Tommy Tyrberg wrote
> It seems to me that the "Mitanni aryan" is significant in this
context. Not
> much is preserved but what there is is definitely Indian (not
Iranian) and
> it is quite close to but not identical to Vedic. The important
thing
is
> that it can be fairly well dated to 1400-1250 BC which means that
it
can
> hardly have separated from ancestral Vedic much later than 1500 BC
(if
> anything earlier I should think). The similarities are so striking
that
> neither branch could have had time to change very much, which
should
put
> the earliest Vedic stratum well back in the second millenium BC.
I think you are right here. Recent research in Central Asian shows a
very complex pattern in the Bronze Age. In the Middle Bronze Age,
for
instance, urbanisation had proceeded apace. In the Namazga V period
for instance, ruins extended over 170 acre, and the ruins of Altyn
depe cover 114 acres. Connections with India show long distance
trade
was in place. In the late third millennium a Harrappan city trading
post was established at Shortugai on the banks of the Amu Darya. The
exchange of pastroal products from the Zamanbabin culture in Ferghana
and to the north and west, for urban craft goods seems to have
connected the steppes with urban centres to the south east and south
west.
There is then a cultural disjunction. Painted pottery that
previously
was found throughout the Djeitun and Namazga I - V stages, is replced
by a new tradition of unpainted ceramics, and an entirely new
icinography appearing on small cylendar seals, and a new settlement
pattern that seems to have much similarity with walled castles. The
cultural disruption is found in a much wider area. The burning of
Tepe Hissar at the Caspian gates 1,900 BCE suggests a movement to the
west, and it seems that there was a chain of displacements leading to
the movement of the Khirbet Karak ware people west from Armenia as
far
as the ebanese coast. It would be fair to say that the qala
fortifications, of which 150 have been found in the Oxus show the
appearance of a new aristocracy, establishing a pattern of
Indo-European overlords in the region that was to last until the
coming of the White Huns (Hephthalites). Qala have no precursors
anywhere and seem to have been adapted by members of a local ruling
class as a most effective way of controlling a local agricultural
oasis. Of course, not all of these (or indeed, any of these) need
necessarily to have been build by Indo-Aryans. But as in later
times,
the military superiority of nomadic pastoralists would have made
themselves valuable as warriors to urban dwellers. It would not have
been long before they appeared in a position of dominance as a new
aristocratic upper class.
Lamberg-Karlovsky suggests that the qala settlements represent the
appearance of a "khanate" political form. City leaders deferred to
the authority of regional dihqans. It is here that we see the first
signs of the spoked chariot wheels so familiar with the Maryanu
aristocracy of the Mitanni, that ushered in the late Bronze Age
military structure that stretched across the urbanised zone from the
Mycenaeans in the West to the Kassites in the East. This military
culture came increasingly under Indo-Aryan domination. The Gutians
who brought the Akkadian empire down (about 2,100 BCE) showed very
little IA input. The Kassite aristocracy who brought down the
Dynasty
of Hammurabi of Babylon, however, did show evidence of an Indo-Aryan
upper class. As do the Mitanni. A Hittite text on horses and
chariots, found at Boghuz Kheu (Hattussas ~ 1,300BCE) also shows that
the new military technology was Indo-Aryan in form.
Margiana seems to have been central in an exchange network stretching
from Sinkiang to the Pontic steppes, and from the southern plains of
India to Mesopotamia. It was a network of urban trading
caravanserai,
military tribute and along which nomadic pastoralists seem to have
moved. What we see is the first appearance of the ancient Silk Road.
It was a frontier zone between Elamite cultural influences from the
south west and Harrapan cultural influences from the south east met
with the steppes, to create a fertile cultural mix from which both
Avestan and Vedic cultures were ultimately to emerge.
To top it all off, the Oxus culture of qala existed in a pastoral
sea.
Pastoralists surrounded the qala, as the presence of many kurgany
demonstrates. As far east as Ferghana, pottery designs of the
related
Chust culture, shows that it was derived from the steppes. The
connections between agriculture and pastoralism were close and
intimate. Farmers practiced transhumance with flocks of sheep and
goats. Nomads settled around oases, married into the locality and
became farmers when seasonal conditions permitted, reverting to
nomadism when it became drier.
Hope this helps
John