SV: method of dating RV, III

[N. Ganesan]

>1) Drews assumes that PIE-speakers invented the chariot. But the
>records of the >Old< Hittite kingdom show that horse drawn
>vehicles were used in battles both by them and their enemies before
>1700 BCE.

Not only Drews. Anthony also writes years after Drews.
(Also, Anthony writes that PIE as a language existed after
3500 B.C. and the breakup could be as late as 2000 B.C..
He also places much emphasis on technical innovations (chariots)
for the spread of IE).
In her critique, Mary Littauer calls Sintashta chariots (2000 B.C.)
are 'proto'chariots because it is possible that they
lacked yoke saddles. They predate Neareastern chariots,
( Littauer, The origin of the true chariot, 1996).

So far, absolutely no evidence of chariots earlier than
Proto-IIr. ones. Or, is it something that I am missing?

Regards,
N. Ganesan


                         From Antiquity, Sept 1995 v69 n264 p554(12)
                         Horse, wagon & chariot: Indo-European
                         languages and archaeology. David W. Anthony.


<<<<<<<<<<<<<
   However, at about 2000 BC a new and remarkable archaeological
culture appeared east of the Urals, apparently at least partially
derived from a late Yamna variant (the Poltavka culture) on the
middle Volga. This new group, the Sintashta-Petrovka culture,
established compact, heavily fortified settlements in the northern
steppes east of the Urals; engaged in bronze metallurgy on  an
unprecedented scale; raised herds of cattle, sheep, and horses;
and practised complex mortuary rituals that parallel in many specific
details the Aryan rituals described in the Rig-Veda (Anthony &
Vinogradov 1995 ; Gening et al. 1992; Kuzmina 1994: 226-8; Parpola
1995). Vehicles, buried in the richer Sintashta-Petrovka graves,
as they had been earlier in Yamna graves, now included spoke-wheeled
chariots, buried with two-horse chariot teams. Recent AMS
dates of 2000 BC have established that these are the oldest
directly dated chariots (or, some would argue, proto-chariots) in the
ancient world.(2) It is likely that Sintashta-Petrovka represents
the ancestral Indo-Iranians, whose traditions were later carried
into India and Iran.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>



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