The languages shared by most of Europe came from the people of the Pontic Steppes, including hunter-gatherers who mixed with the early farming peoples of Western Europe. It was a mixture of populations that later became the Bronze Age early Greeks, the Anatolians of Troy, the Germanic tribes, the Celts, and the Balto-Slavic peoples.
Those who spoke what we now call Proto-Indo-European were predecessors of the Yamnaya – a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture.
They spread their culture and language to the west, to Europe, and east, thus the Indo-Persian link – a deep cultural, linguistic, and artistic blend between Persian and Indian cultures.
You may have said, “No need to reinvent the wheel.” That certainly stands true, as 5,000 years ago, the denizens of what is now an arc from Ukraine to the Caucasus mountains invented the wheel for us.
This technological breakthrough, which accelerated progress on the vast plains of Eastern Europe, occurred long before the Kyivan Rus civilization of modern Ukraine, whose lineage dates back to the Middle Ages. Of course, Kyiv, as the original capital of Slavic civilization, predates the despotic Mongol Empire-inspired state of Muscovy, the ancestor of the Russian and Soviet empires, by several centuries.
The original speakers of this precursor of most European language families of today, appearing millennia before the Scythians, were likely the first to domesticate the horse. Also, in addition to inventing the wheel, these innovators created the wagon and the chariot, which were later used by the Babylonian and Egyptian kingdoms, who adopted the technology of the steppes.
All of this raises the question: Will modern European technological civilizations come to the assistance of the land of their progenitors?
The next installment is coming soon.