Eastern Migrations

Homework

Read the sections below.  Use the Table of Contents above to navigate if you wish.

Questions to Ponder:

1.  Who do you think the Sintashta people were defending against?

2. Anthony views the collapse of the BMAC culture just as Gimbutas saw the death of Old Europe: caused by war-like Indo-European invaders.  Are there alternative explanations?

3. Why do you think the Sintashta/Andronovo people took out the middlemen, when they could have retired comfortably as mining magnates?

4. After taking out the middlemen, why didn't the Andronovo people retire comfortably, instead of moving on to further conquests in India and Iran?

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Introduction

So far, we have seen the development of the Yamnaya steppe culture, with their horses and carts and proto-Indo-European religion.  We followed their successor cultures: the Bell Beakers and Corded Ware cultures as they took over western and northern Europe, and watched their successors, the Celts, Romans and Germanic tribes as they emerged into history.  But all that is less than half of the whole story.

The Yamnaya did not all leave their homeland and decamp for Europe.  They gave rise to successor cultures who emerged into history as fierce nomadic warriors: the Cimmerians, the Scythians, the Phrygians, and even the Amazons.

In this session we'll look at the eastern migrations of the steppe culture, how they developed the horse, the chariot, and bronze metallurgy on an unprecedented scale.  They conquered central Asia including Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, and perhaps even Egypt for a period of time.   Much of the material in this section has been gratefully and liberally borrowed from David Anthony's book, The Horse, The Wheel and Language.

 Next week we'll look at their emergence into history with the Vedic culture, which eventually turned into Hinduism, as well as the Zoroastrian religion in Iran.  In our final session, we'll look at the mystery of the origin of the Mycenaean Greeks and their demise in the collapse of the Bronze Age.

The Afanasievo Culture 3300-2500 BCE and Tocharian Language

The Yamnaya culture appeared starting 3400 BCE, with kurgan burials in the open steppes, far from river valleys, indicating that they were using carts and probably horses to travel the open grasslands of the steppes.  Only 100 years later, identical kurgans started to appear in eastern Kazakhstan, in the foothills of the Altai mountains, 2000 miles from the Urals or or 3000 miles from Ukraine.  The Afanasievo culture spread over current day Xinjiang, China, and eastward across Mongolia for another 1,000 miles and is thought to have introduced the herding economy to Mongolia, as well as copper metallurgy and horse riding to China.  It is not known why some Yamnaya suddenly picked up and moved so far; perhaps they were intoxicated with their new found mobility.  Only one Afanasievo kurgan has been found between the Urals and eastern Kazakhstan, on the slopes of a highly visible isolated mountain in central Kazakhstan, perhaps a prominent landmark on their journey.  Genetic testing on five individuals buried in Afanasievo kurgans showed tight clustering with Yamnaya genetics.  Another study found that 11 of 14 Afanasievo Y haplogroups were R1b, further suggesting Yamnaya ancestry.

A second wave of steppe migration came around 2000 BCE, as the Sintashta/Andronovo culture spread from the Urals to the Altai mountains, which we'll look at below.  The question arises, who brought the Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages to Asia?  The Afanasievo, or the Andronovo cultures, or someone else?  The Tocharian language is known from ancient documents found in oasis settlements found on the northern edge of the Tarim basin, a desert in what is now Xinjiang China.  These settlements were part of the Silk road from the fifth to the  eighth century CE, when these documents were written.  A large number of the documents were translations of known Buddhist works from Sanskrit, written in  the Tocharian A language, while other secular documents: commercial documents, caravan permits, medical and magical texts and fragments of a love poem were written in Tocharian B:

I

... for a thousand years however, Thou wilt tell the story Thy (...) 

I announce, Heretofore there was no human being dearer to me than thee; likewise hereafter there will be no one dearer to me than thee.
Love for thee, affection for thee—breath of all that is life—and they shall not come to an end so long as there lasts life.

III

Thus did I always think: "I will live well, the whole of my life, with one lover: no force, no deceit."
The god Karma alone knew this thought of mine; so he provoked quarrel; he ripped out my heart from thee;
He led thee afar; tore me apart; made me partake in all sorrows and took away the consolation thou wast.

... my life, spirit, and heart day-by-day..

