Who is on First | Indo-Europeans or Steppe Peoples

Mavi Boncuk |

This book argues that the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe essentially began shortly before 1600 BC, when lands rich in natural resources were taken over by military forces from the Eurasian steppe and from southern Caucasia. First were the copper and silver mines (along with good harbors) in Greece, and the copper and gold mines of the Carpathian basin. By ca. 1500 BC other military men had taken over the amber coasts of Scandinavia and the metalworking district of the southern Alps. These military takeovers offer the most likely explanations for the origins of the Greek, Keltic, Germanic and Italic subgroups of the Indo-European language family.

Battlefield warfare and militarism, Robert Drews contends, were novelties ca. 1600 BC and were a consequence of the military employment of chariots. Current opinion is that militarism and battlefield warfare are as old as formal states, going back before 3000 BC.

Another current opinion is that the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe happened long before 1600 BC. The "Kurgan theory" of Marija Gimbutas and David Anthony dates it from late in the fifth to early in the third millennium BC and explains it as the result of horse-riding conquerors or raiders coming to Europe from the steppe. Colin Renfrew’s Archaeology and Language dates the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe to the seventh and sixth millennia BC, and explains it as a consequence of the spread of agriculture in a "wave of advance" from Anatolia through Europe. Pairing linguistic with archaeological evidence Drews concludes that in Greece and Italy, at least, no Indo-European language could have arrived before the second millennium BC.

Until the advent of the archaic or classical Greek polis, nothing particularly distinguished Western proto-states from their larger and more powerful counterparts in the Near East, Egypt, and China. Mycenaen Greece was essentially an off-shoot of Anatolian civilization, the ethnic “Greeks” being created by the merger of chariot-borne Indo-European-speaking conquerors with the Aegean area's indigenous population. The West did share in the general technological advantages offered by Eurasian geography, flora, and fauna. The initial spread of Homo Sapiensacross Eurasia had not coincided with or led to the extermination of potential draft animals, as it had in the Americas and elsewhere. The east-west axes of communications across Eurasia meant that animals and plants domesticated in any one area could spread easily and widely through a large band of roughly similar climatic attributes, whereas in the Americas the North-South axes meant that local domesticates tended strongly to remain localized. The sheer size and relative ease of movement across Eurasia meant that there were more people, in more communities, with access to a wider variety of potentially domesticable plants and animals, and thus more opportunity for the creation and spread of ideas and advances (and diseases: Diamond does of wonderful job of showing the connections between human diseases and the domestication of animals). After all, most of the key elements of the Greeks’ diet and technology (including their crucial writing system, mathematics, and architecture) originated elsewhere in Eurasia.

SEE ALSO:  The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

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, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages from the Pontic-Caspian steppes throughout Western Europe, and Central 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.

SEE ALSO : Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe 1st Edition by Robert Drews[*]
Pp. x + 284. Routledge, London 2017.ISBN 978-1-138-28272-8 (cloth).

The first chapters present the author’s view of the spread of Indo-European languages and theories of the Kurgans and the taming of horses. These chapters primarily serve to set premises for the ensuing historical argument, partly in opposition to prevalent views concerning the place of the Anatolian group in the history of Indo-European languages and Anthony's thesis. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press) (and, to an extent, Gimbutas’ (2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press) concerning the rise and role of horseback riding in the fourth millennium B.C.E.

There are multiple narratives in the following chapters, though these intertwine to create Drews’ overarching argument that (briefly) Indo-Europeanization was a result of a military takeover made possible by innovations in militarism and military technologies (as opposed to, e.g., Renfrew’s spread of agriculture). Chronologically he places these events in a period of turmoil in European history ca. 1600 B.C.E. The argument is at odds both with theories tied to agricultural dispersal out of Anatolia in the seventh millennium and, more importantly, with the prevalent theory of movements during the fifth to third millennia. In terms of the latter, there is a range of theories and disputes, but as Drews discounts “militarism” and Indo-European expansion in Europe before 1600 B.C.E., questions like the role of the Corded Ware Culture or its relation to the Bell Beaker Culture are a priori not important and not dealt with. Drews initially focuses on the central premise of horse riders out of the steppes, as argued by Anthony. After clarifying the premises and background, the book pursues three narratives: one about militarism and war technologies, another about Indo-Europeanization in the wake of militarism, and the last a historical narrative that focuses on the second millennium B.C.E. (and particularly the arrival of the Greeks).

