Back to the Aryan Invasion Theory (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005)

[Guest guest]

" Whether or not one wishes to agree with Robert Drews about the

coming of the Greeks (Drews 1988), he nonetheless points to a series

of interrelated historical changes in the Near East during the

eighteenth to sixteenth centuries BC. They were linked among other

things to the spread and adoption of the `chariot package, " which

demanded both skilled specialist and the importation and training of

horses from the steppe. This coincided with disruptions and social

changes including conquest migrations over large areas: The Kassites

in Mesopotamia, the Aryans in India, the Hyskos ion Egypt and new

chiefly dynasty in Mycenae (the B-circle), just as Indo-European

speaking people were emerging in Mittani texts and other sources from

the Levant and Palestine. In all cases we are dealing with rather

small groups lined to the ruling elite, being warriors and

specialists, sometimes rulers. The new rulers are in most cases a

dominant minority constituting only a tiny fragment of the

population. This was especially true of the Aryan rulers in Mittani

and the Aryan and Hurrian princes in the Levant; it seems also true

of the Kassites in Babylon and the Hyskos in Egypt. The Aryan

speakers who took over Northwest India may have gone there enmasse

but were nonetheless a minority in their newly acquired domain (Drews

1988:63), (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, pp. 180-181). "

" As the textual evidence of the Near East and Egypt describes

conquest migrations and the influx of specialist, warriors and rulers

of Aryan origin, it may seem justified to reassess some earlier

interpretations of the shaft grave kings (Kristiansen and Larsson

2005, p. 185). "

Kristiansen, K. and Larsson, T. (2005). The rise of bronze age

society: travels transmissions and transformations. New York, NY:

Cambridge University Press. ISBN-13: 978 0 521 60466 6 (pbk)

One wonders what is meant by " conquest migrations?! " The

Mittani " Indo-Aryan " chariotering aristocracy does not exist (Dassow

2008). The three wheeled carts of Sintashta/Arkiam do not qualify

as " chariots " (Kohl 2007). " Indo-European " speakers cannot be linked

to the domestication of the horse (Levine 1999, 2003; Shislina

2003). A proto word for wheel cannot be constructed in all " Indo

European " languages (Bellwood 2005).

M. Kelkar

[Guest guest]

Here is the complete quote from Bellwood (2005) in case one wonders

how an archaeologist could comment on linguistic issues.

 

" " For instance, Jim Mallory (1997), one of the staunchest supporters

of a Pontic Homeland, is clearly no longer convinced that

domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles MUST be reconstructed to PIE

(although wild horses could be another matter). Neither are

linguists James Clarkson (2000), Robert Coleman (1988: 450), Calvert

Watkins (1985), and historian Igor Diakonov (1985). The

reconstructed PIE vocabulary was not exclusively pastoralist, and

neither is the archaeological record entirely pastoralist from the

relevant period on the steppes (Mallory 1997; Anthony and Brown

2000). Recent research on horse domestication archaeologist Marsha

Levine (et. al 1999) suggests much later dates for horse riding, only

late second millennium BC and thus irrelevant for PIE dispersal.

Many linguists are now willing to entertain suggestions that PIE

could be older than 5000 years (see below), and the idea that the

Anatolian languages were not native to Anatolia (and thus not

relevant for IE homeland questions) has no strong factual basis. But

the fundamental nail in the coffin of the Pontic steppes hypothesis

was hammered by Colin Renfrew (1987), when he asked how a KURGAN-

based expansion of late Neolithic and Bronze Age conquering

pastoralists across most of Europe could have left absolutely no

corresponding continent-wide horizon in the archaeological record

(Bellwood 2005, p. 204, emphasis in the original). "

 

Bellwood, Peter (2005), " First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural

Societies, " Malden, MA, Oxford England: Blackwell Publishing.