Double headed eagle

This amazing object is a silver gilt cast shaft-hole axe head, made between 2500-1500 BC in the area along the Oxus and Murghab rivers in modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. This is one of my favourite ancient objects. Why? Because it made me realise what double headed eagle means...

The axe head is currently kept in Met museum. The description reads shaft-hole axe with "bird-headed demon, boar, and dragon". The accompanying short article points at the Western Iran as the possible origin of the mythological scene depicted on the axe... 

To understand what we are looking at here, we need to try to identify the animals depicted on the axe head, and we need to answer the question: why is the double headed eagle "hero" separating the dragon (actually winged lion) and the boar?

I talked about winded lions (dragons) in my post about Entemena vase, the most beautiful example of the Sumerian metalwork...  

Dragon represents the destructive power of the sun, which during the summer, burns in the sky threatening to turn everything into cinder. Hence fire breathing dragons...I talked about this in many of my posts. For instance "Dragon that stole the rain" 

The hottest part of the year in the northern hemisphere, including the Western Iran, is the end of the summer beginning of Autumn (August - September)...Which is represented by Leo. Why? Because Eurasian lions mate during that time...I talked about this in my of my posts. For instance "Cylinder seal with a monster" 

So our "dragon" (winged lion) represents August-September, end of summer, beginning of autumn. What about wild boar? This is a wild boar from Tajikistan. Wild boar mating season, across Eurasia, starts in November...At the the end of autumn beginning of winter... 

Sooo. Our double headed eagle "hero" is separating lion (beginning of autumn) and boar (end of autumn)...So if we want to understand what the double headed eagle "hero" means, we need to look at autumn and eagles. More precisely, based on the look of the eagle heads, vultures...

Considering that lion marks the beginning of the lion mating season and that boar marks the beginning of the boar mating season, it would be kind of logical to assume that eagle marks the beginning of the eagle (vulture) mating season. But which vulture?

I believe that our suspect is Gyps bengalensis. This species is found in Iran, Afganistan, Pakistan, India, China and south east Asia...Why? Because of all Western Asian vultures, it alone starts mating in autumn. It breeds from October to March... 

But why double headed eagle? Well, because all vultures, at the beginning of their mating season, perform courtship aerial displays. And the most important part of this display is synchronous flying, wing to wing or one under another...

Vultures only fly together like this at the beginning of their mating season. Vultures flying one above each other, can actually look like this from the ground. Like a double headed eagle...

Interestingly, in Zodiac, Scorpio marks the period between 23 October and 22 November. And guess what. This is the only period in the solar year, which has two symbols. The other one is Eagle...Why? I talked about the zodiac eagle in my post about "Four living creatures". 

Different species of vultures mate at different times at different locations. European Griffon Vultures breed from December. Occasionally birds start breeding earlier and copulation has been recorded in October-November... 

Now bronze age Europe had different, much warmer climate...

Did Griffon Vultures mate earlier then? Say October-November??? They still do in the warmest part of Europe...If so, that wold explain why we find Eagle marking end of October beginning of November...Remember, I postulated that the Solar zodiac, which predates stelar zodiac, was developed in Europe during late Neolithic, early Bronze Age...

By the way, I forgot the best bit... Why would people in Western Iran, Eastern Iraq, give a shit about copulating vultures? Because right at the time when the "double headed eagle" appears in the sky, the rains arrive. The rain season starts in October-November... 

Now that is worth noting and marking, right? Oh, what was the favourite bird of the thunder gods??? You know, the guys that bring rain? Just asking...

And so this finally gives us the identity of the double headed eagle "hero": He is the Thunder God...

If we look at the axe head again, we see that the double headed eagle "hero" is pushing the boar (winter cold is yet to come) but he is strangling the dragon, winged lion (he is killing, ending the summer heat, drought)...

Neat, right?

And here is another, this time Elamite axe head with Lion (Autumn) and Boar (Winter). So this seems to have been a common motif...

Fire goddess

Tapati is a Hindu goddess, a  daughter of the sun god Surya. Her name means the "warming", "the hot one", "burning one".  The name comes from PIE root "tp-" meaning warmth, shine. 

