Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

Reinstating much of



Part 2/2

[size="6"]No Chariots in Sintashta[/size]

say the experts in ancient chariotry and wheeled vehicles, Littauer and Crouwel (in 1996)

(just mere wheel imprints magicked into "chariots")

AKA: More evidence of Anthony's serial forgery (in 1994, 1995)



Summary plus more related to the previous post.



Hindu-baiter and steppe AIT peddler Francesco Brighenti had invoked Littauer and Crouwel as the authorities for the defininition of (true) chariots:

This is an authoritative definition of the English term ‘chariot’ given by M.A. Littauer and J.H. Crouwel, two leading specialists in ancient vehicles:

“Chariot – A light, fast, two-wheeled, usually horse-drawn, vehicle with spoked wheels; used for warfare, hunting, racing and ceremonial purposes. Its crew usually stood.”



(He took that definition "Selected Writings on Chariots and Other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness", 2002)





Littauer and Crouwel's expertise is indeed in chariots and other vehicles of the ancient world. But the Hindu-baiter pretending to be an academic was ignorant about or conveniently left out how the authors damned the evidence from Sintashta (and Krivoe Ozero too) as non-chariots.



Surveying all the arguments, extensive reconstructions and the far less actual evidence provided for the Sintashtan/steppe vehicles by Anthony's work, Littauer & Crouwel, 1996 state the following about these early steppe vehicles ("The origin of the true chariot", M.A. LITTAUER & J.H. CROUWEL, 1996, https: // doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084192, at the time of writing this still available at https: // sci-hub.st/ ).

(0) “Let us consider what is actually known of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles. At Sintashta, there remained only the imprints of the lower parts of the wheels in their slots in the floor of the burial chamber (FIGURE 1); Krivoe Ozero also preserved imprints of parts of the axle and naves.”

So this is all the actual evidence we have. The rest was only ever fanciful reconstruction by Anthony, which Littauer & Crouwel did not find particularly convincing, as seen in the following.

(1) "The present reconstructions of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles above the axle level raise many doubts and questions, but one cannot argue about something for which there is no evidence (FIGURE 4). It is from the wheeltrack measurements and the dimensions and positions of the wheels alone that we may legitimately draw conclusions and these are alone sufficient to establish that the Sintashta-Petrovka vehicles would not be manoeuvrable enough for use either in warfare or in racing."

Useless in warfare and racing: i.e. the very two purposes Indo-Europeans like the Greeks were to have used chariots for.

(2) "these dimensions would render the vehicle impractical at speed and limit its manoeuvrability. These cannot yet be true chariots."

(3) until Sintashta, "no early tradition of fast transport by two-wheeler existed on the steppe", summarising Izbitser’s work (1993).

Only of 4 wheelers.

(4) “We should like to suggest that it was the prestige value of the Near Eastern two-wheelers that inspired imitations on the steppes”.

So that's how two wheeled carts suddenly appeared on the steppe: by failed plagiarism of Near Eastern vehicles, not by imitation. Failed plagiarism, because, unlike in the Near East, the 2 wheeled steppe carts found don't seem to have been useful for anything beyond grave goods, reminiscent of how the earlier steppe cultures' 4 wheelers found were "more suitable for processions and for burial rites than for workaday use".





So there we have it. The evidence we have is positive that these were not chariots in Sintashta. And this is why the Sintashta vehicles can not be described as anything more than carts, as Littauer had done before:



Even in 1994, before her 1996 paper with Crouwel, Littauer had already remarked that the Sintashta finds may just turn out to be carts and not chariots (nytimes.com/1994/02/22/science/remaking-the-wheel-evolution-of-the-chariot.html ), which their 1996 paper then upheld based on their evaluation of the accumulated evidence and reconstructions presented by Anthony & Vinogradov's 1995 paper.



And unless and until Anthony or anyone hereafter discover additional evidence endorsing actual chariots in Sintashta, instead of merely retreading Anthony's earlier submissions as seems to always be the case and which were already dismissed by Littauer and Crouwel as not being chariots, the above conclusions remain in place. And no one should continue to speak of "Sintashta chariots", nor how its drivers thundered about in their vehicles shown to be next to useless in warfare, invading other parts of the globe.



