The focus of this book is, in my opinion one of the most interesting questions modern man can ponder: how is it that languages spread across vast distances and cultural divides can share so much in common? The very idea that English, Polish, Farsi, Armenian, and many more could have all come from the same linguistic root boggles the mind. In the same way that biological evolution seems to defy common sense, it goes against everything one feels when encountering these foreign languages to suggest that, actually, they all came from a nomadic group of pastoralists in Eurasian steppe 5000 years ago.

This book is full of examples of scientific work and discovery that give the layman a true appreciation for all the tedious, impossibly incremental work that builds a theoretical structure on which to hang such a ludicrous-sounding idea. The author discusses dozens or perhaps hundreds of different cultures and societies spread across continents and continental expanses of time. These cultures are known from artifacts that have first been discovered, then dug up, then catalogued and radiocarbon dated (a technique which i know understand to be incredibly complicated thanks to this book), then fit into the grand scheme of archeological data that only in the aggregate gives us a picture of some tiny shard of a life from thousands of years ago. Equally if not more impressive is the process by which linguists have triangulated similarities in far-flung languages in order to cast a ghostly apparition of what the Proto-Indo-European language might have sounded like. It makes your head spin to consider the huge amount of brain and man power spent to make even the smallest bit of progress.

The thing about archeology and linguistics in particular that has always drawn me to them over other sciences is they are really the study of what makes us essentially human. Learning more about deep space or quantum physics is cool and all, but the questions taken up in this book affect millions of peoples lives every day, but at such a deep level that its almost unnoticeable. Writing this review right now puts me in debt to the very nomadic people who are described in this book. The author mentions in the beginning of the book the short time frame that even very well known people have persisted in historical records. For the vast majority of humanity, no one will remember your name or who you were one hundred years after you die. The fact that the world we inhabit today will continue to evolve and change into what may seem like an alien planet, just as the people of the prehistoric Eurasian steppe would surely see us. It takes ingenuity and holy curiosity to excavate the ties that bind us to what happened thousands of years ago. This kind of work isn’t merely egghead research on esoteric topics, its a search for knowledge that has the capacity to revolutionize the way we see death, history, the passage of time, and especially, the meaning we attach to our language and identity. One of the great repeated shocks of life is both a cliché and a rarely heeded piece of wisdom: everything is always changing, nothing stays the same. This truism is especially true in anything human beings do. Too many lives are stunted (not to mention wars started and atrocities committed) by a poor understanding of time in its vast expanse. Maybe work like that described in this book can help make some people more aware.

The first quarter of this book is 5 stars. Like the urban civilizations that rimmed the vast Eurasian steppe, once you pass a certain point, you enter what might seem like a desolate, undifferentiated landscape to the untrained eye. Most of this book is about hardcore archeology, and I came for the language stuff. Trudging through hundreds of pages describing the pottery and burial rituals of sundry tribes and chiefdoms was definitely a slog, and made me wonder if this book we intended for a more specialized audience. When it enters into existential questions about human nature, society, and language, the writing is beautiful and clearly comes from a place of deep passion. Every once in a while i came across and little factoid or idea that, like a river or patch of forest on the steppe broke up the monotony. But it was soon back to the litany of sites and findings and cultural horizons that I’m just not educated enough to care about. ( )

I stopped reading this book at 30% because it was super boring to read about archaeological stuff in minute detail. Might be interesting for archaeologists, but not for me. ( )

Really interesting read! I read this book for a linguistic anthropology class and it was a perfect companion to the course. It mostly explores proto-indo-european language and gives an excellent overview of how languages and dialects began to evolve through trade and transit, as well as providing distinct examples of similarities between modern languages throughout the Eurasian area. Highly recommend reading this if you are interested in language evolution. However, I do wish that it had discussed some African languages, as they also may have a relationship with proto-indo-european, but I could be completely wrong. ( )

very scientific. based upon archeology. good as a resource but difficult to follow. ( )

