Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.11

c14.11

The most reasonable hypothesis, and one which seems best to satisfy the demands of philology and archaeology, is that originally put forward by Professor J. L. Myres and the late Harold Peake, and developed by Professor Childe, which sees the Indo-European languages evolving among the earliest agriculturalists of the South Russian steppes and the lands eastwards to the Caspian Sea. On linguistic evidence this area had been favoured by such scholars as Schrader in the last century, and the archaeology as we now know it seems to provide the most satisfactory background of material culture in accordance with the hints given by the language itself. In this South Russian area the basic culture in the late third and early second millennium B.C. was that of agriculturalists, perhaps partly nomadic but sufficiently sedentary for small cemeteries to be formed, presumably close to relatively stable settlements. They domesticated sheep and cattle, and the horse was certainly tamed in the latter phases of the culture, if not at the beginning; burials in separate graves, sometimes under a mound or barrow and often accompanied by a stone (exceptionally a copper) battle-axe, emphasize the presence of a stratum of warriors and chieftains in the social structure.