Some Central Asian history from 2000-1500BC

Gold cup of the Trialeti culture

This post will look at the years 2000-1500BC for the region of Central Asia. Central Asia is a little tricky to describe and for the purposes of this post it will include the Pontic Steppes (referred to in previous European posts), the boreal lands north of Siberia and all the steppe lands from the black soil of the Ukraine, the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau, to the northern steppes on the borders of China. I will also include the history of the Iranian Plateau here. It is not Central Asian, but it does link the northern steppes with the regions of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

The same caveats that I have mentioned before must be mentioned again. I am not a professional historian, merely someone who finds history interesting. So, all of my data should be questioned heavily.

This period predates most writing, so much of what we learn will come from archaeology, with some additional input from linguistics, genetics, biology and geology. Dendrochronology is of less use here than in Europe, but we have the great fortune to be close enough to written history to be able to use folklore and legend here in a way that we have not been able to do in the posts about prehistoric Europe. There will however be some writings, mainly from nearby Mesopotamia, which shed some light on the kingdoms of what is now Iran.

Shahr-e-Sukhteh

Around the century of the 2000’s BC, we see the Kulli culture of Baluchistan coming to an end. This probably signals that the Indus Valley Civilisation, upon which the Kulli culture appears to have been based, was entering a period of difficulty and any influence on the hinterlands appears to have ending. It is around this time that the trade from Meluhha to Mesopotamia stops and the two civilisations drift apart, leaving each other as only a memory.

The Kura-Araxes culture south of the Caucasus came to an end around this time and the Trialeti culture, based in what is now Georgia, came to prominence. The Trialeti are known for their spectacular kurgan burials and might possibly be counted as a steppe culture.

Much further to the north and east, in Siberia, the Okunev culture comes to an end and the sprawling Andronovo culture. The Andronovo culture was in many ways an extension of the Sintashta culture. It covered a vast swathe of territory. The Andronovo region stretched from the north of the Caspian Sea past Lake Balkhash to the east and stretching into what is now Xinjiang in China. To the south it stretched down as far south as the BMAC, whose culture it seems to have influenced.

Figures from the Bactri-Margiana Archaeological Complex

The Andronovo culture should in no way be thought of as a single group and definitely not as an empire, but it is rather a cultural expansion, probably driven by the now perfected methods of chariot warfare. Every group on the steppe now adopted this new method or faced absorption by those that did. The transient nature of steppe life depended on the herds of livestock that could be kept. This means that any group that specialised in mobile warfare could steal the herds of those that did not with impunity. This gave a strong impetus for all groups to adopt a mobile form of warfare, in this case, the chariot.

In Elam, the city of Susa was conquered by the Ur III Dynasty in their expansion under their king Shulgi, but it won independence around the turn of the millennium under a Shimashki king known as Kindattu.

After he roared over Susa, Adamshah, and the land of Awan like a storm, made them submit in a single day, and captured their lords…
Inscription 2 of Ibbi-Sin, the last king of the Ur III Dynasty. The bombastic description here probably masks a weakening of Sumerian power

In the century of the 1900’s BC the Shimashki Dynasty in Elam ended. It is possible that this was not a dynasty in our modern understanding of the word, but that the king list that we have represents a number of rulers, some of whom ruled consecutively and who may have been allied, but from completely different families. Our understanding of Elam at this time is very limited. We have some knowledge, but apart from the names of some possible kings, we know very little. The Epartid Dynasty, which is similarly obscure, succeeded it.

Reconstructed chariot of the Sintashta culture

Also around this time, the Abashevo Culture, near the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, came to an end. It had however influenced the nearby Sintashta culture, who at this time were making spoked-wheel chariots, which allowed even small horses to become effective for battle.

Around the century of the 1800’s BC the Sintashta culture itself was drawing to an end, becoming subsumed in the larger Andronovo culture that surrounded it. The people of the Sintashta culture had built a large number of settlements on what is today just north of the northern border between Kazakhstan and Russia. They had been probably the first people in the world to pioneer using light, spoked-wheeled chariots. These imposing vehicles would have freed their hands for throwing javelins or shooting arrows with much greater freedom than could have been done from horseback. On the open grasslands these chariots must have been formidable status symbols. They were not entirely nomadic either. Contact with the BMAC to the south had introduced the idea of urbanism and some areas are even quite densely populated, for this time period.

Artists vision of what the town of Arkaim once looked like

One of the settlements is a place called Arkaim. This was a circular fortified settlement consisting of two concentric rings of walls, with houses and workshops in between. There were bronze working areas included in the city and it may have been something more akin to a factory city than a normal settlement. The site of Arkaim has been taken up by many neo-pagans who make some wild speculations about it. It is almost certainly not the birthplace of Zoroaster. However, the Sintashta peoples almost certainly were Indo-Iranian speakers and their religion probably had some similarities with the later religious practices described in the Rig Veda and the older parts of the Avesta.

The Indo-Iranian speakers of the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures were mingling with the people of the Bactro-Margiana Archaeological Complex and were probably migrating southwards in certain instances. The relationship between the steppe peoples and the sedentary peoples of what is now Turkmenistan seems to have been fairly peaceful. We have no evidence for the steppe people destroying the cities of the BMAC. The BMAC maintained trade relations with the people of the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation. This means that as the steppe people came into contact with the BMAC, that they would also have come into contact with the traders and diplomats of the cities of the Indus Valley.

