The revise the paper of the Eurasian nomad history

BIRTH OF THE

CHARIOT Excavations east ofthe Ural Mountains

reveal traces ofthe first two-wheeled, high-performance vehicles. I~

The Rig Veda contains hymns and rituals collected ca. drainage, southeast of Magnitogorsk. The rei5ion is rich 1000-800 B.C. by a people knovm as Aryans, who came in copper and gold o~es, and slag deposits at the site to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India from the Eurasian suggest extensive copper~working. Grave mounds called steppt's to the north. A religious text in which gods, kurgans have yielded bronze weapons and ornaments. priests, and heroes gamble, make war, race chariots, The most exciting discoveries, however, are the traces and praise the beauty of their fat cattle and swift left by chariots interred with the dead. The vehicles horses, it was an attempt to presenT, in a new land, were placed in the burials "vith their wheels fitted into old ritual poetry in a language that was already archaic. holes dug into the grave floor. As the buried rims and

Recent discoveries in the Russian and Kazakh spokes rotted they left stains in the earth that inclicate steppes have revealed remnants of a Bronze Age cul­ their shapes. In a burial at the Krivoe Ozero cemetery ture that practiced rituals similar to those described in north of Sintashta, stains from portions Of a chariot the Rig Veda, but 1,000 years earlier. Ivrost important, superstructure were also preserved. No traces of draft the graves of its people have yielded the earliest evi­ poles have ever been found. dence of chariots. Archaeologists call the culture Sin­ Petrovka was a similar, but smaller, fortified settle­ tashta-Petrovka, after two representative sites dating ment on the Ishym River in northern Kazakhstan, ca. 2100-1700 B.C. They believe Sintashta-Petrovka about 370 miles east of Sintashta. The shapes of the was a proto-Aryan community out of which gTew the bowls and vessels found there are only subtly different Andronovo horizon, the first prehistoric culture to from those unearthed at Sintashta and may possibly

I I extend across the entire steppe from the U rals to the date from a slightly later period. In fact, the two sites Tien Shan Mountains in western China. (See "Mum­ may represent early and late variants of the same cul­ mies of the Tarim Basin," page 28.) The Sintashta­ ture. The earliest discoveries of chariot burials at Sin­ Petrovka artifacts may answer important questions tashta were announced 15 years ago by British about this early period, including the origins of chariot archaeologist Stuart Piggott and Genacli Zdanovich of technology and its spread south into Anatolia and the State University in Chelyabinsk, whose pioneering across the Eurasian steppe to China. work first drew \Nestern attention to this remote area.

An unusually large settlement of about 50 rectangu­ Since then, Russian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian archaeolo­ lar structures arranged in a circle and protected by a timber-reinforced earthen wall, Sintashta is located

I

Artist'S concept of Bronze Age chariot burial is based on exca­ wirhin a cluster of sites along the upper Tobol River vations southeast ofMagnitogorsk (see grave plan, page 39).

By DAVlD ':V. fu"\fTHONY AND NIKOLAI B. VINOGRADOV

v. f86rrf) 3G ARCH.\EOI.(J(;\"

....'

'\ J

\\ , \ I'

:\

:i:.: , " ; ~

:l

---'­ --...:~

gists have excavated 14 Sintashta-Petrovka graves con­ taining evidence of chariot bUlials, six at the Sintashta site.

Sintashta-})etrovka chariot wheels had eight to 12 spokes, and their gauge, the distance between the two wheels, was consistently 3.6 to 3.9 feet. This would have been a narrow vehicle, probably suitable for one person. If the single charioteer wanted to use a bow and arrow or a spear, he would have had to loop the reins around his body and lean back to brake, or twist to the side to turn, a driving technique documented in Etruscan and Roman racing scenes, and in Egyptian depictions of hunting and battle scenes in which single archers shoot from chariots. The narrow wheelbase, which would have made the chariot somewhat top­ heavy on high-speed turns, was probably derived from earlier wagons, whose narrow gauge and slender, fixed axles were designed to reduce friction. Such an axle reduced drag on the wheels, but supported only a nar­ row car for carrying heavy loads. Although the Sin­ tashta-Petrovka chariot was not intended to carry such loads, the narrow wagon gauge was retained, suggesting that these vehicles were local improvisations represent­ ing an early phase in chariot evolution.

Chariot offerings continued a long-established steppe tradition. More than 100 wagon and cart burials, radio­ carbon dated from ca. 3000 B.C. to 2200 B.C.) have been identified in high-status graves in the steppe west of the Urals. These bUlials document a long history of reliance on wagon transport in the western steppe prior to the appearance of chariots. Horses were domesti­ cated and bitted even earlier. Analysis of microscopic

bit-wear on horse premolars from the site of Dereivka in Ukraine has established that horses were bitted repeatedly and probably ridden as early as 4000 B.C.

