Raiding parties of a dozen riders could move fifty to seventy-five head of
cattle or horses fairly quickly over hundreds of kilometers. Thieving raids
would have led to deaths, and then to more serious killing and revenge
raids. A cycle of warfare from thieving to revenge raids probably contributed
to the collapse of the tell towns of the Danube valley.^41In a folk migration the mounted herders and raiders from the Dnieper valley
move westward. “Their move into the lower Danube valley probably was the
historical event that separated the Pre-Anatolian dialects from the Proto-Indo-
European language communities back in the steppes.”^42 Anthony suggests that ca.
3000 BC, after living in the valley of the lower Danube for 1000 years and estab -
lishing the Suvorovo archaeological culture of eastern Bulgaria, the Proto-
Anatolian speakers finally moved—with their riding horses—to Anatolia.^43
In the lands along the lower and middle Danube horses were certainly more
common in the fourth and third millennia BCthan they had been in the sixth and
fifth. Although bone evidence shows that at most sites horses were far outnumbered
by cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, at Csepel-Háros in eastern Hungary slightly more
than half the animal bones found in Bell Beaker levels of the late third millennium
BCwere horse bones.^44 There is no evidence, however, that in Chalcolithic Europe
horses were anything other than food animals, the taste for horsemeat having spread
from the Eurasian steppe into what had been “Old Europe.” As for the Suvorovo
people riding horses into Anatolia ca. 3000 BC, our first chapter has shown the
evidence that the Anatolian languages were indigenous to western Anatolia.
Another huge problem is that throughout the third millennium BCAnatolians seem
to have been no more able than anyone else to drive horses, much less to ride
them. Until ca. 2000 BCwe have no evidence for tamed horses in western and
central Anatolia, where the Anatolian languages were spoken. When evidence
finally appears it indicates that for the Anatolians of ca. 2000 BCthe riding and
the driving of horses were exciting and challenging novelties. A cylinder sealing
from Kültepe shows that at the beginning of the second millennium BCthe
inhabitants of Kanesh, the very city in which the so-called Hittite language
evolved, managed horses not with reins and a bit but with a single line attached
to a nose-ring. It is inconceivable that the speakers of the Anatolian languages
could have regressed so completely, from competent horsemen ca. 3000 BCto
utter greenhorns, unfamiliar with horses, 1000 years later.
Anthony suggests that the Keltic, Italic and Germanic languages were brought
into Europe by another folk migration of riders from the steppe. Ca. 3000 BC, that
is, the migrators left their Yamna culture between the Dniester and the Dnieper
and came into the Danube valley, whence they spread out into central and northern
Europe.^45 In all of these areas the natives adopt the newcomers’ language because
they admire and emulate the newcomers, who have grown rich as horse-breeders
and horse-traders. Anthony suggests that “the annual demand for steppe horses
in Late Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age Europe could easily have totaled thousands
of animals during the initial expansion of horseback riding beyond the steppes.
That would have made some steppe horse dealers wealthy.”^46
38 The Kurgan theory and taming of horses