Finally got this book back out to finish it. I found the first chapters, which were more about the language, the most interesting. toward the end my eyes were glazing over, as the author went into minute detail about archaeological finds.. this is obviously his bread and butter and you can't blame him for finding it fascinating in all of its detail.
I lost the thread of his argument in all the minutia though, so I finished the book feeling like maybe he hadn't defended his central thesis entirely.
that being said, I did really enjoy most of the book, and consider myself better informed about proto Indo European and its probable culture. ( )

An entertaining read about the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) and its spread and the influences on it from the invention of the wheel, domestication of the horse and other sources around six thousand years ago. Includes considerable interesting discussion of linguistics and archaelogy. The book has a little more information than I needed (as a layman) about some specifics, such as some details of archaeological sites, but much of that type of data is in chart form and may be quickly scanned. There are good maps and diagrams.

Although the inference of the author that the language may first have been spoken in an area just north of the Black and Caspian Seas (Pontic Steppes) may not be strictly correct*, the discussion and data presented are little at issue, and the book is hardly diminished thereby, even if the inference may prove wrong . The author has done original research on the question of when horses were first ridden, as horse riding had influences quite beyond domestication alone.

PIE-based languages are spoken by more people than is any other language group and include English, German, Celtic, Greek, Italic (Romance), Slavic, Iranian and other language families. The amount of detail that linguistic study has constructed about PIE and the culture that spoke it is remarkable, given that PIE was entirely oral. Archaeology has much to say as well, and together they yield a fascinating insight about peoples long gone.

* A recent sophisticated study (reported September of 2012) based on linguistic connections purports to show, as some experts had previously argued, that PIE spread with farmers from Anatolia (Turkey) at a time beginning about 1500 years before this author places it at the Pontic Steppes. In any case, PIE and the Pontic culture certainly did spread from the steppes, traveling from there to, for example, as far away as northwestern china, though it became extinct there. The recent study may not resolve the issue. The author does treat with the Anatolia theory and explains some of the problems associated with it, acknowledging the Anatolian language as an odd and in some ways archaic relative of the PIE family. ( )

A magnum opus: an important but accessible work of academic history clearly establishing the roots of the Proto-Indo European language with an approach that marries linguistics with archeology. ( )

Finally a reasonable and thorough exposition of the story of Indo-European mysteries presented with authority and vision. Highly recommended. ( )

Despite not having any interest in archeology I found this fascinating and am deeply impressed by the ingenuity of research that allows us to learn something about cultures we have so little tangible evidence of. ( )

What DO I think of it? It is a hefty book, absolutely very interedting, but at this point in time I can't read it. I just seem to be unable to let my brain cooperate with me and let me grasp and digest what I read.
What I did read (6 chapters) was good, but when you need to reread a chapter when in a following chapter a reference is made and you have no idea why or whereto, that's not good. It also takes the fun out of reading.
I therefore decided to stop reading and hand this book to the person who rewuested it.

Indo-European languages are now some of the most widely spoken languages in the world. The Indo-European languages and the cultures and traditions associated with them which have influenced most of the world have come from a shared source known as proto-Indo-European language.

The main purpose of the book is to trace the proto-Indo-European and its evolution through a study of philological and archaeological sources. The author here makes the case for the Pontic-Caspian steppes as the homeland of proto-Indo-European language based on linguistic and archaeological evidences.

The first part was very fascinating. It deals with the linguistic part where the author discusses the various techniques of reconstructing the proto-Indo-European language and how the language can throw some important light on the culture and traditions of the speakers of the language.

The second part deals with the archaeological sites of various Bronze Age cultures in the Pontic-Caspian steppes. This was a bit difficult to go through because of my lack of knowledge in eastern European geography and the amount of detailed information we are given regarding the various archaeological sites.
The author provides us a lot of data, numbers and graphs regarding the pottery, animal bones, burial postures etc. Rather too many of those details making it a little confusing.

On the whole, this is a very well researched and informative work with extensive footnotes and bibliography that takes on a fascinating journey through the Bronze age cultures and does a good job of showing how the Proto-Indo-European and it's daughter languages might have spread.
( )

How bronze-age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world.

