The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern WorldRoughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. |
From inside the book
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... archaeologist, field excavation co-director, lab director, illustrator, spouse, and best friend through thick and thin. She edited every chapter multiple times. All the maps and figures are by D. Brown. Much of the content in chapters ...
... Archaeologists have wrested surprisingly intimate details out of the silent remains of the preliterate past, but there are limits to what we can know about people who have left no written accounts of their opinions, their conversations ...
... archaeologists and linguists have argued bitterly about the “homeland” question. Many doubt the wisdom of even pursuing it. In the past, nationalists and dictators have insisted that the homeland was in their country and belonged to ...
... archaeologists have their own, quite different definitions of race, based on traits of the skull and teeth that often are invisible in a living person. However race is defined, languages are not normally sorted by race—all racial groups ...
... archaeologists. The reconstructed lexicon is a window onto the environment, social life, and beliefs of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. For example, reasonably solid lexical reconstructions indicate that Proto-Indo-European ...
Contents
The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes | 121 |
Authors Note on Radiocarbon Dates | 467 |
Notes | 471 |
507 | |
547 | |
Other editions - View all
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian ... David W. Anthony No preview available - 2007 |