One significant thing about the Neolithic farmers who colonized Europe that we hardly hear about is their seafaring capabilities which enabled them to colonize and dominate the Mediterranean.
Josef Eiwanger (1987) Orange: Cardial and Impressoceramics Brown: Neolithic Capsian tradition light green: Saharo-Sudanese cultures (Khartoum culture, Shaheinab culture) red: Neolithic of the Niger purple: Levant - Old Neolithic (Fayum Neolithic, Merimde) green: Upper Egyptian Neolithic (Badari)
These people could very well be the original 'Sea People' (of the Mediterranean).
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Yes, it seems the Neolithic and cultural traits like the building of megaliths also in more northern parts of Europe were spread partly by maritime means. There is an ongoing archaeological project researching maritime connections during the Neolithic:
quote:The NEOSEA project will investigate Neolithic seafaring and the maritime technologies that shaped a new interconnected world of megalithic societies
More about NEOSEA
In Europe, most of the approximately 35,000 still remaining megaliths ((derived from the Old Greek μέγας (mégas) big and λίϑος (líthos) stone), including megalithic graves and standing stones, were constructed between 4500-2500 cal BC. Recent research into megalithic mobility and symbols suggest that the rise of long-distance sea journeys began in Europe as early as the megalithic era. Megaliths emerged in Northwest France and then spread over the seaways along Europe’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.
This new discovery leads to NEOSEA’s core hypothesis that maritime journeys and new skills in shipbuilding and navigation arose in Europe much earlier than, as previously thought, in the Bronze Age.
Specific goals of the NEOSEA project are:
-to determine prehistoric maritime linkages and migrations; -to define the emergence of monumental stone architecture within hunter-gatherer societies in Brittany; -to model the spread of megaliths in Europe with pioneering chronological precision (within 20-50y); -to synthesize a model of the social and economic organization of megalithic seafaring communities; and -to interpret these findings within a comparative global ethnographic framework.
To achieve these goals, I will compile available human bone samples from early megalithic contexts across Europe for radiocarbon dates, using: (1) ancient DNA (aDNA) and strontium/oxygen isotope analyses and (2) the novel extraction of environmental DNA (eDNA) from sediments at the earliest megalithic sites in Northwest France lacking bone preservation.
The application of Bayesian statistical modelling on eDNA, aDNA and strontium/oxygen analysis coupled with a large database of radiocarbon dates will produce the first closely detailed sequence for the rise of seafaring megalithic societies and their spread across Europe.
Another project, focused mainly on Europes Atlantic coast is Maritime Encounters. It mostly deals with the time from the Neolithic to the late Bronze Age
quote:Short description This project's central aim is to fill persistent gaps, opened by recent studies based on archaeology and aDNA, to understand maritime dimensions of migration, mobility and exchange along the Atlantic facade from Norway to Iberia. We will investigate the evolution of prehistoric maritime technologies and navigational capabilities on seas, rivers and lakes, and their role in major migrations, including:
1. direct and indirect evidence for prehistoric boats and boat building, exploitation of marine resources; 2. maritime and other water-based movements of humans, animals, lithics, metals, amber and other valuable raw materials; 3. model ancient sea crossings and navigation using novel methods from oceanography; 4. the contribution of indigenous knowledge and traditions to innovations at each stage and transitional episode; 5. the respectively roles of down-the-line versus direct long-distance contact in moving people, materials, ideas and languages.
^ Unfortunately almost all the archaeological remains we have of them is that of stone since wood is perishable so it's seldom that we find remains of the wooden boats and vessels they used. I find it a little unusual that only recently has Western academia made such effort into elucidating these people. I know genetics has made it easier but from the old literature most of the focus on ancient European history has been on the Bronze Age and Indo-European speakers.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
Yes, the earliest maritime technology has been rather uncharted, and the earliest movements on water too. We still have some traces though.
Already the Mesolithic of northern Europe has yielded proof of ancient boats and accessories. Thus at Starr Carr a lake site in England, there has been found an 11500 years old paddle which ought to have belonged to some kind of boat or floating vessel.
