The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

Fascinating account of some of the latest finds on Indoeuropean and the Pontic Steppe and neighboring cultures, including convincing original research on horse domestication. Many stories woven together, not presented as an airtight case for Indoeuropean origins in the steppes, but very convincing all the same. Got me re-interested in the question, which I haven't revisited for at least 15 years or so. The book is excellent but misses being as good as it could be because it needs a little more narrative structure; if the accounts of burial sites had been woven into a narrative of what we know about the development of European and Eurasian cultures, it would have been even better. Best book I've read all year, anyway.

Back in the pre-history of Europe, Persia and India lurks the speakers of the mother tongue, Indo-European. In this fascinating book, author and professor of anthropology, David W. Anthony, presents an up-to-date account of all that is known about the Indo-Europeans, focusing primarily on archaeological excavations in the Eurasian Steppe. Every subject is covered here, from information on individual digs, through linguistic development, and on to such basic questions as when were the various animals domesticated.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book. The author takes a mountain of information, and successfully presents it in a surprisingly interesting yet comprehensive manner. I found this to be a real goldmine of information on the Indo-Europeans, one that is informative but not boring, and interesting but not sensational. If you are interested in the Indo-Europeans, I highly recommend that you get this book, and see what we really know about them today.

This book came highly recommended in a publication I read on a regular basis. I was really disappointed, because it sounded so interesting. There was too much concentration on the minutiae of linguistics, especially for the average reader. It was so tedious that I gave up reading it.

In this massively researched book, Anthony brings together hundreds of findings from archaeology and linguistic studies to support his thesis about the origins of Indo-European language and culture. The book is not easy reading for the non-expert; many chapters are dense with information, particularly about archaeological finds associated with particular cultures or horizons. Yet the interdisciplinary approach makes the argument more persuasive.

Anthony occasionally comes up with an intriguing generalization. For example, he notes that Tripolye settlements of 3700 to 3400 B.C. were the biggest human settlements in the world; instead of evolving into cities, they were abruptly abandoned. His commentary on the psychological essence of language expansion is fascinating. As others have observed, the book is well illustrated with frequent maps and images of artifacts.

Anthony makes a compelling case for the location of the Indo-European homeland, tracks the probable course of Proto-Indo European (PIE) and its daughter languages' expansion, and convincingly argues that PIE speakers domesticated the horse and invented the spoke-wheeled chariot. Anthony asserts he powerful cultural complex that they developed around their herding lifestyle helped expand the range of PIE and its daughter languages -- at one point likening the lifestyle changes engendered by herding combined with wagon and chariot-driving to the similar lifestyle revolution in twentieth-century America brought on by the proliferation of automobiles and the Interstate highway system.

Anthony uses evidence from archaeolinguistics, from oft-overlooked Russian steppe archaology, and his (and his wife's) own pioneering work on bit-wear markings in ancient horse teeth to make his case. He cites Native American linguistics and archaeology to help bolster his case when appropriate, along with the well-studied history of British colonization of North America -- and does so quite convincingly.

Anthony writes in a learned, but accessible style with an occasional witticism to keep the text from being overly-dry. Perhaps my only criticism would be his neglecting to compare the spread of Indo-European with that of the Turkic languages across Eurasia -- which was also accomplished wih stunning celerity (in historical terms), and also caused enormous cultural shifts which are still visible today. Perhaps he could do so in the second edition!