The Coming of the Greeksplaining how these men became so rich in the first place. Surely
it is more reasonable and economical to explain the wealth as a
result of military dominance, of which the weapons and the
chariots are an expression. It may very well be that in Middle
Helladic Lerna or Malthi a wealthy or eccentric individual oc-
casionally acquired a horse and hitched it to a "chariot" for
sport or display, as did Shamshi-Adad and Zimri-Lim in Mes-
opotamia ca. 1800 B.C. But chariots as instruments of war,
arrayed against an infantry of the old style, were another mat-
ter. Unlike such peaceful arts as alphabetic writing or ivory
carving, chariot warfare was not peacefully transmitted. Wher-
ever we encounter chariot warfare in the middle of the second
millennium, it has been violently introduced: in the Levant
and in Egypt, in Mesopotamia and in India, we first catch sight
of it when the light begins to dawn after a disastrous dark age.
Finally, Crouwel's reconstruction does not confront the ar-
gument from language. That argument indicates that the
Greek language and the chariot arrived in Greece at the same
time, which is to say that the chariot was brought to Greece
by Indo-European invaders. More conservatively stated, as
Wyatt does in his meticulous and concise article, the argument
holds that "the Greeks" could not have come to Greece before
they made an acquaintance with the chariot. The argument is
based on a linguistic generalization: if a language includes an
inherited word with its original meaning, then the object de-
noted by that word must have been "constantly and continu-
ously known" to the speakers of that language. 50 If, then, we
find the early Greeks using Indo-European (or "Greek") terms
for a new contraption that arrived in Greece ca. 1600 B.C., we
may conclude either that the Indo-Europeans (or "Greeks") ar-
rived at the same time as the contraption, or that they arrived
at a later date (having in the meantime become acquainted else-
where with the chariot). At any rate, "the Greeks" cannot have
been living in Greece before the innovation occurred. 5 '
- Wyatt, "The Indo-Europeanization of Greece," 99.
- More elegantly stated by Wyatt, "The Indo-Europeanization of