Indo-Europeans

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Indo-Europeans Migrate

The Indo-Europeans were a group of nomadic peoples who came from the steppes--dry grasslands that stretched north of the Caucasus.
These people lived in tribes that spoke forms of language that we call Indo-European.

The Indo-European Language Family

The languages of Indo-Europeans were the ancestors of many of the modern languages of Europe, Southwest Asia, and South Asia.
English, Spanish, Persian, and Hindi all trace their origins back to different forms of the original Indo-European language.
Tribes settled by their languages; Slavic speakers moved north and west while others who spoke early Celtic, Germanic and Italic languages, moved west through Europe. Speakers of Greek and Persian went south while the Aryans, who spoke an early form of Sanskrit penetrated the mountain passes of Hindu Kush and entered India.

An Unexplained Migration

It is unknown why these people left their homelands in the steppes
Some say the lands where their animals grazed may have dried up or their human or animal population may have grown too large to feed.
For whatever reason, Indo-European nomads began to migrate outward in all directions between 1700 and 1200 B.C.

The Hittite Empire

By 2000 B.C. a group of Indo-European speakers, the Hittites, occupied Anatolia (a.k.a Asia Minor).
Separate Hittite city-states came together to form an empire in Anatolia in about 1650 B.C.
The city of Hattusas was its capital.
The Hittite empire went on to dominate Southwest Asia for 450 years occupying Babylon, the chief city in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and struggled with Egypt for control of northern Syria.
Egyptians and Hittites signed a peace treaty pledging to help the other fight off future invaders after both sides could not beat the other.

Hittites Adopt and Adapt

For international use, Hittites adopted Akkadian, the language of Babylonians.
The Hittites borrowed ideas from the Mesopotamians about literature, art, politics and law.

Chariots and Iron Technology

The Hittites excelled in the technology of war, conquering an empire against Egyptian opposition--largely through their superior chariots and their iron weapons.
The Hittite war chariot was light and easy to maneuver and proved itself as a superb fighting mechanism.
The first in Southwest Asia to work with iron and harden it into weapons of war due to the complex process of purifying iron ore then shaping it.
Despite its military might the powerful Hittite empire fell suddenly around the year 1190 B.C.
Tribes attacked from the north and burned the Hittite capital city causing the downfall of the Hittite empire.

Aryans Transform India

Another group of Indo-European people whose homeland was probably somewhere between the Caspian and Aral seas, crossed over the northwest mountain and into the Indus River Valley of India.
Left almost no archaeological record except for their sacred literature, the Vedas.
The Vedas are four collections of prayers, magical spells and instructions for performing rituals.
The most important of the collections is the Rig Veda which contained 1,028 hymns to Aryan gods.
For many years, no written form of the Vedas existed; Instead, elders of one generation passed on this tradition orally to the next generation
The Aryans not develop a writing system

The Aryan Caste System

The Aryans called the people they found in India dasas ("dark"), referring to the color of their skin.
Aryans differed from the dasas in many ways; Aryans were taller, lighter in skin color and spoke a different language.
When the Aryans first arrived to India, Aryans were divided into three social classes:
Brahmins (priests)
Warriors
Peasants or traders
The class than an Aryan belonged to determined his or her role in society.
Non-Aryan laborers or crafts-people (shudras) formed a fourth group.
Varna, or skin color, was a distinguishing feature of this system.
These four major groups became known as varnas but later in the the 15th century A.D. explorers from Portugal called these groups castes.
The four basic castes becomes more an more complex as time passes by.
People were born into the caste for life, determining every aspect of it.
Cleanliness and purity was extremely important.
Those considered the most impure due to their work (butchers, gravediggers, collectors of trash) lived outside the caste structure and were known as "untouchables" (The youtube video below is a short documentary on the "untouchables").

Aryan Kingdoms Arise

Aryans started to extend their settlements east, along the Ganges and Yamuna river valleys.
When Aryans first arrived in India, chiefs were elected by the entire trive.
Around 1000 B.C. minor kings arose among the Ayrans and struggled for land and power.
A major kingdom, Magadha emerged and began expanding in the sixth century B.C. by taking over surrounding kingdoms.
One of the great epics of India, the Mahabharata reflects the struggles that took place in India as the Aryans moved south.
One of the most famous incidents in Indian literature was when hero Krishna instructs a young warrior on the proper way to live, fight and die.
Elements in this epic indicate that a blending of cultures was taking place between Aryan and non-Aryan peoples.
i.e. Krishna, a semi-divine hero of the Mahabharata, is described as dark-faced suggesting that he is non-Aryan.

The picture above shows the Aryan invasions of India from 1500-250 B.C.