"Out of India"

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

> Now what is the chronology of Indo-Aryan `invasion'? And, remember, the
> Indo-Aryans had to drive their chariots over Afghanistan. Anybody
> measured the speed of chariots over mountains?

Renfrew (Archaeology and Language, chapter 6) explains how the "wave of
advance" hypothesis can account for movements of eighteen kilometers for
each generation of twenty-five years, or about one kilometer per year.
Such a slow, continuous expansion through the elite dominance of nomadic
pastoral communities, using horses for draught, but not for riding, can
account for the movements we need, given an the time-depth of the
migration period.  See his "Hypothesis B" in ch. 8. 

All this is discussed in great detail by Renfrew, q.v.

Best wishes,
Dominik


--
Dominik Wujastyk               Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk          183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, England
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