Corded Ware to the East

Recall that the Corded Ware people who spread over the northern European plain were a little different from the Yamnaya.  Male Corded Ware had haplotype R1a, while Yamnaya were predominantly R1b.  Corded Ware people also had about 1/3 of their ancestry from European Farmers.  David Anthony thinks that early Corded Ware groups were formed in the forest steppe zone of the Middle Dnieper close to modern day Kiev around 3200 BCE when steppe overlords obtained client relationships  and interbred with Neolithic farmers from the Globular Amphora culture.  The Middle Dnieper is a good route to the northern European plain; it was allegedly used by Napolean in his Russian conquest and by the Mongols in their European invasion.  But not all of the Corded Ware people went to Europe.  Some moved north and west, where place names tell us the Baltic and Slavic languages originated.  

The Fatyanovo culture from 2900 BCE was a herding culture with few settlements, but 300 large flat grave cemeteries have been found, with Corded Ware burial orientation.  These people reached the foothills of the western Ural mountains by 2300 BCE.  Here some of them created long term settlements and mined the copper rich ores of the Urals in a culture known as Balanova.

South of the Fatyanovo/Balanova culture, the Abashevo culture began around 2500 BCE.  It was probably derived from Fatyanovo people, but perhaps they mixed with steppe Yamnaya peoples because Abashevo buried their dead under kurgans instead of flat graves.  In the southern Urals, the Abashevo made copper tools from local ores, and also arsenical bronze tools from copper ores which had natural deposits of arsenic.  High status Abashevo women were buried with headbands decorated with beads, and copper and silver ornaments, perhaps representing ethnic as well as political status.  Warfare was evident from a grave pit found on the northern border of Abashevo territory.  The grave contained the bodies of 28 young men, all with axe wounds and some dismemberments.  Conflict may have been with the Finno-Ugric speaking Volosovo hunter gatherers to the north.  Linguists have identified Indo-European words for 'lord, god', 'honey', and 'wheel' which were borrowed into the Saami language.  The Indo-Iranian self designation word, 'Aryan' was also borrowed into Finno-Ugric, but came to mean 'slave'.

A reason for conflict may have been climate change.  From 2500 to 2000 BCE, the climate became colder and more arid.  Forests retreated, open grasslands expanded, and marshes, which were critical resources for overwintering herds dwindled.  The severe drought, known as the 4.2 ka event may have been caused by a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, which happens to be weakening today and is forecast to possibly collapse.

Sintashta Culture 2200-1900 BCE

Abashevo groups moved around the southern edge of the Ural mountains and north onto the eastern foothills between the Tobol and Ural rivers.  Starting from 2200 BCE they built extensive fortified settlements, of which 23 are known, called the Sintashta culture.  The settlements, housing between 200 and 700 people, were typically built on the first terrace overlooking the floodplain of a marshy meandering stream, thus close to the key phragmites reed grasses which provide food and bedding for cattle over winter.  All of the Sintashta settlements were similar, the site type of Sintashta contained fifty to sixty houses, every one with ovens, hearths, slag, and copper, indicating metal production on an industrial scale.

Warfare as a Response to Climate Crisis

David Anthony argues that the fortified settlements, industrialized metal production, weapons as grave goods and the invention of the chariot all were a result of the climactic downturn putting pressure on limited resources:  "Warfare, a powerful stimulus to social and political change, also shaped the Sintashta culture, for a heightened threat of conflict dissolves the old social order and creates new opportunities for the acquisition of power. Nicola DiCosmo has recently argued that complex political structures arose among steppe nomads in the Iron Age largely because intensified warfare led to the establishment of permanent bodyguards around rival chiefs, and these grew in size until they became armies, which engendered state-like institutions designed to organize, feed, reward, and control them. Susan Vehik studied political change in the deserts and grasslands of the North American Southwest after 1200 CE, during a period of increased aridity and climatic volatility comparable to the early Sintashta era in the steppes. Warfare increased sharply during this climatic downturn in the Southwest. Vehik found that long-distance trade increased greatly at the same time; trade after 1350 CE was more than forty times greater than it had been before then. To succeed in war, chiefs needed wealth to fund alliance-building ceremonies before the conflict and to reward allies afterward.  Similarly, during the climatic crisis of the late MBA in the steppes, competing steppe chiefs searching for new sources of prestige valuables probably discovered the merchants of Sarazm in the Zeravshan valley, the northernmost outpost of Central Asian civilization. Although the connection with Central Asia began as an extension of old competitions between tribal chiefs, it created a relationship that fundamentally altered warfare, metal production, and ritual competition among the steppe cultures."  Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (p. 538). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Who do you think the Sintashta were warring against?

