From: Alexander Stolbov
Message: 83
Date: 1999-10-15
----- Original Message -----From: markodegard@...Sent: Thursday, October 14, 1999 6:20 AMSubject: [cybalist] proto-Indo-European geography.Agriculturalists build their roads along the river valleys. Pastoralists have trails that connect adjacent river valleys. It's the latter I'm primarily interested in. It's the Ural to the Samara-Volga, then the Volga to the Don-Donets, then to Dneiper, then across to the Dneister, etc. These are rivers whose names I know, and who's length's I can trace on a map, but as to how you get from east to west or west to east, I don't know. Could there possibly be something we could call 'the Indo-European Road' (i.e., the western extension of the Silk Road, leading towards Hungary or the Vistula.
Yes, Mark,I think you may consider the Eurasian steppe belt as 'the Indo-European Road'. You can be sure that everywhere in the steppe zone you'll find more or less flat country or (much more rare) a plan valley between mountains. If on the territory, which climatic conditions would fit the steppe biom, mountains are placed, the vertical zone pattern exists (instead of the whole steppe territory one find the steppe only until a certain high, then forests of different kinds, then alpine grasslands, then maybe ice desert). Of course, such local forms of the relief as steep banks or ravines are met with in the steppe, but they don't make the country difficult to traverse. The most serious obstacles are the great rivers, however in winter time they can be crossed over the solid ice.There is archaeological and historical evidence that the steppe belt was used for moving of large masses of (semi-)nomadic pastoralists at least several times. I mean IE in the Bronze Age (probably even 2 large waves; their attribution - is the question), East-Iranian folks in the Iron Age, Turkic people in the Early Middle Ages, Mongols some later + many relatively small movements (Kimmerians, Ugric tribes etc.).Alexander Stolbov