Abstract
The spread of Indo-European languages is often exclusively attributed to agricultural progress, whereas an alternative hypothesis, the domestication of the horse for warfare, tends to be ignored. Only a few years ago a good case was made for the steamrollering of undefended Old European cultures9 and languages by the first ‘armoured vehicle’, the horse10,11, whose breaking to the bit coincided with proto-Indo-European languages geographically (Ukraine) and in time (at least 4,000 BC).
Main
In anthropology we are witnessing the resurrection of hypotheses depicting our ancestors as fierce big-game killers, even cannibals12, at the expense of more politically correct views of noble vegetarians or, at worst, scavengers. Could the spread of language be another aspect to this argument? Is the idea of peaceful, egalitarian cultures subjugated by male barbarians less palatable than their displacement by a superior agricultural technology?
Why were California and New Guinea spared a linguistic takeover? Could it be because the horse never got there? Perhaps the ‘aggression’ and ‘technology’ mechanisms for competitive exclusion of cultures are not incompatible, but rather occurred in different mixes, with the sword leading in Indo-Europe and the plough in Africa.
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Sterrer, W. Language steamrollers?. Nature 391, 547 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35296
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35296
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