Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (16 page)

⁵⁵
There was no retention of “pure” Indo-Aryan culture or “pure” local non-Indo-Aryan culture. They were both mixtures to start with, and they mixed with each other. It is that creole hybrid (along with successive rehybridizations) which has created Indian civilization.

⁵⁶
Drews (1988: 21–24). James Muhly (quoted in Drews 1988: 23, n. 16) says, “The one dramatic transition in prehistoric Greece came towards the … latter part of the seventeenth century B.C., and is represented by the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. Nothing yet known from the impoverished Middle Helladic period prepares one for the wealth and splendor of Shaft Grave Mycenae.”

⁵⁷
Garrett (1999). Mallory (1989: 66–71) somewhat similarly concludes that the “current state of our knowledge of the Greek dialects can accommodate Indo-Europeans entering Greece at any time between 2200 and 1600
BC
to emerge later as Greek speakers.” The Mycenaean Greek writing system, Linear B, was brilliantly deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1954. With this breakthrough, Ventris and Chadwick were able to begin reading Mycenaean texts. See Chadwick (1958). They contain, among other things, inventories of chariots and chariot parts, arrowheads, and other military equipment.

⁵⁸
On the archaeological controversy about the invention, earliest attestation, and use of the chariot, focusing on the Shaft Graves of the Mycenaean Greeks and the evidence from the Hittite home city of Kanesh, see endnote
39
.

⁵⁹
On the origins, location, and extent of the earliest “Chinese” state, and the linguistic origins of Chinese, see endnote
40
.

⁶⁰
Bagley (1999: 202 et seq.).

⁶¹
Bagley (1999: 207). They have been found at Lchashen, southwest of the Caucasus Mountains near Lake Sevan in Armenia, and are dated to approximately the middle of the second millennium
BC
. See Barbieri-Low (2000: 38), who compares them to the remarkably similar Shang chariots. The historically earliest known chariots and chariot warriors in the ancient Near East were in the Hittite and Mitanni kingdoms directly to the west of Lchashen. Barbieri-Low (2000: 37–39) argues that the Near Eastern chariot was derived directly from a relative of the smaller steppe chariot represented by those found in burials of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture located in the southern Ural Mountain area in what is now northwestern Kazakhstan and southern Russia, while the larger Chinese chariot was derived from a relative of the Lchashen chariot.

⁶²
Bagley (1999: 208), Barbieri-Low (2000: 42–43).

⁶³
Piggott (1992: 63), Shaughnessy (1988). For a “local development” view, see endnote
41
.

⁶⁴
Barbieri-Low (2000: 19 et seq.), who remarks on the “young male humans” buried with the chariots. The often stated idea that these young men were officials is belied by their youth and the presence of weapons with them.

⁶⁵
Barbieri-Low (2000: 22) notes, “In the majority of excavated examples, from one to three humans were also sacrificed and placed within the chariot pit … they are said to be invariably male (20–35 years old).” He adds, “These young men (age 20–35), who are often found in association with weapons, bronze rein-holders, and jade or bronze whip-handles, were probably the actual warriors and drivers who operated the chariots” (Barbieri-Low 2000: 32–33). On the Central Eurasian style of the weapons, see endnote
42
.

⁶⁶
Although it is widely believed that important elements of bronze technology were introduced from the northwest in the second millennium
BC
, it is thought by some Sinologists that the revolutionary changes in Chinese bronze metallurgy that took place in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries
BC
were largely in the vastly expanded scale of the industry and skill of workmanship in bronze casting (Bagley 1999: 136–142 et seq.).

⁶⁷
On the structure and origins of the Chinese writing system, see endnote
43
.

⁶⁸
Bagley (1999: 207–208).

⁶⁹
See Beckwith (2002a, 2006c).

⁷⁰
On the names Chiang
and Ch’iang
and their etymology, see endnote
44
and
appendix B
.

⁷¹
For the reconstruction of the Old Chinese dialect forms of the word for ‘horse’, see endnote
45
.

⁷²
For the reconstruction of the Old Chinese and Old Tibetan words for ‘wheel, chariot’, see endnote
46
.

⁷³
For criticism of the current dominant view, see endnote
47
.

⁷⁴
Keightley (1999: 277).

⁷⁵
Any argument against the Indo-European affiliations of the intrusive people in Shang China must ignore this evidence and much else. Those who argue against the theory do indeed ignore the evidence. Unfortunately, no one has yet been able to reconstruct Old Chinese accurately enough to determine the extent of the influence.

⁷⁶
The theory of the mixed language (on which see endnote
48
) has been disproved, leaving only two possibilities.

⁷⁷
Beckwith (2006a: 23–36); cf. Nichols (1997a, 1997b), Garrett (1999).

⁷⁸
The lack of regular morphophonological or syntactic correspondences has also been noted (Beckwith 1996, 2006a).

