The Sintasha chariot

Whilst we're talking about the Aryans in the taiga, I find that David Anthony's classic book is online now. Fatyanovo concerns page 15. Their land is there associated with the mediaeval Muscovy, as noted here. Abashevo shifts southeast along the Volga away from the Baltic toward Crimea, still bridging watersheds so - no real difference. Today I want to know what Hitler should have known: what use is the wheel up there.

We're all told about the Scythians' excellent horsemen and chariots. But we're dealing here with exactly the route Charles XII of Sweden took into the Russian heartland. The ground is covered in snow for a good part of the year and then mud, later on; and forested throughout. Anthony brings the chariot only in "late Abashevo" and suggests an import from early Sintasha. It is at Sintasha, across the Urals, that the chariot ... begin<s> to make sense.

Throughout all this time the Ukraine was still Indo-European having already ejected the ancestors to the Tochari toward the far northeast. Perhaps the Ukraine invented the chariot; perhaps the Tocharians' ancestors at Sintasha invented it, and it then got stolen by, among others, the invading Aryans from Abashevo.

The proto-Hungarians would, alongside moribund Afanasievo, have stayed north.