Now scientists think this was also accomplished by Hominid predecessors like H. Erectus. I believe they even discovered Homind footprints in the island of Crete.
But more to the point, with Neolithic cultures comes advanced stone technology that allows for more efficient watercrafts to be built in faster time and in greater numbers since food productions means more man-power.
We see this play out for example with the spread of Austronesian in the Asian Pacific Islands.
Such was definitely the case with the Neolithic Anatolian farmers who spread out through the Mediterranean.
Neolithic boat discovered near Rome Excavation at this site has recovered five canoes built from hollowed-out trees (dugout canoes) dating between 5700 and 5100 BC. Analysis of these boats reveals that they are built from four different types of wood, unusual among similar sites, and that they include advanced construction techniques such as transverse reinforcements.
One canoe is also associated with three T-shaped wooden objects, each with a series of holes that were likely used to fasten ropes tied to sails or other nautical elements. These features, along with previous reconstruction experiments, indicate these were seaworthy vessels, a conclusion supported by the presence at the site of stone tools linked to nearby islands.
It's interesting that you bring up examples of Mesolithic boats from northern Europe. We know that Hunter-gatherers inhabited the British Isles as well as Scandinavia so obviously the Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers were using boats of their own before the Farmers arrived so I wonder about the type of influences the latter had on them based on their initial encounter.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti It's interesting that you bring up examples of Mesolithic boats from northern Europe. We know that Hunter-gatherers inhabited the British Isles as well as Scandinavia so obviously the Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers were using boats of their own before the Farmers arrived so I wonder about the type of influences the latter had on them based on their initial encounter.
It would be desirable to find more both Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic boats so one could do a comparison between the different kinds of vessels regarding choice of material, sea worthiness, building technology, size and other traits. Then one could better judge how different traditions influenced each other.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
It is interesting to notice that some of he oldest boat types still are in use in different places in the world. One of them is of course the dugout, which has ben used on all continents and in Oceania.
Reed boats are known from many places in Africa, in Europe, in the Middle East and in South America. Bark canoes are also known from a lot of places, like North America, Europe and Australia. Here in Sweden we have one preserved example from the bronze age.
Boats made of skin are known from the Arctic, from North America, from Europe (among other places Ireland). They were often used in areas that were not rich in trees or other suitable materials.
Different kinds of rafts seem also to have been used in several places. Some of them can transport people long distances over the sea, which Thor Heyerdahls´ Kon-Tiki expedition shows.
An old, but still rather enlightening book about the development of different ship types is Björn Landströms´The Ship. Many new finds have been done since the book was written but it stil gives an overview over different kind of crafts during the years and just like in his Ships of the Pharaohs his illustrations make the book a feast for the eye.
^ In the Brown University article I cited- Seafaring during the Mesolithic and Neolithic in the Mediterranean Region-- the experimental archaeologist Harry Tzalas (a Greek) replicated Heyerdahl's voyage in regards to Neolithic seafarers. His project was called 'Papyrella' and the last website you cited talks about it. Strangely he opted for a reed woven boat instead of a dug-out canoe with the mistaken belief that the latter is not as seaworthy as the former. But the recent findings by Gibaja et al. near Rome has further debunked the claim of dug-outs not being marine worthy.
In fact it's likely that people have been crossing the Mediterranean since Paleolithic times but only in smaller scale and in shorter distances. It's with the Neolithic that we see this sudden expansion similar to other Neolithic expansions like Austronesian. Also, in the Brown University article it mentions that an important quarrying resource for these Neolithic mariners was obsidian which holds both technological and ritualistic purposes.
Yes, several islands get a more stable human occupation during the Neolithic. That goes for Cyprus which has signs of human presence already in the late Paleolithic, but where there are an expansion of sites during the Neolithic.
