To the east, the north, and the west of the Near East, comparable phenomena occurred. Here, in all probability in the areas of southern Russia and Central Asia around the Caspian Sea, was the cradle of the Indo-Europeans, another large family of languages. A recent theory based on computer modeling suggests Anatolia as the region of origin of the Indo-Europeans, but all solid historical and linguistic evidence still points to the steppe areas just mentioned. They were acquainted with agriculture and were cattle breeders. Moreover, in the 4th millennium BC, they had begun domesticating the horse, although that animal presumably did not play an important role in the first stages of their expansion, which must have begun around 3000 BC. Before the end of the 3rd millennium BC, Indo-European groups reached northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia. In the latter case, it was the ancestors of the people later known as the Hittites who infiltrated that region from across the Caucasus. Roughly in the same period, about 2000 BC, the first speakers of an Indo-European language must have moved from southern Russia and the Balkans—if not partly, perhaps, from Anatolia in the east—into Greece, where from a mixture of Indo-European and indigenous elements the Greek language would emerge.
Presumably in Mesopotamia, and not long after 2000 BC, an important invention was made by people acquainted with horses—whether Indo-Europeans or indigenous groups or both—and transmitted to other horse-breeding groups: the chariot. The Sumerians had already known a rather heavy cart with massive wheels drawn by asses. This was transformed
Map 2 Languages in Eurasia, 2nd - 1st millennium
Into a light chariot with two spoked wheels drawn by horses. In the Near East, the chariot became the foremost attribute of Indo-European warlike groups. Their migrations now often took the shape of conquest by small war bands. In that form, probably, Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan groups penetrated and settled in Iran and from around 1500 BC in the Indus valley. In Central Asia, more isolated Indo-European groups had expanded eastward with their horses, and it was presumably from them that not long before 1500 BC the Chinese had acquired their knowledge of horses and chariots. More to the west, the chariot made its appearance in Greece around 1600 BC. Toward the end of the 2nd and in the course of the 1st millennium BC, Indo-European peoples would spread over practically the whole of Europe. The most important linguistic subgroups there were the Italic peoples in Italy, the Illyrians in the western Balkans, the ancestors of the Celts in Central and Western Europe, and the ancestors of the Germanic peoples around the Baltic, and those of the Baltic and Slavonic peoples in the northeast of Europe. Only the Basques, the Estonians, the Lapps, and Finns would to the present day preserve their pre-Indo-European languages. Everywhere else the indigenous populations must have mixed with Indo-European-speaking immigrants and gradually have taken over their languages. That the language of a dominant minority in the end becomes the language of the people at large is a widely occurring phenomenon. Remnants of the pre-Indo-European languages can be found in various regions of Europe, mainly in geographical and topographical names.
World History