Educated in an era when the Tigris-Euphrates "Fertile Crescent") region was credited with the invention of the chariot, this work's most fascinating contribution to our understanding of world history to me was the identification of the Pontic-Caspian steppes as the origin of horse-riding about 4200-4000 BCE, and the invention of wheeled vehicles around 3300 BCE. Chariots used in warfare utterly changed world history, so dating their appearance is important because it helps us understand so many other bits and pieces we have of ancient history in the region (including Indian and Chinese history). Author David Anthony reminds us that the oldest images in Near Eastern art of spoked wheels (which identifies chariots used in warfare from carts used for other more domestic purposes) appear about 1900 BCE, which leads us to the realization that chariots were developed first in the steppes, and "introduced to the Near East through Central Asia". The appearance of chariot-riding warriors can explain the sudden appearance (and disappearance) of armed settlements, large-scale migrations, technologies that focus on instruments of war, the replacement of the heroic warrior with the strategizing general of armies, etc. Even if you're not interested in language, this detail-rich volume has many threads for historians to follow; it is a monumental work for anyone. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2776093.html

It is a very detailed presentation of evidence supporting a theory that I have known about for a long time: that Proto-Indo-European, the long-lost language from which most European languages, most Indian languages and others (notably Farsi) are descended, was originally spoken by tribes living on the steppe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, around 3500 BC. There's a well-known set of arguments for this which starts from the vocabulary which can be reconstructed: their language had words for birch, otter, beaver, lynx, bear, horse and bee and honey (these last significant because apparently you don't get bees east of the Urals). The fact that they had a whole vocabulary dealing with wheeled vehicles, and also sheep with wool (woolly sheep only appear after 4000 BC, whether due to mutation, artificial selection or both) also sets an archaeological time horizon.

Anthony turns this linguistic evidence into a sequenced story of technological innovation: the domestication of sheep and cattle, then horses, then the development of agriculture and towns, and then the invention of wagons and war-chariots. This was enough to give the people of the steppes using this technology a decisive edge as they settled the fertile but hiterto unfarmed uplands and valleys of Europe and Southwest Asia. This is supported by a wealth of archaeological evidence from excavations in Russia over the last few decades, several conducted by Anthony himself. (I confess I skimmed the detail of the digs; I worked on two archaology sites in 1984-85, which was enough to scratch my itch for life.)

I've always found the idea of reconstructing a dead language romantic and fascinating, but this book really scores by making firm arguments based on archeaology and documentation (such as the Rig Veda) which all support the conclusion. He also looks at when and where the daughter languages might have plausibly split off to form their own groups, though not in detail. The early history of Germanic languagues is still a bit mysterious. But it's a fascinating book, which left me with admiration for what we can find out, but also awareness of how little we can ever know about the lives of our ancestors thousands of years ago. ( )

In short, this is the prequel to Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (to which the author refers in the text and in the title trifecta). Maybe this book is a bit more technical in its archeological descriptions, and less forceful in formulating a central thesis, but I found it just as fascinating.
Why did the Indo-Europeans come to dominate the larger part of the Eurasian land mass (thereby extinguishing at least three pre-existing language groups, of which no trace remains, except in river names and a few other language fossils)? How and where did they originate, and how did they split up to form the various main language groups, from Celtic, Germanic and Italic over Greek, Armenian, Iranian to Sanskrit and faraway Tocharian?
The descriptions of what was found exactly in which tomb are a bit tedious, but they are compensated for by the author's research into language evolution and horse domestication as proofs alongside the physical evidence. And there you have it: Troy and the Iliad don't suddenly appear out of nowhere, as our classical education had us believe until recently, but fit firmly in this narrative, as do the Assyrians and their urban civilisations. Suddenly our earliest history gains a new sense by the identification of this Indo-European tribe in their steppes above the Black and Caspian seas, linking old civilisations in Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran to the earliest Chinese states, and finally dominating many of them with their horses, their chariots and indeed their languages. ( )

