The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the… (original 2007; edição 2010)

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. ( )