Why did Indo-European peoples want to expand over the Bronze-Age? Archaeologists today are less likely to ask such a generalised and philosophical question than their predecessors were. Explanations are now likely to be restricted to practical push and pull factors such as climate change and the opportunity to exploit mineral resources in new territories. These are worthy of consideration and can each play a part in the reasons for expansion in different locales at different times. But asking why Bell beaker folk invaded Britain or why Catacomb culture expanded south towards the Aegean, is far more specific than asking why all these various IE material cultures expanded, while others did not. There certainly were tin, copper and gold resources in the British isles and Iberia which seem to have attracted Bell beaker folk (these are exploited as soon as they arrived). We can speculate whether the wealth of Mediterranean cultures like the Minoans was a pull factor for the coming of the Proto-Greeks. Maybe drier conditions on the steppe forced some pastoralists to seek greener pastures abroad. But none of these reasons can fully explain the entire phenomenon of IE expansion across Eurasia between 3000 - 1500 BC. The end of this vast period saw the Aryans invade India and Iran, while the start saw Yamnaya and Corded ware people pushing West into central and northern Europe and East as far as the Altai. I think material environmental factors are a secondary consideration, after cultural ones which are the only constant common to all these IE cultures. The IE cultures all had expansionist tendencies due firstly to their pastoralist economies' dependence on open spaces for their cattle: a concern deeply embedded in the Rigveda as well as in the earliest Irish legends, and also due to the ancient institution of the Mannerbunde, the social function of which was primarily to neutralise the threat that ambitious young men pose to any society, but which has a secondary benefit of expanding the territories of the cultural group. In some cases there may also have been a kind of predatory or parasitic motivation to exploit the wealth and resources of an existing civilisation through raids or extraction of tribute as was seen with the Vikings in the medieval period. These are still materialist explanations, but the cultural conventions would not have been experienced as practical necessities, rather as inherited obligations. The fact IE cultures had a built in tendency for expansion, seizing new territories, and subjugating other peoples, ended up serving them well in the material sense, but I consider it likely they themselves would have attributed their own success to divine favour. Indra granted the Aryans new pastures of Bharat and released the river waters to make the land fertile. Woden gave victory to the Anglo-Saxons who were accompanied by his divine progeny; the twins Hengest and Horsa. The gods were present in every battle, in every migration.

^I will elaborate at length on this in my coming book, but what I can say for now is the following:

The Indo-European (Aryan-Faustian) spirit is one that has a great hunger for glory (which can take the form of conquest and exploration).

Dominique Venner states it beautifully when asked about the meaning of the Iliad:

'He sings about bravery and cowardice, friendship, love, and tenderness. Of the need for glory that pulls men up to the height of the gods.’

“Of all the rewards that virtue brings, the greatest is glory. It is this alone which makes up for the shortness of our lives through the recollections of future generations. It enables us although absent to be present, and although dead to live. In short, it is this which provides the steps by which men may seem to climb as high as gods.” —Cicero in one of his defence speeches

« Qui a peur de la mort? Personne, ce serait inconvenant. Au contraire, il est de bon ton de la défier constamment, jusqu'au bout, mais sans outrecuidance ni forfanterie, le plus simplement du monde, comme si c'était chose sans importance, pas plus que de retourner une mauvaise carte au whist. Le courage étant la quintessence évidente de la vertu à éperons. Ce courage a été fabriqué pendant des siècles. C'est un legs des ancêtres maréchaux ou colonels et, tel qu'il est, il entre de soi dans cet univers du rituel et de l'étiquette qu'est l'Armée. »

Lucien Bodard

Rome was built in a day. One day there was no Rome, then the next Romulus son of Mars founded his sacred city. Destiny was made manifest and an empire was born, all because on one fateful day one hero made one resolute action.

Moving closer to chaos is now desirable.

“All night we talk of this object. How much farther can it be? Beyond the Ganges, that we know. But how distant is that? No guide can tell us. I cannot overstate how this excites me. To stand where no man of the West has stood before! To behold that which none has seen! And forever to be the first!
Do you think me vain or self-inflated? Consider: What has almighty Zeus portioned out for man, save this earth? Heaven He has kept for Himself. But this sphere here, beneath this sky, we mortals may roam with naught to hem us but our own will and imagination.
I can see Earth’s Limit. It shines before my inner eye like a city of crystal, though I know, when I reach there, it will be but a shingly strand beneath an alien sky. No matter. It is Earth’s Ultimate, of which not Heracles or Perseus have dreamt, but only I.
What will I seize when at last I stand upon that shore? Nothing. I shall not even bend to pick up a stone or shell, but only clasp my mates’ hands and gaze with them upon the Eastern Ocean.
That is what I want.
That is all I want.”
—The Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield