PIE Speakers and the Horseother Eurasian societies. And there is no justification for inter-
preting the bones of a domesticated horse as evidence for the
presence of an Indo-European language.
Nor is there any reason to suppose that the "tamed" horse,
or a horse controlled by a bit, was peculiar to Proto-Indo-Eu-
ropean society. Childe, Hermes, and Wiesner assumed that it
was, and the assumption is by now perhaps ineradicable, but
it is unfounded. If one supposes that the PIE speakers used the
bit to control riding horses, we must counter that the riding of
horses was not characteristic of any of the Indo-European peo-
ples who are known from the second millennium: neither the
Bronze Age Greeks, nor the Aryans of India, nor any of the
Aryans attested in Near Eastern texts had any reputation as
riders. If, on the other hand, it is argued that for the PIE speak-
ers the bit was important because it enabled them to use the
horse as a draft animal, the response must be that prior to the
invention of the spoked wheel—early in the second millen-
nium—the horse's value as a draft animal was insignificant. In
short, there are no grounds at all for supposing that in the fifth,
fourth, or third millennia Proto-Indo-European society was
distinguished by the employment of tamed horses.
The matter of wheeled vehicles is somewhat different. Here
we must first make a distinction between the use of the vehicles
and their manufacture. Throughout most of the third millen-
nium, the use of ox-drawn carts and wagons was widespread,
from the Persian Gulf and central Asia to Denmark. Not all
societies, it is true, found wheeled transport practicable. On
the Greek mainland, wheeled vehicles are not attested for the
Early and Middle Bronze periods, 30 nor is there evidence for
them in Egypt or the southern Levant at that time. In Syria
and Mesopotamia, carts and wagons were employed from 3000
B.C. onward, although by far the most common means of
transportation continued to be the pack animal, moving either
singly or in caravan. In the forested regions of Eurasia, on the
- Crouwel, Chariots, 54—58.
133