Chariot Warfare

David Anthony makes convincing arguments that the war chariot was developed by the Sintashta culture from which it quickly spread to revolutionize warfare in the Middle East.  The Sumerians, Akkadians and Assyrians had used four wheeled battle wagons with archers and javelin throwers, drawn by onagers, the Asiatic wild ass.  The Sintashta culture made several advances.  They, or their Yamnaya cousins bred a new breed of horse, the DOM2 horse which was larger,  had a stronger back and was more docile than the previous pony sized Przewalski steppe horse.  All domestic horses today are descended from the DOM2 horse.  The Sintashta also invented the spoked wheel, a little over three feet in diameter, with eight spokes.  These marvels of bent wood joinery were much lighter than solid wooden wheels, and allowed a team of two horses to pull a man with one or two attendants at a gallop.  The frame of the chariot had a light floor over the axle, attached to a pole to harness the horses.  The Sintashta also invented oval cheek pieces shown in Figure 30 above.  These were attached to a rawhide bit and bridle and had bumps which pressed on the sensitive lips of the horse.  The cheek pieces were different for the left and right horse, allowing the driver to slow the left horse more during a left hand turn while allowing the right hand horse to run more freely.  

The chariot driver or his attendant could use their whole body to throw a lance much farther and more accurately than a mounted rider, thus killing the rider before he threatened the chariot.  The sound and speed of chariots must have also been terrifying to infantry, who might have broken ranks and run, making them easy targets to isolate and kill.  Caesar described the use of chariots by Celtic tribes: "In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field hurling javelins, and generally the terror inspired by the horses and the noise of the wheels are sufficient to throw their opponents' ranks into disorder. Then, after making their way between the squadrons of their own cavalry, they jump down from the chariot and engage on foot. In the meantime their charioteers retire a short distance from the battle and place the chariots in such a position that their masters, if hard pressed by numbers, have an easy means of retreat to their own lines. Thus they combine the mobility of cavalry with the staying power of infantry; and by daily training and practice they attain such proficiency that even on a steep incline they are able to control the horses at full gallop, and to check and turn them in a moment. They can run along the chariot pole, stand on the yoke, and get back into the chariot as quick as lightning" (Gallic War, IV.33)."  Modern English words like chariot, car, carriage and carry are ultimately derived from the proto-Indo-European word *kers, meaning "to run."

The use of chariots spread quickly to the Middle East.  Hittite texts mention horse teams and chariots in the 18th and 17th centuries BCE.  The Mitanni were Indo-European chariot riders who took over a Hurrian kingdom in the area of modern Syria around 1550 BCE.  A Hittite horse-training text is attributed to Kikkuli the Mitanni (15th century BCE).  A Levantine people known as the Hyksos who spoke a semitic language used their chariots to conquer and rule over Egypt from around 1650-1550 BCE.  Not much is known about the origin of the Hyksos;  Josephus, the Jewish historian claimed that they were Israelites; others propose Canaanites, Syrians or Phonecians.  Egyptian pharaohs based in lower Egypt eventually drove them out.  The Egyptian priest Mantheo claimed that "no fewer than two hundred and forty thousand, entire households with their possessions, left Egypt and traversed the desert to Syria. (Contra Apion I.88-89)"  

That statement has intrigued scholars who wonder whether the Hyksos expulsion was related to the Exodus story.

Chariots were utilized by most of the Indo-European peoples.  Homer describes their use by the Mycenaean Greeks in the Illiad, and archeology shows both the German tribes of the Norse bronze age and the Mycenaean Greeks used the distinctive Sintashta cheek pieces.  Chariots figured prominently in the Indo-Aryan Rig Veda, as well as Indo-European mythology where the sun was pulled across by sky by the Divine Twins riding a chariot.  Chariots were also adopted in China by the Shang kingdoms, starting from 1250 BCE. 

