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| Lots and lots of informationI offer this review as someone who is something of a student of history, but not someone who is a history student, if you take my meaning. I read this book to learn more about the development of the Eurasian steppe culture and about the spread of Indo-European languages. I got that and a WHOLE LOT more. The author loves his stats. The book is full of figures on the % of different types of bones in graves and burial pits, etc. This is both for humans and animals. And it didn't end there. Personally, I didn't need that level of detail, and I skimmed large portions of the text for that reason. Maybe others like that stuff, though. Still, I didn't really feel like it detracted from the book. I got out of it what I was hoping to when I purchased it.
Good for what it isIndo-European studies are of (seriously) questionable academic merit and usually tend towards simplicity, racism, and essentialism. That said, David Anthony himself gives a good critique of these problems. I see these as inherent and he does not. As long as you aren't looking for a compelling overarching theory, the book is quite useful as an introduction to many of the most significant cultures of the Eurasian Bronze Age.
Outstanding for the Kindle DX(This review is for the Kindle edition, as read on a Kindle DX) This is the best implementation of a non-fiction book for Kindle that I have seen to date. It's full of rich graphics and does an excellent job of making the most of the high-resolution, large Kindle DX screen. The links within the book work well, and the font brings some welcome variety to the Kindle's offerings. Even the tables look like they were reviewed by a human eye before being packaged up and sold as a ready Kindle product. Great job, publishers!
As to the content of the book, I really enjoyed it. I am not a linguist or an archeologist, just an engineer with a lifelong fascination for the Indo-european language tree since seeing it in a dictionary when I was a little kid. This book was perfect for me. It assumed no prior knowledge on my part, but did assume the ability to process information, and plenty of it. I thoroughly recommend it.
a wonderful intellectual adventure in archaeology and linguisticsThough this is a book that advances a highly complex set of academic arguments - that the spread of proto-indo-european languages was not accomplished by violence, that linguistic methods can supplement the physical evidence to pinpoint its origins and fundamental splits - it is also highly readable for interested laymen. I myself cannot judge his ideas against the evidence, but I learned an immense amount about the transition from the late neolithic to the bronze ages, where a single population divided and moved into both Europe and S Asia, disseminating a root language, technologies, a new economic and agricultural system, and finally an innovative socio-political system. The essence of Anthony's argument, in my reading, is that all these interacted to produce a relatively peaceful expansion.
First, in 5500 BC, the proto-indo-europeans (PIE) were small bands of foragers based in the Pontic-Caspian riverrain and seaside regions. While neolithic agricultural techniques were spreading, PIE adopted herding techniques of grass-eating species, enabling them to convert previously useless steppe grasses into animal protein. This vastly increased their range of potential living spaces. Horses, in particular, represented a good food source: they could paw through snow to grass, rather than depend on their noses like sheep, which preferred to starve than scrape their tender snozes as winter wore on. This hugely increased their wealth and nutritional options, expanding their population, prestige, and power. In this way, they became a significant cultural force. (Interestingly, it appears that 2 offshoots - the Hittite language groups and the Tocharians - split off prior to this, around 4500-4000 BC.)
Second, a series of stunning technological inventions increased their mobility and speed over unprecedented ranges. Not only did the wheel make its appearance, but so did the wagon and eventually the chariot. This reinforced PIE economic power and, particularly with the chariot and the newly acquired ability to ride horses instead of just eating them, made them a formidable military power as well. They were able to protect themselves as well as raid others and then beat a hasty escape. The need to protect herds also enhanced the status of male warriors. Finally, as their herds grew to enormous proportions, PIE sought new grazing areas, spurring further spreading west, northwest, and southeast.
Third, according to Kennedy, PIE developed a political system based on 2 customs that enabled them to incorporate local peoples relatively peacefully, with the adoption of PIE dialects and intermarriage eventually mixing the populations. On the one hand, with their wealth and economic system, PIE developed client-master relations with locals, in effect incorporating them into a lower rank of their hierarchy. This was accomplished to their mutual advantage, trading prosperity for peace and stability. On the other hand, there was a system of guest-host relations, also to promote peace and sharing, in particular in feasts given by PIE to prove the superiority of their economic-agricultural system. In this way, over thousands of years, PIE dialects spread to autochtons as they were absorbed into a quasi-political order. Though Anthony did not quite prove to my satisfaction that this was accomplished without depending on a great deal on warfare, I admit it is possible it happened non-violently.
By 3200 BC or so, the PIE had created a gigantic diaspora of related but independent regions. With the perfection of bronze smelting, the relative uniformity of the many groups facilitated trade, initiating an unprecedented era of prosperity that lasted through 2000 years, to the iron age. It was during this time that PIE split into Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Baltic, and Slavic groupings (to name a few!), eventually leading to the modern languages that a full 70% of the world speaks today. This is absolutely wonderful stuff for the brain, a rare intellectual adventure. You can also gain a deep understanding of the Bronze Age, though little of the culture can be known with any specificity. It is also a primer on historical linguistics, lucidly written, that examines the structure of PIE languages; for example, its grammar is elaborately structured to reflect time and action, which is not the case with other basic root languages (Hopi, for example, incorporates one's assessment of the accuracy of a source of information into its grammar, shaping thought in an entirely different way).
That being said, this is a very academic book. THere are long passages where seemingly obscure points are proven. They can be tedious to the uninitiated and easily skipped. For myself, I dislike long descriptions of graves and pottery shards, of which there are very many; the same goes for the linguistic reconstruction of PIE, which necessitates long discussions of word roots and their evolution into modern usages. Of course, to be scientific, these arguments must be made. To his credit, Anthony always brings the reader back to remind us of where he is going and what it means, which make the book a consistent pleasure.
I recommend this book with the greatest enthusiasm. It is also beautifully written and has plenty of personal observations, such as his efforts with his wife to prove that horses were ridden by gauging wear on horse's teeth, that are funny and instructive.
Very Informative workThis book was one joy ride for me that i wanted to read every page about. For years, I have had the curiousity about cultural societies from west and central Asia, and particularly about Aryans and their origins. This is a fantastic work on the subject that attempts to address those and other curiousities of readers. Pre-history is to some degree a speculative probability, and most remains dubious. However, there are several aspects of daily life of tribes and communities that lived before written record which have left their tracks on rocks, bones and other organic matter. For a careful archeologist or anthropologist, those tracks convey unambiguous information about the past before the written word. For anyone who wishes to know about the cultures that persisted from the Danube valley in modern Romania and Bulgaria to the east of Urals, and their contribution to history, this is a very informative guide.
Product DescriptionRoughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.
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