Leo Klejn

"Where Kuzmina finds Andronovo archaeological prototypes for the inferred Indo-Aryan cultural equipment known by the Mitanni Syria in the Near East and the Vedic speakers in India, Klejn points out that no actual trace of this Andronovo culture in the archaeology of either of these-Indo-Aryan cultures in the Near East or India has come to light. Klejns critique of this Andronovo hypothesis raises important objections. While acknowledging the Iranian identification of the Andronovo culture, he finds it much too late for an Indo-Aryan identification, since the Andronovo culture "took shape in the 16th or 17th century B.c, whereas the Aryans already appeared in the Near East not later than the 1 5th to 16th century B.C." More important, "these [latter] regions contain nothing reminiscent of Timber-Frame Andronovo materials" (Klejn 1974, 58). This is an essential point, especially since, as we have seen, some scholars date the Indo-Aryan presence in the Near East to the 18th or 17th century B.C.E. How, then, could the Indo- Aryans have been represented in a completely different material culture in the steppes at more or less the same time? An Indo-Iranian affiliation of the graves is even more unrealistic, since the joint Indo-Iranian period would have been much earlier than the dates for the Andronovo period. Brenties (1981), we can recall, pointed out the same objections with the Andronovo theory."