The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe throughout Western Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. He shows how the domesticated horse and the invention of the wheel mobilized the steppe herding societies in the Eurasian Steppe, and combined with the introduction of bronze technology and new social structures of patron-client relationships gave an advantage to the Indo-European societies. The book won the Society for American Archaeology's 2010 Book Award.
Synopsis 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 the 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, those inventions led 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. That new social organisation, with its related Indo-European languages, spread throughout Europe, Central Asia and South Asia because of its ability 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-Caspian region into Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. The splitting 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 Dniester River (in western 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 Dniester (Germanic) and the Dnieper (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).
Contents Part One: Language and Archaeology Chapter One: The Promise and Politics of the Mother Language Anthony introduces the similarities between a broad range of languages and their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European (PIE). He proposes that "the Proto-Indo-European homeland was located in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas in what is today southern Ukraine and Russia." Anthony gives a short overview of the history of the linguistical study of PIE and then presents six major problems that hinder a "broadly acceptable union between archaeological and linguistic evidence."
Chapter Three: Language and Time 1. The Last Speakers of Proto-Indo-European Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Don Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European branches: Pre-Anatolian (before 3500 BCE) Pre-Tocharian Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (before 2500 BCE) [Pre-Germanic] Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek (after 2500 BCE) [Pre-Germanic] Proto-Germanic c. 500 BCE Pre-Balto-Slavic Proto-Indo-Iranian (2000 BCE)
Chapter Four: Language and Time 2: Wool, Wheels and Proto-Indo-European Anthony proposes that Proto-Indo-European emerged after ca. 3500 BCE. He bases that especially on his analysis of Indo-European terms for wool textiles and wheeled vehicles:
Chapter Six: The Archaeology of Language Anthony, following the methodology of Ringe and Warnow, proposes the following sequence: Pre-Anatolian (4200 BCE) Pre-Tocharian (3700 BCE) Pre-Germanic (3300 BCE) Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (3000 BCE) Pre-Armenian (2800 BCE) Pre-Balto-Slavic (2800 BCE) Pre-Greek (2500 BCE) Proto-Indo-Iranian (2200 BCE), split between Iranian and Old Indic 1800 BCE
A key insight is that early expansions of the area in which Indo-European was spoken were often caused by "recruitment", rather than only by military invasions. With the Yamnaya culture as a nucleus candidate, the original recruitment would be to a way of life in which intensive use of horses allowed herd animals to be pastured in areas of the Ukrainian / South Russian steppe, outside of river valleys.
Part Two: The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes Chapter Eight: First Farmers and Herders: The Pontic-Caspian Neolithic
According to Anthony, the development of the Proto-Indo-European cultures started with the introduction of cattle at the Pontic-Caspian steppes, which, until ca. 5200–5000 BCE, were populated by hunter-gatherers. The first cattle herders arrived from the Danube Valley at ca. 5800–5700 BCE, descendants from the first European farmers. They formed the Criş culture (5800–5300 BCE), creating a cultural frontier at the Prut-Dnister watershed.
The adjacent Bug-Dniester culture (6300–5500 BCE) was a local forager culture from which cattle-breeding spread to the steppe peoples. The Dniepr Rapids area was the next part of the Pontic-Caspian steppes to shift to cattle-herding. It was the most densely populated area of the Pontic-Caspian steppes at the time and had been inhabited by various hunter-gatherer populations since the end of the Ice Age. From ca. 5800–5200, it was inhabited by the first phase of the Dnieper-Donets culture, a hunter-gatherer culture contemporaneous with the Bug-Dniestr culture.