The following three chapters (“Warfare in Western Eurasia in the Third and Early Second Millennium BC,” “Chariot Warfare, the Beginning of Militarism, and Its Indo-European Connection," and “The Beginnings of Militarism in Temperate Europe”) deal with the evolution, from the 18th century B.C.E., of warfare practices, parameters for sieges and combat on the battlefields, the evolution of weapons (spears, swords, axes), and horse riding and the chariot in western Eurasia. The discussion extends from the Indus Valley to temperate Europe’s northern perimeter in Scandinavia. The stringent analysis of these technologies and their historical context provides the most interesting chapters and discursively serves as a counterbalance to theoretical schools that view the tactics and strategies of war as epiphenomena and consistently privilege social and political factors or the blunt insertion of “deeply flawed”  versions of militarism and war into the historical equation. In my opinion, this discussion of practices and technologies, irrespective of the sometimes problematic culture historical argument Drews wishes to place them in, is the most valuable section of the book. The account of the logic of siege with laborers during Hammurabi’s time, via pitched battles and the rise of warriors to the development of chariot warfare, is an excellent history of warfare. The final two chapters focus on the events in Greece slightly before 1600 B.C.E. with the arrival on the eastern mainland of an armed force equipped with composite bows, chariots, socketed spearheads, leather shields, and corselets taking control over harbors (and metal and amber trade). The military takeover in Greece is a precursor to takeovers in northern Italy, the Carpathian Basin, and Scandinavia.  from REVIEW

[*] Robert Drews (born March 26, 1936) is an American historian who is Professor of Classical Studies Emeritus at Vanderbilt University. He received his B. A. from Northwestern College, his M. A. from University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Drews specializes in ancient history and prehistory, in particular the evolution of warfare and of religion.

Representative publications

THE GREEK ACCOUNTS OF EASTERN HISTORY.  Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, for the Center for Hellenic Studies, 1973

BASILEUS.  THE EVIDENCE FOR KINGSHIP IN GEOMETRIC GREECE.  New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1983

IN SEARCH OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN:  NEW LIGHT ON ITS HISTORY AND ORIGINS.  Totowa, N. J.:  Rowman and Allanheld, 1984.

THE COMING OF THE GREEKS:  INDO-EUROPEAN CONQUESTS IN THE AEGEAN AND THE NEAR EAST.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1988.
When did the Indo-Europeans enter the lands that they occupied during historical times? And, more specifically, when did the Greeks come to Greece? Robert Drews brings together the evidence--historical, linguistic, and archaeological--to tackle these important questions.

THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE:  CHANGES IN WARFARE AND THE CATASTROPHE CA. 1200 B.C.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1993.

(editor) GREATER ANATOLIA AND THE INDO-HITTITE LANGUAGE FAMILY. Papers presented at a colloquium hosted by the University of Richmond, March 18-19, 2000.  Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 2001.

EARLY RIDERS: THE BEGINNINGS OF MOUNTED WARFARE IN ASIA AND EUROPE.  London:  Routledge, 2004.In this wide-ranging and often controversial book, Robert Drews examines the question of the origins of man's relations with the horse.

He questions the belief that on the Eurasian steppes men were riding in battle as early as 4000 BC, and suggests that it was not until around 900 BC that men anywhere - whether in the Near East and the Aegean or on the steppes of Asia - were proficient enough to handle a bow, sword or spear while on horseback. After establishing when, where, and most importantly why good riding began, Drews goes on to show how riding raiders terrorized the civilized world in the seventh century BC, and how central cavalry was to the success of the Median and Persian empires.