Take note of how Littauer & Crouwel 1996 makes it clear that the fanciful elaborations in Anthony's reconstructions have no actual evidence to back them up and how they found these reconstructions to be questionable besides. Anthony and his own co-author were not experts in ancient chariots, unlike Littauer and Crouwel, and consequently they must have made blunders in their eager reconstructions. Littauer and Crouwel were diplomatic about this, but also generous in giving the reconstructions their full consideration as well, before then denying the Sintashtan vehicles were chariots, based on the reconstructed additions too. But most importantly, the authors make it very clear the actual evidence however limited is still sufficient to conclude that whatever else they may have been, the Sintashta carts cannot have been chariots in the true and - as Francesco Brighenti would troll Sanauli finds with - the only sense.





The 2000 BCE-1800 BCE vehicles of the 2100 BCE-1800 BCE Sintashta culture being carts and expressly not chariots, these and prior steppe cultures didn't give rise to chariots.

So if no chariots, then exactly what is left that makes Sintashta Indo-Iranian?

And, since Sintashta has turned out to be a culture that expressly has no chariots, can they still be *made* to be Indo-Iranian?





Remember: They said that:

harappa.com/content/cult-object (about Soma filters in SSVC)

We do not have the horse in the Indus Civilization. [1]

There is no evidence for the wheeled chariot. [2]

There is no evidence for the spoked wheels. [3]

And denied that this meant that Vedic religion's antecedents could be identified with Bharatam.

But:

[1] njsaryablog.blogspot.com/2017/07/aryan-migration-from-academics-to-politics.html

true horse bones were recovered from several Harappan sites belonging to the mature Harappan levels which were securely dated between 2700 BC to the 2000 BC and which had nothing to do with the so called migrations of some fictitious Aryan tribes. Every evidence of horse that was unearthed from a Harappan site dated before 2000 BC was doubted and the competency of the scholars who identified them were also questioned. A significant incident can be cited in this connection. In a 1974 article 5, A.K. Sharma, an expert in faunal studies, identified the remains of true domesticated horse from the mature Harappan level of Surkotada, a prominent Harappan site of Gujarat. But Sharma’s claim lacked widespread acceptance as migrationist scholars stamped the specimens as onager or wild ass. After some 20 years, a renowned archaeologist and horse specialist of Hungarian origin, Sandor Bökönyi, came to India and confirmed Sharma’s identification after examining the said specimens.6



The aggrieved Sharma then reacted: “This was the saddest day for me as the thought flashed in my mind that my findings had to wait two decades for recognition, until a man from another continent came, examined the material and declared that ‘Sharma was right’. When will we imbibe intellectual courage not to look across borders for approval? The historians are still worse, they feel it is an attempt on the part of the ‘rightists’ to prove that the Aryans did not come to India from outside her boundaries.”7

(More on p.15 of Michel Danino's academia.edu/39599444/Fabricating_Evidence_in_Support_of_the_Aryan_Invasion_Migration_Theory from 2018)



Compare how they deny this actual evidence for pre-AIT presence of horses in SSVC with how the Goebbelsian Steppe Hoaxes propagated by IEist serial forger David Anthony are celebrated and perpetuated everywhere by IEists.



[2] harappa.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Kenoyer2004_Wheeled%20Vehicles%20of%20the%20Indus%20Valley%20Civilizatio.pdf

"Perhaps the most convincing example of a spoked wheel comes from the site of Rahkigarhi, presumably from the Harappan levels (Figure 8:2) though the excavation report has not yet been published. In this example there are eleven radiating spokes that would have provided considerable support to a light outer rim." [p.11, referring to Figure 8:2 on p29 of PDF]

[3] SSVC or a different culture, further inland in ancient Bharatam there were solid but patterned wheeled chariots : the circa 2500-1800 BCE Sanauli chariots were definitely wheeled:

- external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F30%2F72%2F59%2F307259d6193a100d8af1691e1d1f2c8e.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

- archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2018/06/chariot-from-bronze-age-found-during.html



Can note again how, unlike the massive reconstructions that were necessary for Anthony to transform the actual evidence of Sintashta into chariots, the Indian archaeological evidence is massive. Not elaborate drawings to reinvent mere stains and imprints of axles and naves and lower parts of wheels as in Sintashta into full-blown chariots, but actual and large physical vehicle remains in Sanauli in Bharatam's Uttar Pradesh, the likes of which the European Indo-Europeanists could only wish had been found at that time in their own backyard.



