The Horse, The Wheel and Language
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | David Anthony |
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| Language | English |
| Subject | Indo-European migrations |
| Publisher | Princeton University Press |
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Publication date
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2007 |
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The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World is a 2007 book by David W. Anthony, which describes his "Revised Steppe Theory." The book explores the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages (now spoken by three billion people) from the Pontic-Caspian steppes throughout Western Europe, and Central and South Asia. It shows how the domesticated horse and the invention of the wheel mobilized the steppe herding societies in the Eurasian Grass-Steppe, and combined with the introduction of bronze technology and new social structures of patron-client relationships gave a cutting edge to the Indo-European societies. It won the Society for American Archaeology's 2010 Book Award.
Anthony gives a broad overview of the linguistic and archaeological evidence for the early origins and spread of the Indo-European languages, describing a revised version of Marija Gimbutas’s Kurgan hypothesis. Anthony describes the development of local cultures at the northern Black Sea coast, from hunter-gatherers to herders, under influence of the Balkan cultures which introduced cattle, horses and bronze technology. When the climate changed between 3500 and 3000 BCE, with the steppes becoming drier and cooler, these inventions lead to a new way of life, in which mobile herders moved into the steppes, developing a new kind of social organisation with patron-client and host-guest relationships. This new social organisation, with its related Indo-European languages, spread throughout Europe, Central Asia and South Asia, due to the possibilities it provided to include new members within its social structures.
Part One covers theoretical considerations on language and archaeology. It gives an introductory overview of Indo-European linguistics (ch.1); investigates the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (ch.2); the dating of Proto-Indo-European (ch.3); the specific vocabulary for wool and wheels (ch.4); the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland (ch.5); and the correlation of these linguistic discoveries with archaeological evidence and the role of elite recruitment in language shift (ch.6).
Part Two covers the development of the Steppe cultures, and the subsequent migrations out of the Pontic-Caspic region into Europe, Central Asia and South Asia. The splitting off of the major branches of Indo-European (except perhaps Greek) can be correlated with archaeological cultures showing steppe influences, in a way that makes sense chronologically and geographically in light of linguistic reconstructions. Anthony gives an introduction to Part Two (ch.7); describes the interaction between Balkan farmers and herders and steppe foragers at the Dniestr river (present West Ukraine), and the introduction of cattle(ch.8); the spread of cattle-herding during the Copper Age, and the accompanying social division between high and low status (ch.9); the domestication of the horse (ch.10); the end of the Balkan cultures and the early migrations of Steppe people into the Danube valley (ch.11); the development of the steppe cultures during the eneolithic, including the interaction with the Mesopotamian world after the collapse of the Balkan cultures, and the role of Proto-Indo-European as a regional language (ch.12); the Yamna culture as the culmination of these developments at the Pontic-Caspian steppes (ch.13); the migration of Yamna people into the Danube Valley and the origins of the western Indo-European languages at the Danube Valley (Celtic, Italic), the Dniestr (Germanic) and the Dniepr (Baltic, Slavic)(ch.14); migrations eastward which gave rise to the Sintashta culture and Proto-Indo-Iranian (ch.15); migrations of the Indo-Aryans southward through the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological complex into Anatolia and India (ch.16); and concluding thoughts (ch.17).
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