Crete seems also to be populated mainly during the Neolithic
quote:The population history of Crete can be traced to the early Neolithic when the island was colonized by farmers from Anatolia who established in Knossos, at about 7000 B.C.E., one of the first Neolithic settlements in Europe (Evans, 1994); other Neolithic settlements were subsequently established all over Crete (Tomkins, 2008). These Neolithic settlers and subsequent waves of Neolithic migrants (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991; Cherry, 1981; Nowicki, 2008; Weinberg, 1965) established the first advanced European civilization, the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Crete from 3000 to about 1450 B.C.E. (Evans, 1921).
quote:In this model, Sardinia is effectively colonized by the EF during the European Neolithic, with minor contributions from pre-Neolithic HG groups. Sardinia then remained largely isolated from subsequent migrations on the mainland26, including the Bronze Age expansions of the SP18,20,23. Support for this model is based on SNP array data, and has additional support from a ancient mtDNA study in Sardinia, which showed relative isolation from mainland Europe since the Bronze Age, particularly for the Ogliastra region27. There is also support for this model in the relatively low frequency in Sardinia of U haplogroups that are markers of hunter-gather ancestry18,28–31. The archaeological record in Sardinia is also broadly supportive of such a model – there are few notable sites from the pre-Neolithic, followed by an expansion of sites in the Neolithic and subsequent development of a unique local cultural assemblage (Nuragic culture) by the Bronze Age in Sardinia (see ref. 32,33).
To reach those islands people must have been using boats. Boats and maritime technology would have developed as exchange and contacts became ever more lively and more and more goods and people needed to be transported over longer and longer distances.
A replica of one of the neolithic dugouts found in Lake Bracciano in Italy. This replica was made in the Czech Republic. One can read more about it in the article linked below:
quote:For the whole year 2022 we were working on a dugout boat which could almost precisely fit the dimensions of the dugout – monoxyl found by Italian archeologists in the Lake Bracciano. We tested the new monoxyl in September 2022 on the Czech lake Rozkos, where it was also baptised with the new name: “The King of Mochov”. There it proved to be ready to go on the journey in the tracks of the first Neolitic farmers migrating to Europe and follow their ancient footprints around the chain of the Greek islands between the important archeological sites Cukurici and Franchthi.
In the article you link to in the OP they also discuss the development of boats from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic
quote:It is clear that the Mediterranean Sea must have often been used for travel, as boats allowed rapid movements of population, contacts and exchange of goods. This is seen not only in the vessel or other watercrafts, the subject of this paper, but also in the location of the first Neolithic settlements on islands or near the sea. For this reason, several researchers [2, 3] have proposed that the first farming communities must have travelled by sea, by means of short voyages following the coastline.
Obviously, those groups did not set sail without knowing what lay beyond the horizon they saw from their shores. Their knowledge about the maritime routes began to be acquired by Mesolithic groups, and possibly before, and was transmitted and perfected from generation to generation.
Much of the first indirect and direct evidence of maritime travel in Europe has been found at Mesolithic sites. Sea voyages explain the occupation during this period of Cyprus, Corsica, Sicily and Greek islands like Icaria, Lemnos and Melos [4–15]. Canoes discovered at several sites open a window to past navigation. They have been preserved under water (in lakes and lagoons) or in very humid sites (peat bogs). Their documentation reveals the types of boats that were used and their building techniques. Some of the most notable examples of Mesolithic canoes have been found at Noyen-sur-Seine and Le-Codray-Montceaux-Nandy, in France; Dümmerlohausen and Stralsund-Mischwasserspeicher, in Germany; Pesse, in Holland; Tybrind Vig, Lystrup and Praestelyng II-Baden in Denmark, and Hotiza, in Slovenia [16–23].
They were monoxylous canoes or dugouts made from a single trunk, of very different sizes. Some were small, practically for a single person, as at Pesse (7920–6470 BC), 3m long, or at Noyen-sur-Seine (7190–6540 BC), 4.5m long. Others were larger, like Canoes I and II at Lystrup (5200–5000 BC), 6-7m in length, one at Le-Codray-Montceaux (7240–6720 BC), and Canoe 2 at Stralsund-Mischwasserspeicher (4800–4700 BC), 8m long, and those at Tybrind Vig (4300–4100 BC), 10m long. Together with these, other nautical elements have sometimes been found, such as oars. These have been documented at the Danish sites of Tybrind Vig, Holmegaard and Ulkestrup Lyng [16, 17, 24]. Finally, remains of combustion identified inside some of the canoes shows that they were made by burning the middle of the trunks, which speeded up the work of hollowing them as it was thus easier to cut out the wood.