* The estimated date range of the Sanauli chariots is between 2500 to 1800 ("Web Title:4500 years old chariot and crown from pre iron age found during excavation in baghpat of uttar pradesh" at www.livehindustan.com/uttar-pradesh/bagpat/story-4500-years-old-chariot-and-crown-from-pre-iron-age-found-during-excavation-in-baghpat-of-uttar-pradesh-1997024.html), with news usually reporting 2000 BCE (e.g. WION, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlvl4h3OsFk). Note again that even the Sanauli vehicles' most conservative 2000-1800 BCE dating is still contemporaneous with the date reported by Littauer & Crouwel for Sintashta.





IEists can go hang themselves: they keep FORGING "evidence" and perpetrating steppe hoaxes, e.g. the "Vedic steppe burial/Dadhya~nc burial in steppe" hoax, the "domesticated horse in Dereivka" hoax, "chariots in Sintashta" hoax, and more, (while their Indian sepoys, the IIEists, keep repeating these hoaxes to sell to the new converts they're missionising)

And they keep denying ACTUAL evidence from Bharatam.





Hardcore steppists have now retreated to hide behind steppe horses as evidence and invented a "horse worshipping" religion (a what?) as the key connecting factor. But just as they keep saying that not just Indian mouse, but even Indian peacock, Indian cow, Indian dog with Indian/Iranian wolf (but note: Iranian wolf doesn't howl, but dogs do) presence or admixture in Europe or among Mittani are not evidence of ancient Indians having brought it there, Indians can certainly argue that any steppe horses (should such things have even existed as indigenous to the steppes, other than Przewalski which are irrelevant to IEism) are not evidence of any Sintashta-Andronovo or other steppe kulturs having brought them to ancient India. [Zebu were admixed into ancient Italian cows to produce the Chianina celebrated in ancient Roman times in Latium and Etruria -> www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-57880-4, European dogs have admixture from Indian-like-dog-with-Indian/Iranian-wolf admixture, and had reached Europe by 4700 ybp -> www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/068189v3.full, etc. Mittani used peacock imagery in a major way.]



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[size="5"]The origin of the true chariot[/size]

M.A. LITTAUER & J.H. CROUWEL, 1996

(LINK: sci-hub.st/https :// doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00084192)



Some extracts, for those who only have attention span sufficient for tweet-threads and expect others to do all the looking up, reading and excerpting for you:

"Early spoked wheels in the steppes



The spoked wheel, together with horse draught and the bitted bridle, are usually considered the essentials of the war, hunting and (later) racing chariot, but it can be shown that these features alone are not enough. 1 The recent calibrated radiocarbon dating to c. 2000-1800 BC of light, horse-drawn vehicles from Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero, in northern Kazakhstan just east of the Urals, has revived the claim that the chariot originated in the steppe area rather than somewhere in the Near East (Gening et al. 1992; Kuzmina 1994: 163-457; Anthony 1995: 561-2; Anthony & Vinogradov 1985). The burials from which the northern datings come contain the remains of horses and the bone cheekpieces of soft-mouthed bits, of the vehicles there are in most cases only the impressions of their two, spoked wheels as placed standing in the graves (FIGURE 1). The earliest southern documentation is provided by cylinder-seal impressions from the time of Karum II at Kültepe, central Anatolia, usually dated to the early 2nd millennium BC (FIGURE a), and by a terracotta plaque from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, possibly of slightly later date (Littauer & Crouwell979: figures 28-30; Garelli & Collon 1975: no. 46). The latter show equid-drawn vehicles with two spoked wheels. We do not know what superstructure the Ural vehicles had. The soil impressions of the wheels, placed vertically in especially made slots in the bottom of the burial chamber, when combined with the dimensions of the chamber, give two basic measurements: the wheel-track or gauge (the distance between the wheels, 120 cm) and the maximum length of the nave (20 cm). As explained later, these dimensions would render the vehicle impractical at speed and limit its manoeuvrability. These cannot yet be true chariots. The Anatolian seal impressions and Uruk plaque show small passenger vehicles with light railings.



1 The chariot may be defined as a light, fast, usually horse-drawn vehicle with two spoked wheels; its crew usually stood."



"The earliest southern documentation is provided by cylinder-seal impressions from the time of Karum II at Kültepe, central Anatolia, usually dated to the early 2nd millennium BC (FIGURE a), and by a terracotta plaque from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, possibly of slightly later date (Littauer & Crouwell979: figures 28-30; Garelli & Collon 1975: no. 46). The latter show equid-drawn vehicles with two spoked wheels."