Anthony painstakingly and logically constructs his argument about the origins and impact of the innovations based in the steppe cultures (starting around the 4200 B.C. mark into around 1500 B.C.) between the area of what is now roughly Romania and points north and reaching ultimately, across a large part of the mid area of the Eurasian continent to the Altai (where the influence reached into China). The true mystery is in the intertwining of the powerful and pervasive indo-european languages (and some persistent folkways) with the eruption of a new freedom of movement, commerce, and warfare spreading across the Eurasian continent. To get there Anthony has us wade through long dry passages - you must learn what a 'horizon' is (a sphere of influence of a culture) and about 'ecotones' - subtle shifts in environmental conditions that affect liveability of an area - and the shifts in weather that can make or break a settlement and way of life. You learn about barriers, places where mountains, deserts, and sometimes subtler combinations of things prevent cultural dissemination. The argument also focuses on what can seem like minutia: about, for example, bit wear - but it matters very much, because these are the arguments that can settle the origins and timing of horseback riding. Likewise, certain pot styles, burial practices, sacrifices of various animals, diet, tooth decay..... On the way Anthony decisively overturns ideas about the origins and relationships between the steppe cultures and the cities of the middle east, once thought to be the centers of all innovation and invention. The steppe cultures are proven self-sufficient in all ways, inventive and competent. With them originated horseback riding, wheel-making, wagons, war chariots, and many forms of inventive pottery-making and most importantly mining and smithy-ing (weapon-making). It changes the picture of the ancient world hugely. The steppe cultures had trade relationships with the southern cultures - probably provided the horses, for example.

My deepest take away is that the effects of this robust and footloose culture ultimately, are still is very much with us, not only in the indo-european languages, and especially English which has become the dominant world-language of commerce, but in certain concepts of ritual, oath-keeping, hospitality and responsibilities between peoples that transcends ethnicity. Anthony makes a strong point that the language and innovations were adopted by people of many ethnicities. The point being that you adopt the 'language' and you become a part of this culture whatever your ethnicity might be. In the past, national boundaries did not exist, nor did the 'bundled' prejudices of nationalism. While warfare, caused by scarcity of resources mostly, was always present, much of the dissemination of this culture was accomplished by cooperation for mutual benefits, economically and socially. I can't give it more than four stars because, frankly, it is not easy to read, it's long and it's a slog. But worth it if you are interested in these matters! **** ( )

I haven't felt equipped to review this -- at least until I get to that 2nd reading. A shame not to say that I thought it fantastic, though. A couple of notes:

I am a non-linguist (severely, I think) and can find language discussion in Indo-European books scary. Here I didn't, and besides there isn't over-much of it.

Its section on frontiers -- frontier theory and how frontiers work -- was enlightening for me, even outside the scope of this book. I think I met Frontier Studies here.

If I was bored, ever, it was very briefly (and certainly about language). I was absorbed for much the most of it, and can report states of excitement. It's a great book on the subject: I trusted the author and he spoke to my interests, so rather than try the uncertain waters of what else is written, I'll anchor here and study this one. ( )

Very slow going. Worthy and intersting in parts, but definitely for the afficionado

This is a terrific book for those interested in just who the original Indo Europeans were, BUT it is also a tough read. Forge ahead, but prepare to skim some sections.

The book begins with an explanation of how linguistic scholars have re-created (or at least imagined) the Indo European language from which most of the languages of Europe, including English, ultimately developed. He then moves to archaelogy, gathering and presenting the physical evidence on where -- and when -- the people who spoke that ancestral Indo-European actually emerged.

This is important in terms of understanding history, but it may be even more important in terms of avoiding a misunderstanding of history. For the past two centuries, there has been a lot done by linguists on the Indo-European language, but much less on the archaeological side about the actual Indo-European people. . This allowed the development of nationalistic and racist myths with little or no historical basis, myths that have had terrible consequences. The myth of the "Aryan race" is best disproved by actual archaeological research

And the writer presents and evaluates a massive amount of archaeological evidence, much of it work carried out by Soviet scientists which has only recently become available in the west. He also includes discussions of his own work, including a very interesting discussion of how he estimated times and place for the emergence of horse-riding. From this evidence, he does draw conclusions which seem born out by what is known, and which I found absolutely fascinating.