This model of dugout canoe, of varying sizes and made of different wood, using combustion of the trunk to hollow it, continued in the Neolithic. The canoes of La Marmotta are currently the only boats known at Neolithic sites in the Mediterranean basin. However, numerous canoes dated in more recent periods have been found in other countries [18, 20, 25]. Thus, for instance, the canoes at Seeland, Denmark (3640 and 2920 BC), 7m long, were made of alder (Alnus sp.). The one at Bevaix, Switzerland (3500–3030 BC), 8.27m long, was made of pine (Pinus sp.). Canoe 1 at Stralsund-Mischwasserspeicher, Germany (3858 BC) was 12m long and made from a lime trunk (Tilia sp.). Finally, canoes from the French sites of Paris-Bercy (2890–2510 BC), 6 and 8m long, and one from Charente, 5.56m long, (3650–2900 BC), were made from oak (Quercus sp.)
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: A replica of one of one of the neolithic dugouts found in Lake Bracciano in Italy. This replica was made in the Czech Republic.
Indeed, a striking parallel to the type of dugouts used by Proto-Austronesians.
This makes me wonder, how continuous was the culture (assuming this was a single culture) of these Anatolian Farmers across the Mediterranean?? From the archaeology, it seems the spread took place in multiple waves and colonizations. I'm thinking the scenario to be similar to the spread of the Phoenicians and later Greeks in the Mediterranean. They obviously maintained points of contact with each other across the sea for there to be some sort of common-wealth identity for these people.
Also, in regards to farming there had to have been scouts or surveyors in regards to land. For example in the Aegean alone many islands and the Greek Peninsula itself is very rocky with only sparse farmland. The colonizers would have had to carefully pick the right spots for farming.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
I wonder what languages the ANF/EEF people might have spoken. It probably wasn't Proto-Indo-European since the spread of that correlates better to later migrations from the West Eurasian steppes. Maybe something similar to Basque or ancient Iberian (assuming they all spoke related languages to begin with, which is not guaranteed)?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Actually Euskara (Basque) is a totally different language from ancient Iberian. It's likely the former represents an original (Paleolithic) European language.
But you are correct that Colin Renfrew's Anatolian Hypothesis has been debunked for the simple reason that it fails to produce evidence that the EEF/ANF was Indo-European. In fact, historical evidence supports the Kurgan/Steppe Hypothesis popularized by Marija Gimbutas but also by previous scholars like V. Gordon Childe and Otto Schrader. Such evidences show for example that while the Anatolian subfamily is the oldest recorded evidence of IE languages (Hittite and Luwian), the subfamily with the greatest diversity is Indo-Iranian followed by Balto-Slavic. Then there is historical issue of the predecessors of the Greeks themselves of the Helladic and Cycladic Cultures known as Pelasgians and the problem of their language which is obviously non-IE. This totally contradicts Renfrew's claim, and interestingly Herodotus and his peers claim the Pelasgian's language is related to those on the coast of Anatolia, the island of Lemnos, as well as Etruria and other islands in Italy. Herodotus says that by his time these people became minorities in their regions being overcome by later immigrants who did not speak their language. There is some contradictory claims wherein some of the Hellenes (Greeks) had Pelasgian ancestors like the Atticans (people of Athens and surrounding area) but what these authors really seem to be implying is that these were Pelasgians who became Hellenized. The despised Helots who were the slave class of Sparta were also said to be Pelasgoi. So obviously this was a case of IE speakers later immigrating into EEF areas.
By the way, I can't find the sources at the moment but I've read one popular theory that the ANF people immigrated into Europe in two main waves represented archaeologically by pottery types-- with the linear ware spreading further north through the Danube River while cardial ware was spread along the Mediterranean proper hence the map in my op post.
So one can argue that even the northern wave of farmers still migrated by boat as river-farers.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Cardium or cardial pottery gets its name from cardia (heart shaped) or cockle clams whose shells were used to impress the pottery with its designs.