Chapter Nine: Cows, Copper and Chiefs At ca. 5200–5000 BCE, the non-Indo-European Cucuteni-Tripolye culture (5200–3500 BCE) appears east of the Carpathian mountains, moving the cultural frontier to the Southern Bug valley, and the foragers at the Dniepr Rapids shifted to cattle herding, marking the shift to Dniepr-Donets II (5200/5000-4400-4200 BCE). The Dniepr-Donets culture kept cattle not only for ritual sacrifices but also for their daily diet. The Khvalynsk culture (4700–3800 BCE), located at the middle Volga, which was connected with the Danube Valley by trade networks, also had cattle and sheep, but they were "more important in ritual sacrifices than in the diet." According to Anthony, "the set of cults that spread with the first domesticated animals was at the root of the Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe" in which cattle had an essential role. The Samara culture (early 5th millennium BCE), north of the Khvalynsk culture, interacted with the same. The steppe cultures were markedly different, economically and probably linguistically, from the Danube Valley and Balkan cultures at their west despite trade between them, the foragers of the northern forest zone, and from the cultures east of the Ural river.
Chapter Ten: The Domestication of the Horse and the Origins of Riding: The Tale of the Teeth The domestication of the horse had a wide-ranging effect on the steppe cultures, and Anthony has done fieldwork on it. Bit wear is a sign of horse-riding, and the dating of horse teeth with signs of bit wear gives clues for the dating of the appearance of horse-riding. The presence of domesticated horses in the steppe cultures was an important clue for Marija Gimbutas's development of her Kurgan hypothesis. According to Anthony, horseback riding may have appeared as early as 4200 BCE, and horse artifacts show up in greater amounts after 3500 BCE. Horseback riding greatly increased the mobility of herders, allowing for greater herds, but also led to increased warfare by the need for additional grazing land.
Chapter Eleven: The End of Old Europe and the Rise of the Steppe The Sredny Stog culture (4400–3300 BCE) appears at the same location as the Dniepr-Donets culture but shows influences from people who came from the Volga River region. The Sredni Stog culture was "the archaeological foundation for the Indo-European steppe pastoralists of Marija Gimbutas," and the period "was the critical era when innovative Proto-Indo-European dialects began to spread across the steppes."
Around 4200–4100 BCE, a climate change occurred, causing colder winters. Between 4200 and 3900 BCE, many tell settlements in the lower Danube Valley were burned and abandoned, and the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture showed an increase in fortifications and moved eastwards, towards the Dniepr.
Steppe herders, archaic Proto-Indo-European-speakers, spread into the lower Danube valley in about 4200–4000 BCE, causing or taking advantage of the collapse of Old Europe. According to Anthony, their languages "probably included archaic Proto-Indo-European dialects of the kind partly preserved later in Anatolian." According to Anthony their descendants later moved into Anatolia at an unknown time, maybe as early as 3000 BCE. According to Anthony, the herders, forming the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka complex, probably were a chiefly elite from the Sredni Stog culture at the Dniepr Valley.
Chapter Twelve: Seeds of Change on the Steppe Borders. Maikop Chiefs and Tripolye Towns The collapse of Old Europe led to a decrease in copper grave gifts in the North Pontic steppes. Between 3800 and 3300, substantial contact took place between the steppe cultures and Mesopotamia via the Maikop culture (3700–3000 BCE), in the northern Caucasus. To the west, Tripolye pottery begins to resemble Sredni Stog pottery, showing a process of assimilation between the Tripolye culture and the steppe cultures and a gradual breakdown of the cultural border between the two.
Between 3800 and 3300 BCE, five eneolithic steppe cultures can be discerned, and Proto-Indo-European dialects may have then served as a regional language. Mikhaylovka culture (3600—3000 BCE), on the Black Sea coast between the Dniestr and the Dniepr. Mikhailovka I people looked less like the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka people and may have intermarried more with Tripolye culture people or people from the Danube valley. Mikhailovka II upper level (3300–3000 BCE) imported pottery from the Repin culture (see below) and is regarded as early western Yamna. In the steppes northwest of the Black Sea l, the Mikhailovka culture was replaced by the Usatovo culture after 3300 BCE. The Mikhailovka culture at the Crimea developed into the Kemi Oba culture.