Herodotus tells us that Scythians respected one goddess more than any other and called her the queen of gods: Tabiti. This is most likely Tapati...

Herodotus also tells us that Tabiti is actually Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth, actually of the hearth fire. Which fits in with the meaning of the Tapati's (Tabiti's) name: warm one, burning one, bright one...

The hearth fire was believed to be directly linked to the sun fire. This can be seen from the Yule log ritual preserved in the Balkans. In it the Yule log (Serbian: Badnjak) was specifically kept burning through "the longest night" so that the fire of the sun doesn't get extinguished...You can read more about this in my post "Badnjak".

Remember originally only Sky god (Sun + Thunder) knew how to make fire. Sun, created Thunder (Lighting) which created fire. By the way this link sun-thunder-fire has been scientifically proven recently. You can read more about it in my post "Sun thunder fire".

This "sacred fire" kindled by Sky God, once found in nature, was brought to the hearth and had to be perpetually kept burning... This ancient memory was preserved in the rituals of eternal flame. Which is what Hestia was. The eternal flame which had to be kept burning...

The tradition of keeping the house hearth fire burning at all times was still one of the main duties of the mistress of the house in Serbian villages in the early 20th century.

Just like in Ancient Greece, accidental or negligent extinction of a domestic hearth-fire represented a failure of domestic and religious care for the family.

Hestia's name means "hearth, altar". And in Serbian houses the hearth was the original altar around which the most important religious ceremonies were performed, officiated by the mistress of the house, the high priestess of the domestic cult, the keeper of the sacred fire.

In Serbia when a family moved house, the new hearth fire was kindled with the flame brought from the old hearth. When a sons built his own house, he kindled the first fire in his new house with the flame brought from his parent's hearth. I wrote about house building rituals in my post "New house".

In Ancient Greece: "...with the establishment of a new colony, flame from Hestia's public hearth in the mother city would be carried to the new settlement...". Do we have the same custom in Ancient Greece with regards to family fire, like in Serbia?

Serbian expression "his hearth was extinguished" is identical to "his line has ended, his family died out"

The hearth fire is here clearly equated with the family. Hence the responsibility for the propagation of both, the hearth fire and the family lied on the mistress of the house...

While keeping the fire burning inside of the hearth, the mistress of the house has to keep fire burning inside of her womb too. As without either of these fires, the house will go dead and cold...

This link between the generative power of the hearth fire and the generative power of the womb fire can be seen in the fact that in some parts of Serbia a bread oven, like this one, is called "Baba" (Mother, Grandmother, Birth giver). 

You can read more about it in my post "Baba - Earthen bread oven".

Only the fire burning inside the woman's womb can transform man's seed into living child. Only the fire burning inside the oven can transform dough into bread. Only the fire burning inside the earth can transform Sun light into Life... Interesting, right?

O and only a female fire burning inside the crucible can transform ore, that a male smith puts into it, into metal. Is this the reason why Irish "hearth fire goddess" Brigid was also the patron of smiths?

This magic transformative power of "female fire" burning inside of the house hearth is what turned difficult to digest raw carcasses into nutritious broths and roasts allowing our ancestors to grow bigger stronger and smarter...

This magic transformative power of "female fire" burning inside of the house hearth is what turned inedible acorns full of poisonous tannins, through leaching and roasting, into nutritious gruels, broths and breads... You can read more about this in my post "Eating acorns". 

This magic transformative power of "female fire" burning inside of the house hearth is what turned inedible grains into porridge and bread...

This magic transformative power of "female fire" burning inside of the house hearth is what turned leaves, root and bark into medicines...

House hearth was the first alchemical laboratory and the house mistress was the first alchemist, preserving and enriching the accumulated knowledge of generations of women who tended the "sacred fire" and used it to make food and medicine...

Is this where the image of an old witch bent over a bubbling cauldron hanged over a house hearth making magic potions comes from? And is it possible that this image was not originally a negative one?

You can read more about this in my post "The skilful one".

Crab

This is Brown Crab (Cancer pagurus) 

It is found in all Atlantic European waters as well as northern Mediterranean waters.

