River (in western Ukraine) and the introduction of cattle (ch. 8); the spread of cattle-herding during the Copper Age and the accompanying social division between high and low status (ch. 9); the domestication of the horse (ch. 10); the end of the Balkan cultures and the early migrations of Steppe people into the Danube Valley (ch. 11); the development of the steppe cultures during the Eneolithic, including the interaction with the Mesopotamian world after the collapse of the Balkan cultures and the role of Proto-Indo-European as a regional language (ch. 12); the Yamna culture as the culmination of these developments at the Pontic-Caspian steppes (ch. 13); the migration of Yamna people into the Danube Valley and the origins of the western Indo-European languages at the Danube Valley (Celtic, Italic), the Dniestr (Germanic) and the Dnieper (Baltic, Slavic) (ch. 14); migrations eastward which gave rise to the Sintashta culture and Proto-Indo-Iranian (ch. 15); migrations of the Indo-Aryans southward through the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological complex into Anatolia and India (ch. 16); and concluding thoughts (ch. 17). Contents Part One: Language and Archaeology Chapter One: The Promise and Politics of the Mother Language Anthony introduces the similarities between a broad range of languages and their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European (PIE). He proposes that "the Proto-Indo-European homeland was located in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas in what is today southern Ukraine and Russia." Anthony gives a short overview of the history of the linguistical study of PIE and then presents six major problems that hinder a "broadly acceptable union between archaeological and linguistic evidence." Chapter Three: Language and Time 1. The Last Speakers of Proto-Indo-European Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Don Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European branches: Pre-Anatolian (before 3500 BCE) Pre-Tocharian Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (before 2500 BCE) [Pre-Germanic] Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek (after 2500 BCE) [Pre-Germanic] Proto-Germanic c. 500 BCE Pre-Balto-Slavic Proto-Indo-Iranian (2000 BCE) Chapter Four: Language and Time 2: Wool, Wheels and Proto-Indo-European Anthony proposes that Proto-Indo-European emerged after ca. 3500 BCE. He bases that especially on his analysis of Indo-European terms for wool textiles and wheeled vehicles: Chapter Six: The Archaeology of Language Anthony, following the methodology of Ringe and Warnow, proposes the following sequence: Pre-Anatolian (4200 BCE) Pre-Tocharian (3700 BCE) Pre-Germanic (3300 BCE) Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (3000 BCE) Pre-Armenian (2800 BCE) Pre-Balto-Slavic (2800 BCE) Pre-Greek (2500 BCE) Proto-Indo-Iranian (2200 BCE),