Russian archaeologists had dated the Sintashta­ Petrovka culture to ca. 1700-1500 B.C., an estimate based on typological comparisons with other cultures, including the Mycenaeans (1650-1100 B.C.). Sintashta­ Petrovka disk-shaped bridle cheekpieces of bone or antler are decorated with incised, running spiral designs and are similar in form to those recovered at Mycenae. Because of these similarities, -Mycenaean cheekpieces were thought to be the prototypes for those found east of the Urals. It now appears that the reverse may be true. \Ve obtained radiocarbon dates for four bone samples from two horse heads that had been ritually buried next to the body of an adult male and a chariot at Krivoe Ozero. Other grave offerings included four disk-shaped cheekpieces, two projectile points, a bronze ax and dagger, and three Sintashta pots. Bone samples tested in an accelerator mass spectrometer by Univer­ sity of Arizona staff working in Zurich yield(~d an aver­ age date of 2026 B.C., proof that the Sintashta-Petrovka culture predated the Mycenaean. The new dates also indicate that the Sintashta-Petrovka chariots were con­ temporary with, or may even have preceded the earliest

ARCH.\i:(JI.()(;Y38

N

A

o 10 20

39

.....cm

Floor plan of the chariot ting wood outlining the grave at Krivoe Duro wheels and axle fragments shows, from top: J, a horse of collapsed superstructure, skull, three pots, two bridle and the hubs over the axle cheekpieces, and the poillls terminals; 5, yellow lines of two spears or arrows;2, marking the location of charioteer;3, bone cheek­ spokes and the exterior of a pieces; 4, stains left by rot- hub.

chariots in the Near East. Although they do not resolve a long-standing scholarly dispute about where chariots first emerged, the new dates do strengthen the case for the northern steppe.

Heavy, solid-wheeled war vehicles drawn by teams of asses or hybrids of ass and onager (a wild horselike animal) were used in Sumerian warfare as early as 2500 B.C., but chariots soon made these clumsy moving platforms obsolete. The new, light chariot was horse­ drawn and had spoked wheels. A later innovation was the yoke saddle, an adaptation of the ox yoke to horse anatomy. Three seal impressions recovered from the site of Karum Kanesh II (Kultepe) in southeastern Ana­ tolia clearly show light two-wheeled chariots pulled by two horses and carrying single figures brandishing axes or hammers. The wheels on these chariots have four spokes. Dated to 1950-1850 B.C., these seals bear the earliest known representations of chariots in the Near East, and are nearly as old as the Sintashta-Petrovka finds. Karum Kanesh was an important trading center contemporary vl'ith the Sintashta-Petrovka culttire.

Why were chariots invented? In battle, the chariot provided a high-speed protected platform from which a standing warrior could shoot arrows or cast spears, coming close to his target before releasing his missile, then dashing away. If the peoples of the western steppe rode horses from at least 4000 B.C., why would they have needed chariots in warfare? Perhaps they had not yet developed a short bow with which to shoot arrows from horseback. 'When the short, compound bow first appeared in the steppes ca. 1500 B.C., chariot burials ceased, suggesting that such conveyances were no longer essential to warfare. From then on, cavalry gained in importance. It is also possible that the steppe chariot was not used in warfare, but rather in ritual races that offered prizes or settled disputes. Chariot warfare is referred to but never clearly described in the R~g Veda, but chariot races are described in detail, and provide metaphors ("the turning point") that resonate today.

By the time the Rig Veda was compiled, many of its myths and stories were already part of the heroic past. Cavalry had become increasingly important in warfare, and chariots were largely relics of an earlier era. But the chariot survived in Indo-Iranian myth as the vehicle of ancient gods and heroes, perhaps preserving dim memories of the chiefs of Sintashta.

Other offerings in the Sintashta-Petrovka graves also have a bearing on the hymns of the Rig Veda. One of the most sacred rituals described is the racehorse sacri­ fIce. The animal is preceded by a goat, the symbol of Pusan, the god of paths and ways, who will lead the sacrificed horse to the heavens.

The chariot .follows you, Swifl Runner; the young man .follows, the cow.follows, the love ofyoung girls .follows. The troops .follow

your friendship. The gods entrusted virile power to you. Your body flies, Swiji Runner; your spirit rushes Md! the wind.

