Horses, trousers and PIE
This 8-minute video by an American student linguist is a quirky but clear explanation of this session's central issue, namely the origin of the Indo-European language family.
I recommend you focus closely on the narration, as it's very rapid, but actually says it all very neatly and concisely. Horse power By the time the civilisations of Iraq and Egypt were making pictures of horses pulling chariots, these animals had been domesticated for possibly 2000 years. |
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Europe was home to vast herds of wild horses, but as the ice retreated and humans spread around 10,000 BC, these herds disappeared quite quickly. We can tell from cave art that these animals had a variety of colouring, from grey-black to spotted, and had a tufty upward-sticking mane. It seems that not all of these varieties were domesticable.
The nearest living equivalents to these have been ‘bred back’ in modern times ie zoologists have run selective breeding programmes to create as near to the wild species as possible. The Tarpan, and Przwalski’s Horse, are two zoo-bred examples that have been returned to the wild and which are not domesticable.
In the wide grassland steppes running north and east from the Black Sea, two factors led to the horse predominating rather than disappearing. One was the terrain, which is ideal for horse herds and for humans managing horse herds. The other is that as farming spread around the Black Sea margins and Danube Valley, it didn’t follow the same pattern across the Steppes.
This was an issue encountered later in the Soviet era when agronomists attempted large scale cereal-farming in steppe terrain, only to find the aridity led to poor harvest and ploughing the turf led to soil erosion.
Horses are an ideal steppe animal, being bettr able to cope with thirst and also able to cover wide distances relatively quickly to reach new food and water sources.
By 4000 BC the steppe people had adapted horse traits to their own advantage, moving from camp to camp over often vast distances. Excavations in present-day Kazakhstan from the 1930s onwards, have given an insight into just one of these nomadic groups, termed the ‘Botai’ culture. Analysis of bone dumps from the Botai sites show a diet based on horse meat and horse milk – the older age of mares at slaughter suggests they were kept alive for reasons other than tender meat. Fermented mares milk is still drunk in Kazakhstan.
The Botai also began developing a bigger horse. Whether the Botai were riding horses is still debated. Common sense suggests horse herders would learn to ride animals. But archaeologists need evidence. Domestication and riding apparently don’t lead to massive morphological changes in the skeleton of horses – they’re basically still doing what they did before ie grazing and galloping. Wearing a mouth-bit might leave marks on teeth, so quite recently archaeologists have started to look at the dentition of excavated skulls for this. It’s microscopic and not easily spotted.
And the problem is, bits can be made to go around the muzzle rather than in the mouth – a ‘hackamore’ bit – and this will leave no evidence on the teeth. Or animals can be controlled via a nose-ring made of wood, bone or metal, again leaving no skeletal markings.
Chariots
The steppe people also began to make nifty two-wheeled chariots as well as more heavyweight 4-wheel carts, and were harnessing both oxen and horses for traction.
So the upshot is, we still don’t know where or when the horse was domesticated but the odds seem to suggest a location in the steppes, and like all domestication, there will have been centuries of adaption before a docile breed emerged that could be both harnessed and ridden. This seems to have occurred by 4000 BC but as for when…..
There is an archaeological explosion of wheels and carts / chariots about 3500 BC, stretching from central Europe to Iraq. At the same time, there is evidence for the larger Botai-type horse appearing alongside these new inventions. The speed and uniformity of this event suggest one sudden contact, be it by a migrating group or by trade. Horse-herding nomads were by this time living in close proximity to the very prosperous farming communities of the Lower Danube, and anthropologist note that ‘zones of contact’ – borderlands – are fertile areas for the spread and development of new ideas. And at this time, domesticated farm animals especially sheep and goat began to spread further east into the Steppes, along with cultivated crops.
Another important ‘zone of contact’ existed in the northern Caucasus, where herders were supplying copper and ?horses? to the wealthy cities of the fertile crescent.
Around 3500 BC the farming towns of the Lower Danube went into rapid decline and were abandoned. Some burned down. It may be over simplistic to decide that the ‘invading nomads took over and razed the towns to the ground’. There could be a whole lot of other reasons, from climate change and soil exhaustion to disease.
What was the Proto-Indo-European world like?
It may be that the horse-herders living in the ‘zone of contact’ NW of the Black Sea were the speakers of Proto Indo European, the language from which the modern Indo-European language group developed. Bearing in mind that expert linguists disagree, it seems that the words used by the PIE speakers reflect a terrain that was partly wooded, had snow in winter, and was farmed, and that the people knew lots about wheels and horses, boats and oars, and how to make copper. They also traded with Uralic speakers, and borrowed some words from them.
The PIE speakers also seem to have followed conventions that still chime today. Guests and hosts were obliged to behave in set ways. The exchange of gifts was an important way of keeping equilibrium between groups. Women belonged to families led by men, and joined the man’s family on marriage.
As PIE speakers moved outwards from their point of origin the language morphed into new dialects, and over time the dialects became distinct languages of their own. Linguists have formulae for calculating the time taken for these dialect shifts (not all agree this is a reliable technique). But by using this method, it has been calculated that the main language groups of Europe came into being around 3000 – 2500 BC, and that by 2500 BC PIE was no longer spoken.
One mysterious language that fits within this pattern of dispersal by horse-back nomads is Tocharian. This was identified in the 20th century on the basis of earlier writings, as the language itself died out before 1000 AD. The speakers lived around the Tarim Basin, an arid area surrounded by oases close to the borders of NW China. They seem to have originated as one of the nomadic western steppe PIE speakers who migrated ever eastwards with their herds, and remained for thousands of years in an isolated pocket with little outside contact. Recent excavations in the arid soils of the Tarim Basin have revealed the physical remains of these people, who are noticeably western-looking rather than east Asian. Aridity has preserved details of clothing, including g the earliest known pair of trousers in the world.
