all, not even around the springs that fed the stream at its source, where there was plenty of water and good pastures. So the herding system seems to have been localized, like the new residence pattern. The Srubnaya economy in the middle Volga steppes does not seem to have required long-distance migrations.

  Figure 16.11 The Peschanyi Dol valley, a tributary of the Samara River, surveyed to find ephemeral camps in 1995–96. PD1, 2, and 3, were Srubnaya herding camps excavated in 2000. All numbered sites yielded at least one Srubnaya ceramic sherd. Barinovka was a larger Srubnaya settlement tested in1996 but found to be badly disturbed by a historic settlement. Author’s excavation. Bottom image is a Google EarthTM image, © 2006 Terra Metrics, 2006 Europa Technologies.