Your mane, spread in many directions, flickers and jumps about in the .forests [like sunlight]. The racehorse comes to the slaughter, pondering with his hm.rt tumed to the gods. The goat, his kin, is led in .front; behind Coml the poets, the singers . .. Let this racehorse bring us good cattle and good horses, male chil. dren and all-nourishing wealth. Let Aditi [a goddess} make ut free from sin. Let the horse with our ojJerings achieve sovererg,i power for us.

According to the rite, the horse was butchered ana its legs laid out in a carefully prescribed manner:

Keep the limbs undamaged and place them in the proper manner. Cut them apart, calling out piece fry piece. As many ofyour limh.f. as 1 set out, according to the rules, so many balls [of meat] I offer into the fire.

The flesh of the saClifIce was and eaten by the celebrants.

Horses were often sacrificed in the mortuary rites of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture. Many, like the pair at Krivoe Ozero, appear to have been chariot teams and may possibly have been racehorses. Their heads and hides, with lower front legs intact, were deposited in the grave, while their lower back legs were cut off and laicl out separately. The rest of the horse's body was proba­ bly eaten by the burial party. The offering was accom­ panied by the sacrifice of at least one goat or sheep, usually a ram. At the Sintashta cemetery there was a. sacrificial deposit, not associated with a grave, that con­ sisted of the skulls of six horses and the bones of their rear feet and lower legs; four skulls of hornless cattle polea?,ed in their foreheads, also ,vith feet; and a single ram skull, with feet; all grouped around an inverted ceramic pot. In the Rig Veda the inverted pot is a fre­ quent metaphor for the heavenly source of rain. The single ram here and in several Sintashta graves may indicate the goat or symbol of the god P1.Isan.

Describing an Aryan kurgan, the Rig Veda says:

... Let them bury death in this hill.... 1 shore up the emth all around you; let me not injure you as 1 lay down this clod Qf earth. Let the fathers hold up this pillar .for you; let Yama [the first morial human, whose death was the first} build a house.for you here.

The bodies in Sintashta-Petrovka graves were placed in chambers with plank-shored walls, and a plank roof supported by posts and capped by mounds.

There are other parallels between Sintashta-Petrovka burials and the sacred text. In an important Rig Veda myth, the Divine Twins, called the A~vins, seek the secret of a magical drink of mead from the god Tva~tr, who created it. A human fIre-priest, Dadhyanc hhar- . vana, knows the secret but cannot reveal it. The A~v:ins cut off his head and replace it with a magical horse head, through which the fire-priest can speak to them

.'\RCH,\F.OrO(;\· 40

Egyptian tomb painting from 18th Dynasty (1500-1300 B. c.) depicts charioteer, reigns about waist, hunting with bow and arrow.

::md disclose the secret of the mead. This strange tale may be evident at the site of Potapovka, near Samara on the Volga River. Igor Vasiliev, deputy director of the Urals Region Institute of Archaeology, excavated kurgan graves at Potapovka that belong to a variant of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture. They have horse sacri­ fices, studded bridle cheekpieces, and other characteris­ tic grave offerings. A human sacrifice, very rarely encountered in Sintashta-Petrovka cemeteries, was dis­ covered under one kurgan. The body of the decapi­ tated victim had been placed on top of the central grave pit after it was filled with earth. The head had been replaced with that of a horse, as in the myth of the fire-priest Dadhyafic Atharvana.

For many centuries the Rig Veda was memorized and passed on orally; it was considered too sacred to be put into writing. Remarkably, the original language vvas retained even after it became so archaic that it could no longer be fully understood. This language was very similar to Old Persian-so similar that the two tongues must have developed from a parent language now des­ ignated as Pro ta-Aryan or lndo-Iranian. No one can be

certain where or when lndo-Iranian was spoken, but many of the gods and religious concepts that appear in both the Rig Veda and in the oldest Persian religious texts must represent a common inheritance from the speakers of Indo-Iranian. The Sintashta-Petrovka cul­ ture might be that lndo-Iranian group because a num­ ber of customs that were later central to Iranian culture appeared for the first time at Sintashta-Petrovka sites. These included chariotry, horse sacrifices, and the myth of the horse-headed human. The Sintashta-Petrovka people were probably not Aryans themselves; more likely they were the ancestors of the Aryans of the Rig Veda.•

D.'\.V1D W. A"THO;-';Y is an associate professor of anthropology at Hartwick College in Omonta) New York, and director of the Institute for Ancient EquesLTian Studies. NIKOL>\I B. VINO­ GRADOV is a professor oJ history and archaeology at the Chefyabinsk State Pedagogical Institute, Russia. Translations by rvenety Doniger O'Flaherty (fhe Rig Veda. An Anthology. lJJndon: Penguin BoofJ, 1981.)

41