Trousers seem to have developed alongside horse-riding
The nearest living equivalents to these have been ‘bred back’ in modern times ie zoologists have run selective breeding programmes to create as near to the wild species as possible. The Tarpan, and Przwalski’s Horse, are two zoo-bred examples that have been returned to the wild and which are not domesticable.
In the wide grassland steppes running north and east from the Black Sea, two factors led to the horse predominating rather than disappearing. One was the terrain, which is ideal for horse herds and for humans managing horse herds. The other is that as farming spread around the Black Sea margins and Danube Valley, it didn’t follow the same pattern across the Steppes.
This was an issue encountered later in the Soviet era when agronomists attempted large scale cereal-farming in steppe terrain, only to find the aridity led to poor harvest and ploughing the turf led to soil erosion.
Horses are an ideal steppe animal, being bettr able to cope with thirst and also able to cover wide distances relatively quickly to reach new food and water sources.
By 4000 BC the steppe people had adapted horse traits to their own advantage, moving from camp to camp over often vast distances. Excavations in present-day Kazakhstan from the 1930s onwards, have given an insight into just one of these nomadic groups, termed the ‘Botai’ culture. Analysis of bone dumps from the Botai sites show a diet based on horse meat and horse milk – the older age of mares at slaughter suggests they were kept alive for reasons other than tender meat. Fermented mares milk is still drunk in Kazakhstan.
The Botai also began developing a bigger horse. Whether the Botai were riding horses is still debated. Common sense suggests horse herders would learn to ride animals. But archaeologists need evidence. Domestication and riding apparently don’t lead to massive morphological changes in the skeleton of horses – they’re basically still doing what they did before ie grazing and galloping. Wearing a mouth-bit might leave marks on teeth, so quite recently archaeologists have started to look at the dentition of excavated skulls for this. It’s microscopic and not easily spotted.
And the problem is, bits can be made to go around the muzzle rather than in the mouth – a ‘hackamore’ bit – and this will leave no evidence on the teeth. Or animals can be controlled via a nose-ring made of wood, bone or metal, again leaving no skeletal markings.
Chariots
The steppe people also began to make nifty two-wheeled chariots as well as more heavyweight 4-wheel carts, and were harnessing both oxen and horses for traction.
So the upshot is, we still don’t know where or when the horse was domesticated but the odds seem to suggest a location in the steppes, and like all domestication, there will have been centuries of adaption before a docile breed emerged that could be both harnessed and ridden. This seems to have occurred by 4000 BC but as for when…..
There is an archaeological explosion of wheels and carts / chariots about 3500 BC, stretching from central Europe to Iraq. At the same time, there is evidence for the larger Botai-type horse appearing alongside these new inventions. The speed and uniformity of this event suggest one sudden contact, be it by a migrating group or by trade. Horse-herding nomads were by this time living in close proximity to the very prosperous farming communities of the Lower Danube, and anthropologist note that ‘zones of contact’ – borderlands – are fertile areas for the spread and development of new ideas. And at this time, domesticated farm animals especially sheep and goat began to spread further east into the Steppes, along with cultivated crops.
Another important ‘zone of contact’ existed in the northern Caucasus, where herders were supplying copper and ?horses? to the wealthy cities of the fertile crescent.
Around 3500 BC the farming towns of the Lower Danube went into rapid decline and were abandoned. Some burned down. It may be over simplistic to decide that the ‘invading nomads took over and razed the towns to the ground’. There could be a whole lot of other reasons, from climate change and soil exhaustion to disease.
What was the Proto-Indo-European world like?
It may be that the horse-herders living in the ‘zone of contact’ NW of the Black Sea were the speakers of Proto Indo European, the language from which the modern Indo-European language group developed. Bearing in mind that expert linguists disagree, it seems that the words used by the PIE speakers reflect a terrain that was partly wooded, had snow in winter, and was farmed, and that the people knew lots about wheels and horses, boats and oars, and how to make copper. They also traded with Uralic speakers, and borrowed some words from them.
The PIE speakers also seem to have followed conventions that still chime today. Guests and hosts were obliged to behave in set ways. The exchange of gifts was an important way of keeping equilibrium between groups. Women belonged to families led by men, and joined the man’s family on marriage.
As PIE speakers moved outwards from their point of origin the language morphed into new dialects, and over time the dialects became distinct languages of their own. Linguists have formulae for calculating the time taken for these dialect shifts (not all agree this is a reliable technique). But by using this method, it has been calculated that the main language groups of Europe came into being around 3000 – 2500 BC, and that by 2500 BC PIE was no longer spoken.
One mysterious language that fits within this pattern of dispersal by horse-back nomads is Tocharian. This was identified in the 20th century on the basis of earlier writings, as the language itself died out before 1000 AD. The speakers lived around the Tarim Basin, an arid area surrounded by oases close to the borders of NW China. They seem to have originated as one of the nomadic western steppe PIE speakers who migrated ever eastwards with their herds, and remained for thousands of years in an isolated pocket with little outside contact. Recent excavations in the arid soils of the Tarim Basin have revealed the physical remains of these people, who are noticeably western-looking rather than east Asian. Aridity has preserved details of clothing, including g the earliest known pair of trousers in the world.
Trousers seem to have developed alongside horse-riding