Chariot warfare was enormously expensive.  Kings needed to import expensive trained horses, the drivers required years of training, and the chariots themselves were carefully carved with hand tools.   Chariots weren't the primary fighting force; they were the elite shock troops at the head of a large army.  It is estimated that for each chariot in the ancient Middle East there were one hundred infantrymen.  Chariots were organized in squadrons of five or six with associated infantry; battlefield tactics were coordinated with horns.

The largest recorded chariot battle was the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BCE between Egypt and the Hittite Empire in which some 5000 chariots were deployed.  Despite both sides claiming victory, it appears to have been a draw; Egypt and the Hittite Empire signed the first known official peace treaty fifteen years later.

Sintashta-Andronovo-BMAC Trade

The 23 known Sintashta settlements were producing copper and bronze on an industrial scale.  Within a hundred years or so the Sintashta culture spread eastward across the steppes of Kazakhstan to the former areas of the Afanasievo culture where they also mined copper from the western Altai mountains in eastern Kazakhstan.  This expanded Sintashta culture is called the Andronovo culture and it lasted from 2000 BCE to 900 BCE.  Where was all that copper and bronze used?

Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex

Much of the copper was probably traded over 1000 miles away from Sintashta, across the desert of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to a series of series of cities called the Oxus River civilization or the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, or BMAC.  These cities, not far from what would become the Silk Road connecting China to Europe two millennia later, connected the major civilizations of the Near East with sources of lapis lazuli, turquoise, carnelian, gold, silver, lead and tin from mines in eastern Afghanistan, Tajikistan and western Pakistan.  

Closer ties between Sintashta and BMAC

As the southern empires and city states imported more and more copper, tin became the most important trade resource.  Some copper ores in the Urals had natural arsenic in them, which formed an arsenical bronze alloy.  But a far superior bronze alloy was formed by mixing copper with tin.  At that time, tin was worth ten times the price of silver.  Tin mines were few and far between; there were some in far away Cornwall, but for the middle east, the most important sources were located in the Zeravshan river valley in Tajikistan, close by the BMAC city of Sarazm.  There may have also been tin mines in Afghanistan, but ancient workings have not yet been found.  

Between 2000 and 1900 BCE, Sintashta pottery started appearing in small quantities in some of the BMAC cities, as well as in the tin miners' camps in the Zeravshan valley.  A grave of a man with luxury goods, a sacrificed ram and Sintashta style cheek pieces with bronze metal bits was found outside Sarazm, which may have belonged to a wealthy Sintashta trader.  

Starting from 1900 BCE Andronovo settlers travelled across the Uzbekistan desert and began settling in mining camps in the Zeravshan valley.  Other Andronovo settlers started farming in BMAC river deltas.  And suddenly, after 1900 BCE, the walled BMAC centers decreased sharply in size.  Andronovo pottery was widely found within and outside the walled settlements.  Kurgan cemeteries started appearing.  Some BMAC pottery continued to be made, but each oasis developed its own styles of pottery, diverging from the formerly uniform BMAC culture.   David Anthony interprets this as a takeover by the warlike Sintashta/Andronovo culture: "On the eastern frontier in Kazakhstan, where [Andronovo] was budding off from Sintashta, the lure of the south prompted a migration across more than a thousand kilometers of hostile desert. The establishment of the Petrovka metal-working colony at Tugai, probably around 1900 BCE, was the beginning of the second phase, marked by the actual migration of chariot-driving tribes from the north into Central Asia. Sarazm and the irrigation-fed Zaman-Baba villages were abandoned about when the Petrovka miners arrived at Tugai. The steppe tribes quickly appropriated the ore sources of the Zeravshan, and their horses and chariots might have made it impossible for the men of Sarazm to defend themselves."  Anthony, David W.. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (pp. 588-589). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Anthony views the collapse of the BMAC culture just as Gimbutas saw the death of Old Europe: caused by war like Indo-European invaders.  Are there alternative explanations?

Further Conquests

As we'll see in the next chapter, the Sintashta/Andronovo people didn't just conquer the BMAC culture, they absorbed some religious beliefs and rituals from them in the short period of their co-existence.  They then expanded again, driving their herds east across the many 14,000 foot high passes of the Hindu Kush mountains across Afghanistan into Pakistan and India.  Another group moved west onto the Iranian plateau.  Why weren't they content to just settle down and control the gigantic bronze and horse trades into the insatiable markets of the middle east?  That's a question to ponder.