"The issues: progress vs invention



The steppes also had burials with wheeled vehicles, in the Pit-Grave culture of the late 4th and 3rd millennia BC - ox-drawn wagons with four disc wheels. A re-examination of all the pertinent documents and material forms the basis of a recent doctoral dissertation for the Institute of Archaeology of St Petersburg by Yelena Izbitser (1993). Several new facts have emerged. Wherever the superstructure can be deduced, it has turned out to be rather light, and for a seated passenger. But these vehicles would not have been fast, and their range even more limited than that of two-wheelers. A sec ond conclusion is more significant. Hitherto, when an irregular number of wheels (beyond four) have been found in a few graves, it has suggested the presence also of two-wheelers. Dr Izbitser’s examination has shown that these wheels belonged to other four-wheelers. If she is correct in her readings, it means that no early tradition of fast transport by two-wheeler existed on the steppe.



What also seems to emerge from Dr Izbitser’s work is that many of the four-wheeled vehicles buried with seated passengers would have been more suitable for processions and for burial rites than for workaday use. These must have been ceremonial, status-conferring vehicles.

In the Near East, however, by the later 3rd millennium BC, fast, single-person, equid-drawn two-wheelers had been in use for many centuries. The domestic horse is depicted there by the 23rd-21st centuries BC, to judge particularly from the terracotta figurine of a stallion recently found at Tell es-Sweyhat in Syria (Holland 1993-4: 283, figure 111). This animal’s muzzle was pierced in an area that could only be for a bit (not a nose-ring) and he was associated with models of wheeled vehicles. When the horse was ridden, it was still with the ‘donkey’ seat, and horse-back riding continued to be considered unsuitable for the Blite (Moorey 1970; Littauer & Crouwel1979: 45-6,65-8; Owen 1991).

But an animal faster, stronger and handsomer than the native donkey soon found his appropriate role - in draught with that traditionally prestigious conveyance - the wheeled vehicle. Does it not seem more likely that the horse’s introduction to draught in the Near East stimulated the local wheelwrights to invent a lighter wheel for the already long-existing two-wheelers than that people without a history of two-wheeled vehicles and with an already superior personal conveyance - the mounted horse - should find reason suddenly to invent such a vehicle in its entirety?"



"We should like to suggest that it was the prestige value of the Near Eastern two-wheelers that inspired imitations on the steppes".



"The chariot, moreover, was costly to make and to maintain, and draught teams had to be especially trained and to be matched in height and stride (Piggott 1992: 42-8)."





‘ Proto-chariots’

Let us consider what is actually known of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles. At Sintashta, there remained only the imprints of the lower parts of the wheels in their slots in the floor of the burial chamber (FIGURE 1); Krivoe Ozero also preserved imprints of parts of the axle and naves. At Sintashta, the wheel tracks and their position relative to the walls of the tomb chamber limited the dimensions of the naves, hence the stability of the vehicle. Ancient naves were symmetrical, the part outside the spokes of equal length to that inside. Allowing enough room for the end of the axle arm and linch pin on the outer side of the nave and for a short spacer on the inner side of the nave end to keep it from rubbing on the body of the vehicle, we are left with no more than 20 cm for the entire length of the nave. The shortest ancient nave of which we know on a two-wheeler is 34 cm in length, and the great majority are 40-45 cm (Littauer & Crouwell985: 76, 91). The long naves of ancient two-wheelers were required by the material used: wooden naves revolving on wooden axles cannot fit tightly, as recent metal ones do. The short, hence loosely fitting nave will have a tendency to wobble, and it was in order to reduce this that the nave was lengthened. A wobbling nave will soon damage all elements of the wheel and put all parts of the vehicle under stress. If the vehicle should hit a boulder or a tree stump, the wheel rim would lose its verticality and, so close to the side of the body, could damage that as well as itself. The present reconstructions of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles above the axle level raise many doubts and questions, but one cannot argue about something for which there is no evidence (FIGURE 4). It is from the wheeltrack measurements and the dimensions and positions of the wheels alone that we may legitimately draw conclusions and these are alone sufficient to establish that the Sintashta-Petrovka vehicles would not be manoeuvrable enough for use either in warfare or in racing."