PIE Speakers and the Horseit is quite possible that many of them were specialists in its
manufacture. What seems to have been the most distinctive
feature of Proto-Indo-European society, it will be argued in the
following chapter, appeared only in the last generations of that
society: expertise in building, driving, and fighting from char-
iots. Nineteenth-century scholars suggested the association be-
tween Indo-Europeans and the draft horse in part because they
noticed that chariot warfare and chariot racing were important
in the Rigveda, the Iliad, and the common mythology of the
Indo-European peoples. For many scholars in the early twen-
tieth century, the Indo-Europeans' association with chariot
warfare was confirmed by the Kikkuli treatise and the discovery
of Aryan charioteers in the Near East.
The association between PIE speakers and chariot warfare,
however, has been chronically blurred and obscured. The no-
tion that what was peculiar to Proto-Indo-European society
was the domesticated horse per se (and, possibly, the wheeled
vehicle) is a misconception that for the last fifty years has sent
investigators down false trails. We must once again focus the
argument on its original object—the chariot.