Celtic Max Expansion c 250 BC 

Roman Empire Max Expansion 117 AD

The 3,000-year expansion of the horsemen from the Steppes maximized with the Celts by 250 BC, then began shrinking as the Roman Empire expanded. The two maps above illustrate an awesome change in only 133 years. The story is much bigger than the simple invasion and replacement of prior cultures by the horsemen. The progression of cultures during this expansion began with the Yamnaya and, as I surmise, cascaded through the succeeding cultures of Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Catacomb, Urnfield, Hallstatt, La Téne and reached their greatest extent with the Celts. Virtually all of the Celtic cultures were absorbed by the Romans—who, of course, also had horses but had built a formidable foot-based strategy in the Roman Legion.

The bigger story which extends to our present world is the expansion of the Proto-Indo-European language from the Yamnaya to become an enormous array of 445 derivative Indo-European languages spoken today by 3.2 billion native speakers—46% of the world’s population. I now include two tables which list the division of the branches of this language based upon a small but distinguishable difference between the centum and satem words.

Thanks for visiting,

R. E. J. Burke