Normally this crab lives in coastal waters under 100 m deep, sometimes over 100 km off coast. But once a year, during the moulting (shell shedding) season, which is followed by the mating season, these crabs move to the shallows. The mating season of the brown crab is mainly in July-September. 

Mating of the Brown crabs occurs shortly after the female has moulted, when the female carapace is soft. Mating predominantly takes place at night-time. During that time, male crabs are found attending both hard and moulted females at low-water mark, hiding under rocks...

This is Spider Crab (Maja squinado - Mediterranean sub species and Maja Brachydactyla - Atlantic sub species)

It is found all along the the Atlantic and North Mediterranean coast. Distribution area of Maja brachydactyla (blue circles) and Maja squinado (red squares) along the distribution area of the species 

Spider crabs inhabit coarse sand mixed grounds and open bedrock from the shallow sublittoral zone to a depth of 120 m, although highest densities occur between 0 and 70 m. Large migrations of spider crabs occur during the early spring when they move into shallower water to spawn. Female crabs become berried (egg-bearing) from April onwards, and by June all mature females are berried. Hatching occurs from July until November, following which the crabs migrate back to deeper water. 

In latitudes located farther to the north, matings were observed in shallow waters from May to July, on the Irish coast, and starting in June on the French coast...

So if you were a primitive hunter gatherer living in Europe, the only time you could catch these crabs was when they were in shallow inter tidal waters. Which happened during their mating season...Which peaks during June-July period... 

Which is really interesting considering that this period of the Solar year is on the Zodiac circle marked with the sign of Cancer (Crab)...

Cancer  21 June – 23 July

Coincidence?

I don't think so. 

By the way, “Cancer” is an ancient word of Indo-European origin from a root meaning “to scratch.” Today Cancer is the scientific Latin genus name for “crab,” but in classical usage it described many species of shellfish. In both Sanskrit and Greek the word for crab had the same meaning as crayfish, both animals having pincers. While the Latin word for Cancer, Carcinus, comes from the Greek karkinos, the English word “crab” has Germanic and Old English roots, and an Anglo-Saxon chronicle from about the year 1000 identified Cancer as crabba. In Old High German (800-1050), kerbiz meant simply “edible crustacean” and was also used to describe crayfish. The OED links the Middle High German (1050-1350) krebz to the Middle French (ca. 1400-1600) escrevisse, which in turn became écrevisse (crayfish).

Which is why Cancer is often depicted as crayfish. 

More about this in "The index of medieval art" on Princeton website.


So far I have found that:

Aries - marks lambing season of European wild sheep
Taurus - marks calving season of European wild cattle
Pisces - marks mating season of European salmon
Capricorn - marks mating season of Alpine ibexes

Leo - marks mating season of European lions

And now 

Cancer - marks mating and best shallow coastal water catching season of European large crabs...

And that I am not inventing things, here is a depiction of two men fishing for crab (of Zodiac Sign: Cancer) on Calendar page for June in the Queen Mary Psalter. British Library, Royal 2.B.VII, fol. 77r. (London, 1310-1320).

And a calendar page for June from the Bedford Hours with the sign of the zodiac – a crayfish. Source: Bedford Hours, France (Paris), c. 1410-1430, Add MS 18850, f. 6r

This means: June is the time cut grass and to catch crayfish

Catching crayfish in the Fishing book by Maximilian I near Lienzer Klause. From: Tiroler Fishereibuch (The Austrian National Library, Cod. 7962 fol 100

Today it is mid July which is the start of crayfish season in all European countries were crayfish hunting is still allowed...

You can read more about medieval crayfish fishing on this "Medieval histories" page.

I will here repeat this question:

Does anyone realize how important this is, from the point of view of the determining the origin of the Zodiac? The official line is that: 

"The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy during the first half of the 1st millennium BC. "

Yet here we have all these zodiac signs marking extremely important cyclical natural events which occur in Europe...

These zodiac signs could only have been invented in Europe where they have self explanatory meaning. The meaning which was completely lost when zodiac was brought out of Europe to the places where natural cycle is very much or completely different. 

