late fourth and early third millennia BCE. Their genes may show selection for easier domestication and stronger backs). These self-designated Aryan people migrated southward into South Asia, ushering in the Vedic period around 1750 BCE. Shortly after this, about 1700 BCE, evidence of chariots appears in Asia-Minor. The earliest fully developed spoke-wheeled horse chariots are from the chariot burials of the Andronovo (Timber-Grave) sites of the Sintashta-Petrovka Proto-Indo-Iranian culture in modern Russia and Kazakhstan from around 2000 BCE. This culture is at least partially derived from the earlier Yamna culture. It built heavily fortified settlements, engaged in bronze metallurgy on an industrial scale, and practiced complex burial rituals reminiscent of Hindu rituals known from the Rigveda and the Avesta. Over the next few centuries, the Andronovo culture spread across the steppes from the Urals to the Tien Shan, likely corresponding to the time of early Indo-Iranian cultures. Not everyone agrees that the Sintashta culture vehicle finds are true chariots. In 1996 Joost Crouwel and Mary Aiken Littauer wrote Peter Raulwing and Stefan Burmeister consider the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero finds from the steppe to be carts rather than chariots. Spread by Indo-Europeans Chariots figure prominently in Indo-Iranian mythology. Chariots are also an important part of both Hindu and Persian mythology, with most of the gods in their pantheon portrayed as riding them. The Sanskrit word for a chariot is rátha- (m.), which is cognate with Avestan raθa- (also m.), and in origin a substantiation of the adjective Proto-Indo-European meaning "having wheels", with the characteristic accent shift found in Indo-Iranian substantivisations. This adjective is in turn derived from the collective noun "wheels", continued in Latin rota, which belongs to the noun for "wheel" (from "to run") that is also found in Germanic, Celtic and Baltic (Old High German rad n., Old Irish roth m., Lithuanian rãtas m.). Nomadic tribes of the Pontic steppes, like Scythians such as Hamaxobii, would travel in wagons, carts, and chariots during their migrations. Hittites The oldest testimony of chariot warfare in the ancient Near East is the Old Hittite Anitta text (18th century BCE), which mentions 40 teams of horses (in the original cuneiform spelling: 40 ṢÍ-IM-TI ANŠE.KUR.RAḪI.A) at the siege of Salatiwara. Since the text mentions teams rather than chariots, the existence of chariots in the 18th century BCE is uncertain. The first certain attestation of chariots in the Hittite empire dates to the late