A History of Agriculture in India v1.c24.13

v1.c24.13

‘The most reasonable hypothesis, and one which seems best to satisfy the demands of philology and archaeology’, states Piggot, ‘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 agriculturists of the South Russian steppes and the lands eastwards to the Caspian Sea. In this South Russian area the basic culture in the late third and early second millennium B.C. was that of agriculturists, 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.’²