Which is why people have forgotten the true meaning of Zodiac: It is a solar not stellar circle...

So was zodiac invented in Europe? And more importantly when was it invented? And what about the other zodiac signs?

Sources for crab lifecycle info:

Brown crab

Brown Crab (Cancer pagurus) Handling and Quality guide

Bionomics of brown crab Cancer pagurus in the south east Ireland inshore fishery

Ecology of the brown crab (Cancer pagurus), and production potential for passive fisheries in Dutch offshore wind-farms

Mating Behaviour in the European Edible Crab (Cancer pagurus L.)

Spider crab

Timing and seasonality of the terminal molt and mating migration in the spider crab, Maja brachydactyla: Evidence of alternative mating strategies

Marine conservation society website

Ladia

Amazing photo. This is not a scene from a film about Vikings. This are barges on the River Emajõgi, 19th century. Emajõgi is a river in Estonia which flows from Lake Võrtsjärv through Tartu County into Lake Peipus

Ladja was an early medieval Slavic heavy cargo ship developed in South Baltic. Norse Vikings acquired the technological knowledge to build these large vessels when Harald Bluetooth made the alliance with the Baltic Slavs, which is why we find the word in Old Norse.

Before mixing with Slavs, Norse viking ships were small, narrow and fast. Ideal for small raiding parties. Only after, when they started building wide and large "ladja" ships, were they able to cary armies including cavalry. And only then were the vikings able to transport enough troops and equipment to Britain to launch the major invasion, which culminated during Canute (Cnut the Great).

This is based on archaeological data. Source for Slavic influence on Viking ship building (and the other way round) is "A comparative analysis of early medieval shipwrecks from the southern shores of the Baltic sea" by George Indruszewski, used to work in Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, now at Roskilde University....

Neolithic omul fishermen

Neolithic (4th - 3rd millennium BC) fishing (obviously 🙂) culture artefacts from lake Baikal, Russia.

Several details are very interesting.

The life like representations of fish are amazing. A great article was published about them by A.G. Novikov and O.I. Goriunova entitled: "Portable Sculptures from Neolithic and Bronze Age Habitation Sites near Lake Baikal" 

Interestingly the archaeological evidence from the same period seems to suggest that "omul" was not the main type of fish caught by the Neolithic Baikal fishermen. Apparently they have very small mouths and can be caught only by using small hooks or nets and traps. The fact that they were found among the fish remains, suggests that Neolithic fishermen in the Baikal region likely used nets and traps, as small hooks were not found. You can read more in "Fishing ancient Lake Baikal, Siberia: inferences from the reconstruction of harvested perch (Perca fluviatilis) size" by Robert J. Losey*, Tatiana Nomokonova, Olga I. Goriunova

I believe that these are Omuls, Baikal salmon, which is the main type fished in the area.

Just like in Europe and India, it was migratory fishes that became the staple food of the neolithic settled hunter gatherers and later substance farmers.

In Europe it was Salmon that allowed people to settle along salmon migrating rivers, like Rhine river.

I wrote about this in my post "Fishes".

And in India it was palla which allowed people to settle along palla migrating rivers, like Indus River.

I wrote about this in my post "Palla".

Also interesting is the pot which looks like it was made by plastering inside a soft basket (sack). It even has holes around the rim, where rope would have been put through to tighten the sack.

This seems to corroborate the theory that pots developed from plastered baskets. I wrote about this in my post "Basket pottery".

You can read more about this type of pottery in "Cultural Dynamics of Southern Part Middle Siberia in the Neolithic Based on the Pottery Study" by Ivan Berdnikov, Natalia Sokolova, Бердников Иван 

This is a good article about these fishermen cultures in the Baikal region: "The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of the Lake Baikal Region: A Review of Recent Research" by Andrzej Weber

Gu-za

Sumerian: gu-za - throne, chair
Serbian: guz, guza, guzica - bottom, arse. From proto Slavic *gǫzъ, *guzъ (rus. guz, slov. goza, polj. gąz)
Persian: guz - fart

I find this very funny

"Sumerian Lexicon, Version 3.0" by John A. Halloran
"Elementary Sumerian Glossary" Author: Daniel A. Foxvog

Breath

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

These two words have their direct cognates in all Slavic languages, as well as Ancient Greek, Old Armenian, Baltic languages and Indo-Iranian languages:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live.

