64 Bakker et al. 1999. See also Anthony 2007, pp. 65–72 and Bondár 2012, pp. 21–27.
65 In defending their thesis that PIE was spoken in central and western Anatolia in the
7th millennium BCHeggarty and Renfrew 2014, pp. 1690–1691, argue that the PIE
terms for the elements of a wheeled vehicle must have been in use long before any
wheeled vehicles existed, and therefore are useless for linguistic paleontology. The word
for “wheel,” for example, had been around since people began talking about circles
(the sun, the moon, etc.). This is certainly correct, but the crucial point is that late in
the 4th millennium BCthese traditional old nouns were applied by all Indo-European
speakers to the elements of a brand new contraption: a wheeled vehicle. That this
happened because PIE was still being spoken late in the 4th millennium BCmakes
good sense. It strains credulity that widely separated Indo-European subgroups, having
been diverging geographically and linguistically from each other for more than 3000
years, could each have chosen the very same set of traditional old nouns for the parts
of the new contraption. For criticism of Renfrew’s argument see especially Meid 1994,
p. 63, and—more recently—Anthony and Ringe 2015 (I would commend that article
more generally had Anthony and Ringe not posited a migration of Proto-Anatolian
speakers from the steppe into Anatolia ca. 4000 BC).
66 Anthony 2007, p. 71: “The earliest radiocarbon dates on wood from steppe wagons
average around 3300–2800 BCE. A wagon or cart grave at Bal’ki kurgan (grave 57)
on the lower Dnieper was dated 4370+ 120 BP, or 3330–2880 BCE; and wood from a
wagon buried in Ostanni kurgan 1 (grave 160) on the Kuban River was dated 4440+ 40
BP, or 3320–2930 BCE. The probability distributions for both dates lie predominantly
before 3000 BCE, so both vehicles probably date before 3000 BCE. But these funeral
vehicles can hardly have been the very first wagons used in the steppe.”
67 See Schier 2015. At pp. 112–113 Schier writes: “A key role in the development and
transfer of wagon technology can probably be assigned to the Majkop culture, located
in the north-western foreland of the Caucasus.” He assumes that some of the required
technology may have come from contact with Late Uruk. “The earliest wagon from a
burial context comes from the middle phase (Kostromskaya-Inozemcevo) of the
Majkop culture, dated c. 3500–3200 BC.”
68 Trifonov 2004, p. 168.
69 Gej 2004, p. 177.
70 Gej 2004, p. 178: “Die Wagen aus den Kubangebiet machen damit fast die Hälfte aller
entsprechenden Funde aus der Steppe in der frühen und mittleren Bronzezeit aus.” At
p. 177 Gez reports that according to his own count 257 steppe burials have been found
to contain wagons or parts of wagons.
71 Sherratt 1981 and 1983; Anthony 1986, and most fully Anthony 2007, Chapter 13
(pp. 300–339), “Wagon-Dwellers of the Steppe: The Speakers of Proto-Indo-
European.”
72 On the Yamna (or Yamnaya) culture see Mallory 1989, pp. 210–215; cf. Fortson 2004,
pp. 43–44.
73 Darden 2001, p. 196. Darden’s pp. 196–204 provide an excellent overview of the
earliest evidence for wool sheep.
74 For the relative preponderance of cattle bones see Kohl 2007, p. 162. In contrast,
Anthony 2007, pp. 297–298, notes that in the grassland steppe along the lower Don
ovicaprids account for 25 percent of the bones recovered, outnumbering cattle bones.
75 Kohl 2007, p. 128, comments on “the lack of empirical evidence supporting the
cultivation of domesticated cereals throughout nearly the entire duration of the Bronze
Age.” At pp. 144–145, however, Kohl notes that “occasionally implements, like
grinding stones and horn mattocks, have been found in Pit-Grave kurgans that
presumably were used in some form of agricultural activity.”
76 Herodotos 4.46, 114, and 121; compare Ammianus Marcellinus 31.2.10 and 18 on the
wagons of the Huns and Alans.
26 Origins and spread of Proto-Indo-European