The problem is the sheer weight of the evidence. Several reviewers have suggested that much of the technical archaeological discussion -- and there is SO much of it, site after site, tomb after tomb, pot after pot -- could better be put in footnotes and/or appendices. For a non-professional reader like myself, this would have avoided the sensation of plodding through a whole lot of minutiae to get to the points.

For professionals, I am sure the detail is valuable and interesting. (I didn't find the sections on linguistics at all dull, which may be because I know a bit about it.) But for popular readers, less would definitely be more.

I learned a lot from this book, and -- in the expository sections -- the writing is a pleasure to read. Because of the massive detail, however, I am giving it four stars instead of five. ( )

Describes the various tribe-like groups in and around the Black Sea and southern Russia around 20,000 years ago. ( )

This is a fairly technical book with many archeological details and discussion of linguistic theory. Not a light read, but interesting for those who care about language and cultural change. One interesting point made is that early horse riding nomads did not rely on trading with or raiding farming cultures for grain as what grain they did use was theseeds of wild grasses. Another interesting point is that one of the skeletal markers for a grain based diet is dental caries.

Weaving together linguistics, archaeology, and other social sciences, Anthony gives you the state of play in our current understanding of the Indo-European efflorescence that came out of the transition between the tail-end of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age proper. While it's still largely a matter of steppe-dwelling pastoral nomads who first effectively tamed the horse, think less in terms of something that looks like the horde of Attila or Genghis Khan and more a group of peoples who turned the steppe from a barrier to a road, who were better able to exploit a landscape entering into something of a little ice age, and who brought new forms of organization to cultures traumatized by climatic change. That we have this new understanding, which puts a final end to the curdled romanticism about the "Aryans," is largely a testament to East-West scientific cooperation in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

If I have one particular gripe it's that this book could have used some more basic editing; I read a library copy that was liberally proof-marked by a previous reader. ( )

The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, by David Anthony, is an outstanding work of history, archaeology, linguistics and overall scholarship. Anthony argues that it was indeed Indo-European Bronze Age chariot riders from the steppes who “invaded” (actually he suggests a gradual, transitional displacement, amalgamation) and absorbed the territories of the Danubian agriculturalists of Old Europe such as the Cucuteni-Trypillian people, as well as introduced new technologies (i.e. the chariot) to the Near East and (through the Tocharian Mummy segment) to China.

Anthony’s fascinating study begins with the study of bit wear on horses, a scientific examination that he seems to have inaugurated some years back. His studies have provided evidence that clearly demonstrates the demarcation line between those who utilized horses for food like other mega-fauna and those who rode them, thereby establishing that the latter occurred far earlier than previously noted.

Unfortunately, Anthony’s book is heavily bogged down with the minutiae of archaeological evidence – hundreds of pages of it – that would have found better provenance in an appendix. The organization of the book is such that his well-written narrative becomes pregnant with details of each site and culture to the degree that even scholars in the field would grow weary of it. It took me months of perseverance – while reading other books, of course – to make to the end of this volume, which is in fact well worth the read. Anthony should re-edit the book, however, and re-issue a version that is more accessible to, if not a popular audience, at least for readers who are not schooled in professional archaeology. Still, I highly recommend the book as the best and certainly the most comprehensive study of the early Indo-European peoples. ( )

A hefty and fact-filled review of proto-Indo-European language origins in the steppes of central Asia. The initial chapters on the process of deriving ancient languages from modern languages, using rules of language evolution, were interesting but I was left a little baffled by the reliability of the process. The chapters on steppe archeology were more straight-forward, but the endless listing of pottery styles, kurgan graves, copper and bronze artifacts, became numbing after several chapters. I believe the author could have edited much of this or consigned it to footnotes, although I understand he was writing for experts, not popular readers. The prose is serviceable, and the mass of detail eventually painted an interesting picture of pre-historic life in the steppes. ( )

See my full review on goodreads.com (& I may have reviewed it on amazon.com as well.) This was the hit of summer 2007 for me and I've sneaked rereads of portions since then. Besides learning fascinating things about the Indo-Europeans who have left their imprint by langguages formed from their original one, this book also shows in detail how an archaeologist works and uses data. ( )