Sintashta's Wheels of Change
The Bronze Age military industrial center that revolutionized warfare and mobility
Today, we'll explore a fascinating yet seldom-discussed culture from the Eurasian Steppes: the Sintashta Culture.
Four thousand years ago, an obscure military-industrial center in the vast grasslands of the Steppes, south of the Ural mountains on the modern Russia-Kazakhstan border, became the cradle of a revolution that shaped human lives for the next few millennia. This lesser-known culture, the Sintashta, invented the spoked wheel chariot and bred the ancestor of the modern horse. These innovations, born from survival necessities, benefited warriors and ordinary people till modern times.
The Sintashta culture had around 20 settlements, which thrived between 2100 and 1800 BC. Soviet archaeologists discovered their remains in the 1970s. They termed the culture Sintashta, after its typesite by the same name in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It was a circular fortified town with a diameter of around 140 meters.
The Sintashta people were more than just pioneers in mobility. Their descendants played a crucial role in disseminating Indo-Iranian languages across South and Central Asia. These languages include Bengali, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Balochi, and many more. Today, over 1.5 billion people worldwide speak Indo-Iranian languages.
In this newsletter, we’ll learn about these enigmatic warlords from the Eurasian Steppes and their historical significance. We'll begin our journey by exploring their origins.
How did the Sintashta culture originate?
Archaeologists have offered various explanations regarding the origins of the Sintashta culture. To understand them, we have to roll the clock back to 3000 BC in the region between the Dnieper and Dniester Rivers, where there were extensive interactions between the Corded Ware Culture, Globular-Amphorae Culture, and the Yamnaya Culture.
I covered the Yamanya and their milk-fueled migrations in an earlier newsletter, but I’ll define these three Bronze Age Eurasian cultures for convenience.
Yamnaya Culture( 3400-2600 BC): This archaeological culture was located in the Pontic Caspian region and is marked by kurgan or pit burial mounds. The population was an admixture of Eastern Hunter Gather (EHG) from Eastern Europe and Caucasian hunter-gatherers (CHG) from the Caucasus or Iran. This new genetic population is known as Western Steppe Herder(WSH).
Globular-Amphorae Culture( 3400-2800 BC): Archaeological culture between the Elbe River (west) and Vistula River (East). As the name suggests, they were characterized by globular-shaped pottery with two to four handles. They were an admixture between Early European Farmers (EEF), who were of Anatolian origin, and Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG), hunter-gatherers from Western and Central Europe. Globular-Amphorae had little genetic similarity with the Yamnaya.
Corded-Ware Culture (3000 BC to 2300 BC): A vast archaeological horizon between the Rhine and the Volga rivers, stretching from present-day Belgium to Ukraine. They are characterized by cord-like impressions on pottery and crouched or fetal-position burials. Recent genetic studies revealed that Corded Ware people were a complex admixture of local hunter-gatherer populations and people from the Yamnaya and Globular Amphorae cultures.
The intricate web of cultural interactions between the three distinct people gave birth to a fascinating array of regional cultures stretching into the forest-steppe zone. Notably, the Middle-Dneiper (2800 to 1800 BC) and the Fatyanovo culture (2900 to 2100 BC) were the outcomes of this cultural exchange.
Fatyanovo emerged on the northeastern edge of the Middle Dnieper culture, and its economy was based on cattle herding. The Fatyanovo were mobile pastoralists, and some kept migrating eastward down the Volga until they discovered copper ores at the foothills of the Ural mountains near the Kama River. They settled in this region, converting it into a mining and metallurgical center, and the culture became known as the Balanovo Culture.
Just below the Fatyanovo-Balanovo horizon was the Abashevo Culture in the forest-steppe zone. The Abashevo also took advantage of the copper ores in the Ural mountains and began large-scale metallurgy. There are over two hundred Abashevo settlements, but only two were fortified. Ultimately, the Abashevo people would move eastward and begin the Sintashta culture.
A 2015 genetic study confirms archaeologists' observations of this eastward migration pattern. The Sintashta people were genetically similar to the Corded Ware culture.
A common question that comes to our mind is if the Abashevo people moved east, why not simply call it the Abashevo culture? Why Sintashta? Why do we need a unique name for the eastern migrants of the Abashevo?
The distinction between Abashevo and Sintashta is their large fortified settlements. In contrast to Abashevo, all Sintashta settlements were surrounded by circular reinforced ramparts. Each residence had a metalworking furnace. Nothing like these dwellings and towns were seen during the Bronze Age in the Eurasian Steppes. Each settlement had about 200 to 700 people, but some, like Arkaim, had as many as 1500-2500 residents.
Contrary to the popular image of the Steppes as the domain of hardy horseback nomads, the Sintashta people led a sedentary lifestyle. They were not mobile like their Corded Ware ancestors but pastoralists living in settled communities. However, they didn’t farm, and their subsistence depended entirely on livestock, which might surprise many.
The lifestyle of the Sintashta people is crucial to understanding why they invested heavily in building fortified settlements.
The fortifications of the Sintashta and their purpose
The climate in the Steppes became colder after 2500 BC, and the grasslands became the driest around 2000 BC. Archaeologists figured out the effect of this climate change on the ecological zone by studying ancient pollen grains. Forests retracted, grasslands expanded, and marshlands became more concentrated as their numbers reduced.
Marshy areas were a lifeline, providing crucial livestock feed during the unforgiving winter. This led to fierce competition among various tribes to establish control over these marshlands in the Steppes. The consequences of losing cattle were dire, which meant facing starvation during the winter. This desperation drove migrants to settle around these marshlands, ensuring the survival of their cattle. The situation was so desperate that they had to give up the nomadic lifestyle of their Corded Ware ancestors and adopt a more settled, permanent existence.
The competition for limited resources spurred the Sintashta people to adapt and build robust defenses along the marshes, a more challenging terrain than the defensible hills adjacent to the marshlands. Unlike prior cultures, which had constructed temporary defensive structures, the Sintashta people built massive, long-lasting fortifications.
Earthen walls reinforced with timber and V-shaped ditches protected the settlements. These walls were often topped with wooden palisades for added security. Watchtowers, tall structures with a commanding view of the surrounding area, were erected strategically to detect potential threats.
Archaeologist David W. Anthony theorized that people built forts to protect their limited resources. In 2021, archaeologist Igor Chechushkov suggested an alternative explanation for the fortifications, claiming they were warmer than the open plains and helped keep animals safe throughout the winter. You can imagine the Sintashta settlements as gigantic cattle pens.
Both views regarding the purpose of fortifications make sense and are not exclusive. The well-being of the animals was as crucial as keeping intruders out. During the 2100 BC, violence was no longer limited to cattle raids. We see the rise of ritual warfare and the emergence of a warrior class dedicated to protecting the community and its resources.
Archaeological excavations of the burials at Sintashta reveal that among the 242 individuals found in 181 graves, 65 graves contained people buried with weapons.
A total of 79 graves were adults; among them, 43 or 54% of adults were interred with weapons rather than gold and silver, highlighting the value of arms at Sintashta.
What was impressive in these graves was weaponry, vehicles, and animal sacrifices, not crowns or jewelry- David W. Anthony, author The Horse, The Wheel and Language
Burial with weapons wasn’t new to the region. However, the sheer number of weapons found at Sintashta’s graves surpassed those from Abashevo and Fatyanovo.
Many of the weapons found in Sintashta’s graves, such as bronze or copper daggers, flat axes, shaft-hole axes, polished stone maceheads, and flint or bone projectile points, were a continuation of preceding cultures.
But we also see newer weapons emerge.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Forgotten Footprints to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.