PIE Speakers and the HorseIndo-Europeans brought the horse-drawn chariot with them
from their northern homeland, whether in the Eurasian steppe
or in northern Europe. Most scholars by the late 19305 were
agreed that toward the end of the third millennium the Indo-
Europeans had pioneered driving and fighting from horse-
drawn chariots.
Closer hippological analysis, however, indicated that the
consensus needed revision on one or two central points. Ger-
trud Hermes's study of the supposedly neolithic and Early
Bronze Age antler and bronze bits of Europe 10 showed once and
for all that the "tamed" horse was a late-comer to northern
Europe, and by so doing, it eventually contributed to the de-
mise of the "northern European hypothesis." Equally sobering
was Hermes's conclusion that the chariot originated south of
the Caucasus, in eastern Anatolia. Despite these conclusions,
however, Hermes not only accepted the view that the early
Indo-Europeans were pioneers of chariot warfare, but refined
it: she argued brilliantly that the Indo-European movements
were not mass migrations of pastoralists or agriculturalists, but
conquests by relatively small groups of charioteers."
It is instructive to see how Hermes reconciled her findings
about the provenance of the chariot with her insistence that the
chariot was indispensable for the Indo-European conquests. In
her reconstruction, the original Indo-Europeans inhabited the
steppe from the Black Sea to the Caspian and there developed
a special dependency upon the draft horse. About 2000 B.C.,
some Indo-Europeans from the steppe crossed the Caucasus,
bringing their favorite animal with them. In their new location
they came into contact with Hurrians and other peoples on the
periphery of the Near East and so had access to a far more ad-
vanced craftsmanship and technology than they had known in
the steppes. The light chariot was one of the first fruits of the
- The title of her article ends with a question mark: "Das ge-
zahmte Pferd im neolithischen und friihbronzezeitlichen Europa?" - "Das gezahmte Pferd im alten Orient," and "Der Zug des ge-
zahmten Pferdes durch Europa."
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