Tocharian B: śāw-, śāy - to live

The more to the front you pronounce "ž", the more it changes from "ž" to "š" then to "z" and then to "s".  

Baltic languages

Latvian: dzivs - alive, living
Lithuanian: gyvas - alive
Old Prussian: giwato - alive, living

Also if you add "d" to it you get "dž".

Indo-Iranian

Sanskrit:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life

Avestan: ǰva - alive, living
Old Persian: 𐎪𐎺 (jiva) - alive, living

Persian: زیست (zist) - life, existence, زیستن (zistan) - to live

Old Armenian: կեամ (keam) to live

The more to the back you pronounce "ž", the more it changes to "đ" (dj) then to "k" and then to "g"...

Also consonants b,v,p,m also belong to the same group and can easily morph into each other depending on how your speech apparatus works. 

So it is easy how the above words are cognates. Now here is the problem (at least for me):

Official etymology says that all these words come from these two PIE roots: "gʷeyh₃-" meaning "to live" and "gʷih₃wós" meaning "alive".

To me this doesn't make any sense. Why would all these "ži", "dji" words have a root that starts with "gw"? Well because of the Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz, from which English word quick was derived. The word "quick", which today means "speedy" once meant "mobile, alive". This word has direct cognates in all other Germanic languages. The root "gw" was coined so that Germanic words can somehow be linked with Indo-Iranian words. The thing is the Germanic "qw"ic can not be the root because it can be derived from "qiv"ik which can be derived from "djiv"ik...

Now have a look at this:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live. 

This word is actually derived from Linear B "za" symbol which is in the shape of the Egyptian ANKH which means "life".

This symbol is traditionally transliterated as "za", but some people suggest that the sign should be transliterated as "ka".

This is very interesting as it shows the antiquity of the "z" root for the word for life. 

But I believe that we have even more proof that the "ži", "dji" root is indeed the original root for the above cluster of words meaning life, living. 

Let me ask you this question: What does it mean to be alive?

Some would say that to be alive means to have a soul still inhabiting your body. Interestingly, Hittite word "zi" meant "soul, spirit, seat of life, person"...

But at the most basic level, you are alive if you are breathing. I remember once when my kid was very sick, I used to come to his bedroom and stand over him while he was lying asleep, motionless, looking for signs that he was breathing in order to reashure myself that he was still alive.

So we could say that "breathing", or "breath" is at the root of life. And so does Genesis 2:7:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

And here is a very interesting thing.

In traditional Chinese culture, "qi" or "chi", pronounced as something between these two transliterations very close to dj, and represented by logograph 氣, is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living thing. This Chinese word literally translates as "air" and figuratively as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow".

The logograph 氣 also has a rare archaic reading "xì" which means "to present food".

The primary logograph 气, the earliest written character for "qì", consisted of three wavy horizontal lines seen in Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) oracle bone script, Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) bronzeware script and large seal script, and Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) small seal script.

You can see how this logograph ended up looking like air going through mouth and throat...

The secondary logograph,  mǐ 米 "rice" was added during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Official explanation is that this is supposed to indicate "steam (rising from rice as it cooks.)"??? I believe that the rice was added to breath to indicate that both of these substances are "life energy givers".

We also have Chinese symbol (zǐ 子) meaning son, child, seed, egg...Basically life...

At the same time in Sumerian language we find this word:

"zi" (ži?) - breathing, breath (of life), life, throat, soul...
"zi(d)" "še" - flour, meal
 zíz - emmer (wheat)
"še" - barley, grain

Now this is very very interesting. Here we have two "unrelated" distant languages containing the word for "breath of life" which has the same root as the above Indoeuropean words for "life, living". And when are we alive? When we have the breath, energy of life within us. In Slavic languages the word for alive "živ" could be derived from "ži" + v = breath, energy of life + in, within. Or the above words for "breath of life" could be derived by not pronouncing the two main Indoeuropean words for living:

Slavic "živ" --> "žiw" --> "žiu" --> "ži"

Indo-Iranian "jiv" --> "jiw" --> "jiu" --> "ji"

What is also very interesting is the link between the word for the breath, the energy of life and core food of the early farmers: grain, rice. We find this link in both Chinese and in Sumerian language.

