Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.13

c14.13

It seems likely, therefore, that by about 2000 B.C. there was at least a loose confederacy of tribes, stretching from South Russia to Turkestan, who shared certain elements of culture, including a dependence on the higher centres of civilization for their metal-working techniques, and who spoke closely related dialects within the Indo-European framework. The evidence of historical documents from the literate urban cultures of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia supports this view, for the Nashili dialect of Hittite, a member of the Indo-European family, is recognizable soon after the beginning of the second millennium B.C. in the extant inscriptions and documents of the Hittite empire.