The Coming of the Greeks. Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East

The Coming of the Greeks

from Nor§untepe, in eastern Anatolia, and from Tal-i-Iblis, in
south central Iran, in chalcolithic and Early Bronze levels. 14
Although the eastern Anatolian specimens may have been wild
horses, those at Tal-i-Iblis would undoubtedly have been do-
mesticated animals, since the range of the wild horse appar-
ently did not extend so far south. Domestic horses would surely
have been exotic in the Fertile Crescent in the third millen-
nium, but perhaps it would be incorrect to assume that few
Near Easterners at that time had ever seen a horse. It is more
likely that until the end of the third millennium, the cost, in
the Near East, of using horses either as riding animals or as
draft animals was so great that only an occasional rich or foolish
man decided to acquire them.
At the end of the third millennium, the number of domes-
ticated horses in central Europe seems to have increased signif-
icantly, 15 and the horse may have begun to become slightly
more desirable as a riding animal in more southerly lands.
There is some evidence that at the end of the third millennium
the people of the Tripolye Culture, in the forest-steppe around
the Dniester Valley, turned from hoe agriculture to stock rais-
ing, and it may be that in this new pastoral economy horses
served both as mounts and as a source of food. However the
fact is to be explained, in the period between 2000 and 1700
B.C., approximately one-fifth of the animal bones found in the
Tripolye Culture settlements are horse bones, a fairly high fig-
ure for a region outside the open steppe. 16 There is also evi-

14. Littauer and Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles, 24-25; P.R.S. Moorey,
    "The Emergence of the Light, Horse-Drawn Chariot in the Near East c.
    2000-1500 B.C.," World Archaeology 18 (1986): 197-98.


15. Bokonyi, "Domesticated Horses," 52ff., argues that also in the
    northern Balkans horse-keeping did not become significant until shortly be-
    fore 2000 B.C. , whereas in the Ukraine it had been important all through
    the third millennium.


16. Hangar, Das Pferd, 78—79; Hangar's Table 24 presents the per-
    centages of animal bones found in the Tripolye settlements. Although in
    the early third millennium, 23 percent of the bones are from the pig and
    only i percent from the horse, at the end of the millennium the distribu-

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