We also find the same links in Ancient Greek:


ζάω (záō) - I live. 

σῖτος (sitos) - grain encompassing wheat and barley, the cereal grains used by the ancient Greeks, bread as opposed to meat, food as opposed to drink

Lin. A, B: se (ear of corn)

Also in Sanskrit we find:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life, food, grain, milk, water, marrow, wind (breath)

And we see the same link in Slavic languages

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

živ - alive

život - life, stomach
zev - yawn (possibly related as yawning is breathing so it could be a remnant of the old meaning zi - breath)

žir - acorn (the original first starch food which predates grain. You can read more about human consumption of acorns through history in these posts). In the Balkans the word žir in the past actually meant all plant food. In Eastern Slavic languages, the word for acorn is "želud" which is interesting because in Serbian the word for stomach is "želudac". This word also has the same root as žir.
žito - grain

I think that this is amazing. But how could there possibly be a linguistic and cultural link between such far flung cultures? The answer is this: Eurasian steppe:

The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches from Romania and Moldova through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, and Mongolia to Manchuria, with one major exclave, the Pannonian steppe or Puszta, located mostly in Hungary.

Since the Paleolithic age, the Steppe route has connected Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China, South Asia, and the Middle East economically, politically, and culturally through overland trade routes. 

And from the early copper age until the early medieval time, this vast area was solely controlled by metal weapons wielding, horse riding, chariot building Indoeuropean cultures.

The most important of them been Yamna culture.

The Yamna culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language.

The people of the Yamnaya culture were the likely result of admixture between eastern European hunter-gatherers (via whom they also descend from the Mal'ta-Buret' culture or other, closely related people) and a Near Eastern people, with some research identifying the latter as hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus or a similar people also related to Chalcolithic people from what is now Iran. Their material culture is very similar to the Afanasevo culture, their contemporaries in the Altai Mountains; furthermore, genetic tests have confirmed that the two groups are genetically indistinguishable.

And most importantly, the males in both of these cultures genetically belonged to R1a and R1b haplogroups, which have been the main carriers of the Indoeuropean culture and language. It is funny how this link between the genes and the language is now becoming something completely normal. But when I wrote this blog post suggesting the genetic background of the language groups I was almost crucified...

Yamna culture is also closely connected to later, Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures which spread throughout Europe and Asia, especially the Corded Ware culture, but also the Bell Beaker culture as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubna cultures. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamna culture (e.g., horse-riding, burial styles, and to some extent the pastoralist economy) are present. Genetic studies have shown that all these cultures derive from Yamna culture.

As I already said, Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) in the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas. It is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language, along with the preceding Sredny Stog culture. Significantly, animal grave offerings were made (cattle, sheep, goats and horse), a feature associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans. The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hillforts. Characteristic for the culture are the inhumations in pit graves under kurgans (tumuli). The dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre. Multiple graves have been found in these kurgans, often as later insertions. While the earliest evidence of horse domestication was found in Sredny Stog culture sites, the earliest remains of a wheeled cart were found in the "Storozhova mohyla" kurgan (Dnipro, Ukraine, excavated by Trenozhkin A.I.) associated with the Yamna culture.

It is the domestication of horses and the invention of wheeled carts that enabled the Indoeuropean people to quickly spread throughout a huge area or Eurasian steppe and the land around the steppe.

It was the metal weapons which enabled the Indoeuropeans to become the absolute rulers of the steppe and to exert a huge political and cultural influence on all the lands lying to the south of the steppe: Mesopotamia, India, China.

And so this is how we can find these common words for "living", "life", "breath of life" and "core food, grain, rice, acorn" distributed across such a huge area and embedded into such diverse languages.

What do you think of this?