⁷⁹
This scenario also neatly explains the transfer of the exonym Ch’iang
‘Indo-Europeans’ to later mean ‘Tibeto-Burmans’. The most serious problem at the moment, however, is the lack of any actual Proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstruction. The
Urtext
of Benedict’s (1972) book, flawed as it is, remains the first and so far the only attempt to reconstruct Proto-Tibeto-Burman based on strictly linguistic sources and methods.

⁸⁰
On the typological issues involved, see Beckwith (2006a: 1 et seq.; 2007b: 189).

⁸¹
That is, not including Avestan, q.v.
appendix A
.

⁸²
Di Cosmo (1999a, 2002a), Mallory (1989),
EIEC
308–311.

⁸³
EIEC
311.

⁸⁴
EIEC
311.

⁸⁵
EIEC
309, 520–521.

⁸⁶
Burney (2004: 64–65). The Hittite chariot crew originally consisted of a driver and an archer, as in other early cultures’ use of chariots, but this seems to have changed by the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 (if we assume that the depictions on the Egyptian reliefs portraying the battle are historically accurate), in which the crew consisted of a driver, an archer, and a shield bearer whose job was to defend the others (Bryce 2002: 111). Hittite charioteers are also listed in records of military personnel from the seventeenth century
BC
on (Burney 2004: 64).

⁸⁷
The mitochondrial DNA study of Jansen et al. (2002: 10910) concludes, “Although there are claims for horse domestication as early as 4500
BC
for Iberia and the Eurasian steppe, the earliest undisputed evidence [is] chariot burials dating to 2000
BC
from Krivoe Ozero (Sintashta-Petrovka culture) on the Ural steppe,” and in view of the sudden spread of the chariot across Eurasia in the mid-second millennium
BC
, “the knowledge and the initially domesticated horses themselves would have spread, with local mares incorporated
en route,
forming our regional mtDNA clusters” along with the chariots. On scholarly arguments concerning the Sintashta-Petrovka chariot, the earliest so far discovered, see endnote
49
.

⁸⁸
Burney (2004: 65).

⁸⁹
The Proto-Tokharians introduced the domestic horse several centuries earlier, probably as a food animal, as noted above.

⁹⁰
Drews (2004).

⁹¹
Contra Littauer and Crouwel (2002). Another reason it is unlikely that the chariot was first used for royal display is that advances in military technology have consistently preceded use of the technology for other purposes.

⁹²
The poem’s description of their use is not historically correct for the period before the end of the Bronze Age, during which chariots were still serious military weapons. See Drews (1988: 161 et seq.).

⁹³
Cf. Allsen (2006).

⁹⁴
Simply constructing a chariot involved many specialized crafts, most importantly, knowledge of the design and how to make it actually work. A chariot has spoked wheels and is practically the opposite of an oxcart. It is not even related closely to early two-wheeled oxcarts, which have a strikingly different design and the same drawbacks as the four-wheeled oxcart.

⁹⁵
Cf. Littauer and Crouwel (2002). Thus,
pace
Bryce (2002), chariots could not have been used to transport household goods in time of peace.

⁹⁶
Later, some chariots were enlarged and strengthened to hold three or even four men (Littauer and Crouwel 2002). These vehicles must have been slower and less maneuverable than the two-man chariot, and more like battle wagons.

⁹⁷
Their use is regularly listed as an option in Pegolotti’s (1936) manual for Silk Road merchants in the late Mongol period. He also records how much each form of transport could carry and how long each took to traverse a given leg of his itinerary.

⁹⁸
The archaeological connection of the Mycenaean Greek culture of the Shaft Graves with the culture of the North Caucasus Steppe explains the Greeks’ early possession of chariots as well; see above.

⁹⁹
Van de Mieroop (2004: 117).

¹⁰⁰
See the citations collected by Drews (1988: 74 et seq.).

¹⁰¹
The same was clearly true of the Chinese chariot. As Barbieri-Low (2000: 47) and other specialists have pointed out, the horse-drawn chariot was far too complicated a piece of machinery for uninitiates to operate, let alone copy.

¹⁰²
see endnote 46 for some of the linguistic evidence.

¹⁰³
The battle was evidently a draw, but the Hittites, led by King Muwatalli, were the ultimate victors. On the battle and its aftermath, see Bryce (2005: 234–241).

¹⁰⁴
The chariot seems to have been too good an invention to completely abandon. Long after it had lost its usefulness as a weapon, it was still used as a military transport for high-ranking warriors, or as a military command post, as a parade vehicle for generals and kings, and for racing.

¹⁰⁵
Drews (2004).

¹⁰⁶
In Tibet, where vehicles were largely unknown until modern times, the deceased emperor was paraded around in a wagon before he was buried (Walter forthcoming), exactly like the deceased Scythian ruler. See Rolle (1989: 24–25) for discussion and a photograph of a Scythian funeral wagon being excavated. Benedict the Pole, who visited the camp of the Mongol khan Batu in 1245, says he saw “a chariot bearing a gold statue of the emperor, which it is their custom to worship.” A similar object was seen by Carpini at the court of Güyüg in Mongolia (Allsen 1997: 62).