Fwd: THE URALS AND WESTERN SIBERIA IN THE BRONZE AND IRON AGES

[Guest guest]

IndiaArchaeology , " mkelkar2003 "

<swatimkelkar wrote:

 

http://tinyurl.com/5sctfu

 

" Later, we read the " support for the Proto-Iranian (or Indo-Iranian)

linguistic attribution of the Alakul and Fyodorovo cultures, or

related branches of the Andronovo cultural confederation, requires

the supposition that the extension of these languages increased and

partly overlapped the distribution of the Proto-Ugric

languages....All...[the] data representing the Andronovo-like

cultures in western Siberian forest-steppe and southern forest are

evidence for the hypothesis that suggests very active contacts

between the Indo-Iranian and Finno-Ugric languages, expressed in

numerous mutual borrowings, a part of which relates to the second

millennium BC. " If read carefully, their discussion reveals some

qualification, a degree of uncertainty characterizing even this

relatively well-enshrined linguistic identification. The basic

problem, of course, is that material remains are nearly always

ethnically, linguistically, and " racially " porous, freely adopted by

different peoples speaking different languages and exhibiting

different physical characteristics. "

 

" Perhaps the most basic and important thesis expounded at length in

this study (and reflected in its very structure – Parts 1 and 2) is

that the Iron Age of central Eurasia qualitatively differed from its

Bronze Age. The mobile dominantly cattle herding pastoralism

practiced during the Bronze Age must be distinguished from the

mounted Eurasian nomadism that emerged subsequently only during Iron

Age times. Koryakova and Epimakhov opt for what they term

the " `later' hypothesis " and cite approvingly A. Khazanov's

observation that " Eurasian nomadism as an economic and sociocultural

phenomenon could not appear earlier because in many respect it

depends on the economic and sociopolitical relations with settled

statehood societies. " These early nomadic societies and ultimately

the first steppe empires (and first appearance of " royal " kurgans)

came into being in part because they were caught up in larger systems

of interregional interaction and exchange, including regular

relations with sedentary states to their south (from China to Rome,

including the states of southern Central Asia, such as the Parthian

and the Kushan states). True Eurasian nomadism, which they believe

first emerged farther east on the Mongolian steppe and then diffused

west to the area of their concern, required a level of technological

control not just over cattle, but also over horses, sheep, and

Bactrian camels, each species of which had to adapt or be made to

adapt to the climatic extremes of life on the steppes, particularly

to forage throughout the long cold winter when the steppe was covered

in snow. "

 

posted by M. Kelkar

 

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