The Sintashta culture is a nearly perfect match for what the Vedas and the Avesta describe. In particular, its leaders were buried with chariots, the oldest two-horse chariots in the world.Genetically, the people of the Sintashta culture are identical to those of the Corded Ware culture of central and eastern Europe, so a mix of Yamnaya (the likely origin point of Indo Europeans) with European farmers. Which is a little weird; you have to imagine people from the Ukrainian steppes migrating west into Europe, mixing with local farmers, then sending an offshoot east back out onto the steppes where they formed the Sintashta culture. But the genetic evidence is very clear here; Sintashta men are completely identical to the men of Corded Ware Europe. The most important sites of the Sintashta culture are Sintashta (no surprise) and Arkaim. It is Arkaim that fascinates me, because of its remarkable structure. Most, at least, of the Sintashta towns were round, but only at Arkaim have the details of the structure been exposed by archaeologists.Most internet sites say the site was discovered in 1987, but the web site of the Russian institute that actually found it says 1968. Whenever it was found, it seems that not much was done at the site until 1987 when the Soviet Ministry of Water Resources decided to build a dam and flood it. The archaeologists were given a year to extract what they could from the site. They quickly discovered that the time and budget they were alloted were nowhere near enough to properly investigate the site and launched a campaign to either delay the dam or cancel it outright. Fortunately for the archaeologists, late Soviet chaos meant that the Ministry of Water Resources never got their act together to begin construction until the Soviet Union collapsed and the Ministry disappeared. Reconstructions of the site. Description, from wikipedia:
The settlement covered approximately 20,000 square metres (220,000 square feet). The diameter of the enclosing wall was about 160 metres (520 feet), and its thickness was of 4 to 5 metres (13 to 16 feet). The height was 5.5 metres (18.04 feet). The settlement was surrounded with a 2-metre (6-foot-7-inch)-deep moat. There were four gates, the main was the western one.Reconstruction of one of the houses, in the Arkaim Museum; every house had a hearth for smelting metals. One of the many (to my knowledge) unique things about the site. These houses were pretty big:
The dwellings were between 110 and 180 square metres (1,200 and 1,900 square feet) in area. The dwellings of the outer ring were thirty-nine or forty, with doors opening towards the circular street. The dwellings of the inner ring numbered twenty-seven, arranged along the inner wall, with doors opening towards the central square, which was about 25 by 27 metres (82 by 89 feet) in area.
The excavators thought about 2500 people lived at the site, which would mean 35 to 40 in each dwelling.
Everything about this site is weird: the shape of the settlement and the houses, the size of the dwellings, the ubiquitous smelters, the absence of any particularly large residence for a chief or king. One way the site fits the world of the Vedas is that there is no temple, since the Vedas say much about priests but nothing about temples. Sacrifices were very important in Vedic religion, but most were performed outdoors or in temporary shelters built for the occasion.
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The excavators thought about 2500 people lived at the site, which would mean 35 to 40 in each dwelling.
Everything about this site is weird: the shape of the settlement and the houses, the size of the dwellings, the ubiquitous smelters, the absence of any particularly large residence for a chief or king.
This positively ~screams~ "military outpost" to me - shared 'barracks' accommodations, a fortified outer wall, a layout designed to maximize usability of the limited space, hearths suitable for maintaining weapons and armor on the small "company" / large "squad" level, no "kingly" residence...
It honestly reminds me a bit of Zulu amakhanda, despite some notable differences.
I suppose it's also possible that this was a site devoted to some other kind of large scale fraternal organization, perhaps some kind of guild system of craftsmen, perhaps specifically for metalworking... but that doesn't seem anywhere near as likely. Particularly since we're talking about a warlike, hierarchical society as described in the Vedas, etc.
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