PIE Speakers and Chariot Warfare
world (their introduction of chariotry into India is conceded,
but that episode is seen as anomalous rather than typical).
While Indo-Europeanists, following Childe's, Hermes's, and
Wiesner's unfortunate lead, generally persist in the belief that
the domesticated horse was from early on (well before the in-
vention of the chariot) uniquely important in Proto-Indo-Eu-
ropean society, they have for the most part given up Hermes's
and Wiesner's quite valid insistence that the Indo-Europeans
played a central role in the development and spread of chariot
warfare. 6 Most ancient historians, too, if they have explored
the origins of chariot warfare, have also fallen away from the
belief that the war chariot was perfected by the PIE speakers.
The main reason for this apostasy has been the majority view
of hippologists and archaeologists that chariot warfare was in-
deed developed and perfected south of the Caucasus (a conclu-
sion that is almost certainly correct), and the insistence of an
eminent Hittitologist that the Aryans had nothing to do with
the advent of chariot warfare in the Fertile Crescent and Ana-
tolia (a conclusion that, as we shall see, rests on invalid argu-
ments). Historians who have been diligent enough to read the
specialists' arguments, and have concluded that chariot warfare
did not originate in Europe or the Eurasian steppe, naturally
enough have seen the chariot's eastern Anatolian provenance as
an argument against assigning to chariotry the leading role in
"the Indo-European invasions." Much less has the apparent
Anatolian origin of the chariot encouraged the belief that char-
iot warfare was pioneered by the PIE speakers, since until now
there has been no serious argument that the Indo-European
- Some scholars who have, almost incidentally, credited the PIE
speakers with the chariot have had little regard for chronology. Gamkre-
lidze and Ivanov, for example, make references to draft horses and chariots
in third- and fourth-millennium contexts (cf. "Migrations," 61 and 75).
Gimbutas, "Old Europe," 19, notes that the Indo-Europeans' "principal
gods carry weapons and ride horses or chariots," but she does not add that
these theological vehicles could not possibly have been envisaged by Kur-
gan pastoralists in the fifth, fourth, and early third millennia.
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