Artwork from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
Complex

The climate was beginning to change over the course of this century. The monsoon systems, which had reached far to the north, into what is now Afghanistan, began to shift further south in unpredictable fashion. This may have caused the abandonment of the city of Shahr-e-Sukhteh, on the far eastern edges of what is now Iran. The loss of the rains would have led to the drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra River, which was relied upon by the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Around the century of the 1700’s BC the shifting of the monsoons began to take its toll. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) seems to have ceased to exist around this time. The largest city of the region, Gonur Tepe, was abandoned. The river it had been situated on had moved and the lack of rains made it pointless to re-found the city elsewhere. The peoples of the BMAC probably adapted the ways of the life of the steppe people among them. The Indo-Iranian languages of the steppes were probably adopted and some religious and linguistic elements adopted and fused into the new culture.

Also around this time, the Srubna (or Srubnaya) Culture, began to flourish on the steppes north of the Caspian and the Black Seas. These were another variant of the steppe cultures. They used bronze weapons and implements. They were very similar to the Andonovo culture to the east, but they buried their dead in timber-lined graves (which is what "Srubnaya" means in Russian).

Reconstructed timber hut of the Srubna culture

In Elam, the Elamite monarchs had become powerful enough to be regional hegemons over lower Mesopotamia, until they were defeated by the Amorites of Babylon under Hammurabi. Hammurabi had made an alliance with the city-state of Larsa to help him defeat the Elamites and once he had confined their influence to Susa and the mountains of Iran, Hammurabi turned on his previous allies. After breaking the power of Larsa and Eshnunna, Hammurabi seems to have tried to conquer Elam itself. It’s unlikely that he fully succeeded, but Elam may have paid tribute to Babylon for some decades.

Around the century of the 1600’s BC the Trialeti culture ended, in the region that is now part of the country of Georgia. This was a kurgan culture, meaning that they buried their important deceased in large earthen mounds raised above the plains. Like the earlier Maykop culture, they had been a transitional region between the Mesopotamian city-dwellers to the south and the steppe cultures to the north. It is possible that the Trialeti culture had been led by Indo-European speaking peoples.

Around the century of the 1500’s BC, the Epartid Dynasty in Elam ended and was replaced by the Kidinuid Dynasty. The end of the Epartid Dynasty marks the end of what has been termed the Old Elamite Period and the beginning of the Middle Elamite Period. The Kidinuid Dynasty is not particularly well known either however, unfortunately.

Elamite artwork

Near the Caspian Sea, south of where the BMAC culture had flourished, the Yaz culture began to become evident. This was in some ways the first distinctively Iranian culture. Plenty of ancient cultures had existed in the Iranian Plateau but they spoke non-Iranian languages. The Yaz culture almost certainly spoke an Iranian language that had begun to split from the Indic languages. The Yaz culture was settled, but with remnants of nomadism. Their towns were mixtures of Sintashta and BMAC structures. They clearly had horses and chariots, but they do not seem to have buried their dead. The aversion to burial of the dead seems to reflect the earliest beginnings of the Iranian religious tradition that would eventually become Zoroastrianism.

The Indo-Iranian language family seems to have split around this time, with the Indic languages arising around this time period. This century probably saw the composition of the earliest parts of the Rig Veda, as the speakers of Sanskrit moved from central Asia into the subcontinent.  Just to be clear, I do not believe that the speakers of Sanskrit invaded India. I believe that they probably had been involved in the subcontinent for many centuries. As they were trading and intermingling with the BMAC culture, they would have been aware of the area now known as India. When the climate shifted and the rivers dried up for the Harappan civilisation, the speakers of Sanskrit moved into the vacuum. With their new culture and status symbols like horses and chariots, they would have been people to emulate. There were not even necessarily that many of them who moved, at least not at once. But I believe that some form of migration from central Asia had to have happened. But here is not the place for a full discussion. Below is a video giving an idea of how the Vedic chanting sounds today.

Another migration of sorts, which might be similar in certain respects to the migration into India, was the emergence of the mysterious Mitanni kingdom. This kingdom was a Hurrian kingdom in the north of Mesopotamia, near the Khabur Triangle. The people spoke Hurrian, a language of the Hurro-Urartian family. It was not related to the other languages around it, or to any that are spoken today. But while the people and the kingdom spoke Hurrian, were culturally Hurrian and had Hurrian gods, the rulers did not. The rulers of the land had Indo-Iranian names and seem to have worshipped at least a few of the Indo-Iranian gods. They were also skilled charioteers, used an Indo-Iranian word for warrior, “maurya” and were experts on horsemanship. The occurrences of the names of Mitanni kings and their gods on treaty documents are the earliest instances of Indo-Iranian languages preserved to us. It’s not clear exactly who they were or how they got there but my own theory is that they were a group of mercenaries who had been hired by the Hurrians and who took control of the land. Sadly we know almost nothing of the Mitanni and everything we do know is from the writings of their enemies. Perhaps one day we shall find out more of these mysterious charioteer kings.

Mitanni era cylinder seal

This is the five hundred years of the period briefly described. The period sees continued linguistic evolution, with languages breaking into groups that we recognise today. Elam continued to be a force to be reckoned with, albeit a poorly documented one. The climate shifts that disrupted the Harappan and BMAC civilisations continued, with the monsoons moving almost entirely south into the subcontinent. This led to the downfall of many of urban cultures of central Asia and allowed the semi-pastoral steppe cultures to expand. We shall continue the story in the next blog.

Related Blog Posts:
Some Central Asian history from 4000-3000BC
Some Central Asian history from 3000-2000BC
Some Central Asian history from 2000-1500BC
Some Central Asian history from 1500-1000BC
Some Central Asian history from 1000-750BC
Some Central Asian history from 750-500BC