I've been fascinated by the nomads of Central Asia, especially the Scythians, since I was in high school, but few accounts begin as far back as the point where this one leaves off. I've never read a full-length history of the neolithic period before, and I found this one absolutely fascinating. I'm giving the book five stars, because I think David Anthony does an excellent job of supporting what could be game-changing theories about Bronze Age civilization. However, it's a bit of a rarified read, full of technical detail, and the style and content may not make it fun for everyone.
The very concept of Proto-Indo-European has long suffered from an association with all manner of bogus racial theories and rampant speculation about who the "real" Aryans were. Even Amazon's recommendation engine now seems to think I'm interested in a lot of thinly-veiled screeds and conspiracy theories. But one of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it tries to distance the concept of Proto-Indo-European from nearly two centuries of racist claptrap by pinning linguistic theories to recent archaeological discoveries. The persistence of those inaccurate racial theories had a lot to do with a lack of physical evidence; there was nothing to prove them either right or wrong, and this allowed imaginations to run wild. But after reading Anthony's account, it seems entirely plausible that the archaeology supports the linguistic hypothesis that Indo-European languages share a common ancestor. Since the 1990s, an explosion of archaeological discoveries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia has given us a huge new range of information about neolithic peoples, their movements, technology, and apparent contact with and influence on one another. Anthony weaves this new evidence in with linguistic methodology to create a compelling argument for who the "Aryans" (the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European) were, where they lived, and how their language became the foundation for dozens of modern languages.
Of course, to do this, Anthony needs to get very deep into the archaeological records. The latter 2/3 of the book analyzes dozens of finds across an area of thousands of square miles at a fairly granular level. Many readers have found this tedious, but it lets him pin a set of hypotheses down with an impressive series of data points. And he's making some pretty big claims, pushing milestones like the domestication of horses, the production of wool, and the use of chariots back by hundreds of years, in a way that changes the widely-accepted narrative of prehistory considerably.
I thought that was interesting enough to make all the descriptions of pottery and tools relevant. There were always enough big ideas interspersed with the small facts to keep me turning the pages. However, the scope of the book is so vast and the level of detail so intense, I think it may be more than most people would enjoy. If I wasn't already intensely interested in the archaeology of this region, it might have overwhelmed me, too. The parts about domestication of the horse could have stood alone as a book, and I suspect the author had a lot more to say about this, but simply couldn't fit it into this already-sprawling text. I understand why Anthony thought this research needed to be part of a continuous volume, as it is all interconnected, but the flip side of this is that it's a bit difficult to tease any one thread out of the whole as you're reading.
The weakest points of the book are where Anthony seems to let his own political and ideological leanings show through, although mercifully he keeps this brief. It seems, like many archaeologists, he pines for some sort of idealized paleolithic Eden, when humans lived in small, peaceful groups, before agriculture created modern inequality. At least he doesn't get too far into that; like Jared Diamond, his theories are weakest when he speculates about the motivation and morality of ancient peoples. But one feature that more than compensates for these asides is that Anthony includes *images* of nearly everything, something not every archaeology book does, always to its own detriment. Reading about an endless series of broken pots and trying to remember why they were significant is taxing enough. Why make me struggle to visualize all that pottery as well? It was so much more enlightening to read about a clay bowl or a horse-shaped axe, and then see an image of the thing on the very next page.
Overall, an incredibly interesting book, and one which I think will be of great importance as we struggle to understand the civilization of this period, and the ways in which it shaped the modern world.
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Reviews with images
Let's archeological evidence dictate the narrative
As the author writes on page 465, "A convincing narrative about the speakers of Proto-Indo-European must today be pegged to a vast array of archeological facts, and it must remain un-contradicted by the facts that stand outside the chosen narrative path. I have used a lot of archeological detail on this account, because the more places a narrative is pegged to the facts, and the more different kinds of facts from different sources are employed as pegs, the less likely it is that the narrative is false."That explains the book accurately. The author, who is an anthropologist, presents a ton of archeological evidence to "peg his narrative". Hence his narrative is incontrovertible. At stake are racial, political and nationalistic issues in many countries today. He had to get this right. So, he presents archeological evidence like an academic to the point a non-academic reader might be bored to death. For those who still want to plod through the quag there are narratives that are pegged to evidence hence are most likely true.The downside is that the book was published in 2010 and had not been updated. So, newer evidence isn't covered. In my view, this could form the basis and latter books can build upon that foundation.
Top reviews from other countries
Nat Richard
Interesting hypothesis using evidence and language.
Reviewed in Canada on April 27, 2021
S.Misra
A Mystery Resolved : How Indo-European Languages spread through Eurasia
Reviewed in India on July 15, 2018
Mr. M. Lloyd
You Need to Read this... and make up your own mind
Reviewed in Australia on November 8, 2021Paolo Orlandi
Fast and in very good conditions!
Reviewed in Italy on January 20, 2017
