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. |
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... kind of thought, the linguistic anthropologist Franz Boas protested that no language could be said to be superior to any other on the basis of objective criteria. As early as 1872 the great linguist Max Müller observed that the notion ...
... kind of change observed in prehistoric cultures: if pot type A in level one was replaced by pot type B in level two, then it was a migration of B-people that had caused the change. That simple assumption was proven to be grossly ...
... kind of warfare conducted by disciplined troops of mounted archers, the earliest cavalry. If Indo-European speakers were the first to have chariots, this could explain their early expansion; if they were the first to domesticate horses ...
... kind is provided by the variable pronunciations of the word athlete in English. Many English speakers insert [-uh] in the middle of the word, saying [ath-uh-lete], but most are not aware they are doing so. The inserted syllable always ...
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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 |