Breaking the Chains
Page 14
Two thousand years after it had been domesticated in Ukraine the horse was introduced as a draft animal. Indo-European tribesmen who already possessed horses were the principal beneficiaries - although chariots had been first used in Mesopotamian cities such as Ur and Tutub about 3000 BC, they had not been pulled by horses. In the 2nd millennium BC horse-drawn chariots were facilitative of victories for the Hittites in Anatolia, the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Aryans in northern India, and the Hyksos in Egypt - amongst the Hyksos were a people (Hurrians) from north-western Iran who, about 1500 BC, founded the kingdom of Mitanni: a feudal state, ranging from the mountains of Iran to Syria, led by a chariot-warrior nobility of Aryan or Hurrian origin.
During the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD Ukraine was invaded by Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, Magyars, and Pechenegs. In the 5th and 6th centuries AD some Slavic tribes left their primordial homeland north of the Carpathian Mountains, and some of these (East Slavs) occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of western and north-central Ukraine. In Baltic tradition the moon god was not as important as the sky god. However, in Slav tradition the moon was the primary object of veneration, and Ukrainian peasants in the Carpathians freely confess that the moon is their god. Coincidentally, the patron deity and divine king of Ur (a city important to the origination of the chariot) was the moon god Nana, and the Hurrians, who used the chariot to devastating effect, regularly placed their moon god, Kushukh, above their sun god Shimegi.
Europe is an appendage of a land-mass more than four times its size. It is the world’s second smallest continent, and occupies about four million square miles or one-fifteenth of the world’s total land-mass. The continent is named after a Phoenician princess (Europa) who was, according to Greek mythology, abducted and taken to Crete by Zeus She bore him three sons: Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthus. At one time it was thought Europa meant sunset. Now it is thought Europa means mainland.
On its seaward flanks the limits of Europe appear clear: the north is bordered by the Arctic Ocean, the west is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, and the south is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, and Caspian Sea. In the east the boundary runs along the Ural Mountains and the Zhem River. The highland regions of north and north-west Europe contain old mountains and plateaux. Medium age mountains and plateaux make up the central upland regions, and south of these are a series of young mountain ranges: Sierra Nevada, Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, and Balkans. More than half of Europe is lowland which includes the East European Plain, the North European Plain, and the Romanian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian plains. Europe’s major rivers are: the Volga, Dnieper, Don, Danube, Rhine, Rhone, Elbe, and Oder.
Much of Europe’s prehistoric story may never be recovered as knowledge concerning it is derived solely through archaeology. Nevertheless, some scholars maintain the Indo-European language was introduced into Europe about 3000 BC by migrants from north of the Black and Caspian seas. Others assert it was introduced by farmers from Anatolia. However, there is no undisputed evidence to support either proposition. Furthermore, as language appears to have been a feature of European life for hundreds of thousands of years it is unnecessary to suppose the sixty or so languages spoken in Europe are extraneous - where there is evidence for languages spoken in Europe at the end of the prehistoric period it demonstrates that, with few exceptions (Basque and Etruscan), they were Indo-European.
Some scientists believe Homo erectus was the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, and the first hominid to leave Africa. However, the oldest hominid fossils to be found in Europe are not Homo erectus. The fossils date to about 1.7 million years ago, and were discovered at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. Their age and skeletal characteristics suggest they could be related to a less developed hominid who lived in East Africa at about the same time, and who has been named Homo ergaster. Homo ergaster employed a less sophisticated stone tool technology than Homo erectus. Tools found with the Dmanisi remains belong to a ‘pebble-chopper’ tradition that preceded the Acheulean or ‘hand-axe’ technology of Homo erectus. The earliest members of the Homo erectus family appear in Africa about 1.8 million years ago and in Asia about 1.7 million years ago. It is not known where or how Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens. The cranium of Homo erectus is different to that of Homo sapiens. Homo erectus had a low brain case, a jutting browridge, a flattened forehead, the area of neck-muscle attachment at the back of the head was much larger than in Homo sapiens, and the teeth of Homo erectus were larger than those of Homo sapiens. A number of scientists assert that these traits show Homo erectus could not have been ancestral to Homo sapiens. Regardless of this, prevailing opinion assumes Homo erectus existed and evolved into Homo sapiens in Asia, south-east Asia, and elsewhere for over a million years but were not involved in any significant influx into Europe during that time.