The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony, Princeton University Press, 2010. 

Domestication of the Horse

This book describes how human being domesticated the horse. The people who spoke the proto-Indo-Europeans language are called the Yamnaya. The Yamnaya lived between 4500 and 2500 years BCE. They were descendants of hunter-gatherers who lived in the Eurasian steppes, north of the Black and Caspian Seas. About five to six thousand years BCE, these hunter-gatherers learned to domesticate animals from the Criş cattle herders, who lived between the Carpathian mountains and the Black Sea. Originally, the Yamnaya hunted horses for food. But after learning how to domesticate animals from cultures to their West and South, they domesticated the horse for transportation.

The Wheels of Chariots

The Yamnaya used their domesticated horses to pull chariots. The chariots were the first vehicles in Middle East to use spoked wheels. The wheels already in use in the Middle East were solid, not spoked. 

Anatolian Languages

Around 4200-3900 BCE, proto-Anatolian, an early version of proto-Indo-European, spread into Old Europe and, well, Anatolia. There was a Bronze Age culture in the northern Caucasus from 3700 BCE to 3000 BCE. It transmitted culture between the Kartvelian tribes (now Soviet Georgia) in the Sauth Caucasus and the Yamnaya north of the Caucasus.  

Tocharian

The Tocharian language split off proto-Indo-European after Anatolian split off, but before the other Indo-European languages split off. Tocharian moved eastward, to the Tarim Basin in Central Asia. It eventually died out. 

Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex

A relatively recent discovery is the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Some Yamnaya  migrated East of the Urals  and became the Petrovka culture, and then the Andronovo culture (1800-1200 BCE). The Andronovo eventually moved southward through the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in present-day Afghanistan. The BMAC and Andronovo produced a combined culture, which later spread to Persia and India.