much greater than on the steppe. The soil in northern Caucasia is rich, and in the
western and central region agriculture was very productive. In the central upland
area of north Caucasia oak and beech trees were once common. The eastern
stretches of north Caucasia are more arid, verging toward desert. It is in the Kuban
drainage region that the great Maikop kurgan stands, the Bronze Age kurgan whose
rich grave goods (discovered in 1897) give the Maikop culture its name.^61
The Maikop culture was once dated late in the third millennium BCbut is now
dated a millennium earlier. A “pre-Maikop” culture in north Caucasia, belonging
to the Neolithic period, was likewise once placed no earlier than the fourth
millennium BC, but Maria Ivanova’s analysis concludes that it began in the middle
of the fifth.^62 Basing her conclusions on carbon dates, Ivanova dates the Maikop
culture from ca. 3500 to ca. 3000 BC, and the pre-Maikop culture to the late fifth
and early fourth millennium BC.
With the advent of metallurgy the Kuban settlements began to play a pivotal
role. The steppe had no copper, and the people in its valleys would have had to
acquire copper either from the Ural mountains far to the east, or from the Cau -
casus. It is not yet known when metal began to be extracted from the northern
Caucasus. Most specialists have assumed that the Maikop culture depended on
the Kura-Araxes for its metal. In his survey of early Caucasian metallurgy,
however, Antoine Courcier challenges the assumption and observes that—in
addition to gold and silver—the northern Caucasus mountains have fifty-seven
deposits of copper ore, in several of which arsenic is associated with copper.^63
Toward the middle of the fourth millennium BCthe availability of arsenical
bronze saws made possible the fashioning of wooden wheels and so of wheeled
vehicles. Where first this happened is uncertain: wheeled vehicles are attested
almost simultaneously as far apart as southern Mesopotamia and northern
Europe.^64 What is certain is that the people who made the most of the invention
lived north of the Caucasus, in the Kuban drainage area. They had access to
arsenical bronze, to plenty of hardwood, and to oxen that were accustomed to
pulling ards, plows and sledges. It is also clear that through the Early and Middle
Bronze Age the inhabitants of the Kuban region placed an unusually high
value on their vehicles: in funerals a wagon often served to carry the body of a
distinguished man to his grave, and went with him to the Underworld. The
wagons are as strong an argument as we are likely to find that PIE speakers should
be located along the northern face of the Caucasus. It is likely that PIE was also
spoken along the middle Volga, the Don and the smaller rivers flowing into the
Sea of Azov, but the Maikop culture may have been an especially important part
of the PIE homeland.
Because of its home-grown terms for wheeled vehicles we know (contra
Heggarty and Renfrew)^65 that the maturation of PIE occurred between ca. 3500
and 3000 BC, and that it occurred in a land where wheeled vehicles were made
and prized. Very few places meet that requirement. One of the earliest wagons
was found under a kurgan at Bal’ki, on the left bank of the lower Dnieper and
about 100 miles upstream from the coast. Many other wagons were found near
the Dnieper in kurgan burials of the third millennium BC. These burial wagons,
16 Origins and spread of Proto-Indo-European