Page 96 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

servants ot the dead man, a man and a woman, accompanied bv
less rich accoutrements. P y

From the relics of the dead we can deduce something about
the life of these nomads of the steppes. We know from the many
flint arrowheads in the graves that they possessed the bow as well

as the ax. In the graves, too, we find proof, in the form of a two­
wheeled cart, that they had already learnt to make and use
vehicles, and to break their animals to harness. The frequent dis­

covery of two large amber buttons lying close to the throat of
the men suggests that a prominent article of their clothing was a
loose cloak secured at the neck. Other evidence of clothing we

do not possess, but we can assume that they were acquainted
with the art of weaving.
They worshipped, it would seem, gods of the sky and the

horizon, as is natural for nomads and pastoralists—whereas dirt
farmers tend to worship gods and goddesses conceived of as

dwelling underground or in natural features of the landscape.
That their dead lay with their faces to the south suggests that
they were in particular sun-worshippers, a suggestion reinforced
both by their later history, which we shall see in due course, and

by the presence of golden discs, representing the sun, in the
graves of their cousins in northern Asia Minor. We have reason to

believe that the horse was venerated, and we have already seen
that the ax was an object of ritual and symbolism.
Who are, then, these people who in 2000 b.c. occupy half of

Europe with their chariotry, and are still expanding their do­
mains? We know from innumerable skeletons that they are a long­

headed race and that the racial type is homogeneous from one
end of their range to the other. Appropriately enough in view of
their place of origin, they are of the type now called Caucasian,

one of the main components at this day of the European and
Middle Eastern peoples. We have every reason to believe that
the language they speak is Indo-European, that genus of lan­

guage to which belong most of the languages of Europe, in addi­
tion to Persian and Hindustani. One must be careful to dis­
tinguish language and race. When peoples of two races and two

languages meet and mix, both races, as well as all grades of Ad­
mixture between them, will survive. But normally one language