This is in contrast to the Linear or Band ware pottery of the Danubian region named after the pattern made by string or cord.
Then there is also a difference in architectural styles. The Mediterranean First Farmers specialized in Cyclopean Masonry which used medium to massive limestone boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal clearance between adjacent stones with or without clay mortar. These were used for important city structures, while the Danubian First Farmers stuck with used timber and earth for their structures. This made sense because the limestone was more plentiful in the coastal areas than in the Danubian region.
^ So the Linear Ware Culture is what spread into Central and Northern Europe (including Scandinavia) but interestingly Linear-band Ware and Cardial Ware converge in France especially in the Britanny area (see Between Cardial and Linearbandkeramik: From no-man's-land to communication sphere by Samuel van Willigen)
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
These people were known as 'Farmers', but what did they farm?
The Eight Founder Crops and the Origins of Agriculture The Eight Founder Crops, according to long-standing archaeological theory, are eight plants that form the basis of origins of agriculture on our planet. All eight arose in the Fertile Crescent region (what is today southern Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Turkey and the Zagros foothills in Iran) during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period some 11,000–10,000 years ago. The eight include three cereals (einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, and barley); four legumes (lentil, pea, chickpea, and bitter vetch); and one oil and fiber crop (flax or linseed).
These crops could all be classed as grains, and they share common characteristics: they are all annual, self-pollinating, native to the Fertile Crescent, and inter-fertile within each crop and between the crops and their wild forms...
And let's not forget dogs!
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
^ The article above gives a somewhat narrow view of agriculture in a global perspective:
quote:The Eight Founder Crops, according to long-standing archaeological theory, are eight plants that form the basis of origins of agriculture on our planet.
If we shall talk about agriculture on our planet we ought not to forget that agriculture arose in different places independently. For example the domestication of plants in America. Some of the American crops form a large and important part of todays production of food (like potatoes and corn/maize). Asian crops like rice feed millions of people and descend from an independently developed agriculture. Also in places like New Guinea agriculture seems to have risen as a local invention. And as have been discussed in other threads millet and other crops seem to have risen independently in Africa.
Animal domestication is interesting, often different experiments with taming and domestication of other species than the well known domesticates have occurred. One well known example is the South American camelids. Another not so well know example is the taming and domestication of a species of South American fox among the Fuegians in the most Southern part of the Americas.
Fuegian dog Three Fuegian dogs in 1883 Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
But I see at the bottom of the link about the eight founder crops they have links to articles about Rice in China and beyond:
They also have articles about Sunflowers, Bananas and other interesting agricultural products.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ The source I cited is obviously referring specifically to Western (European) agriculture not really that of the entire planet, so the title is misleading and bias. Also, agriculture refers specifically to the cultivation of grains whereas horticulture is the broader term for cultivating plants in general.
Of course agriculture was independently invented in various parts of the world and more so other forms of horticulture. While agriculture was introduced to Europe by people from Southwest Asia, Africa had multiple centers of independent agriculture-- pearl millet and fonio somewhere in the western Sahel, and African rice somewhere in the lower Niger River Valley probably Nigeria, finger millet somewhere in the eastern Sahel, Sorghum in Sudan, and teff in Ethiopia. Strange how this is almost NEVER talked about despite the fact that both sorghum and African millets became huge exports during European colonialism. Interestingly in the Lower Nile Valley (Egypt & Nubia) although the grains used there are same as Southwest Asia (emmer wheat and barley) they did not use any Semitic or Asian terms but used their own native language terms for these crops and their farming process. These are just the grains. The fig tree domesticated by Natufians is also has a wild ancestry in Africa.
The same is also true with domesticated animals. Donkeys even those of Southwest Asia descend from the wild African ass, domesticated cattle in Africa also are indigenous, and so too guinea fowl-- the plain guinea fowl in West Africa and the horned guinea fowl in East Africa the latter is first documented in Nubia and Egypt and the root Egyptian word for Nubian (Nhs) is the horned guinea fowl. There is also evidence that attempts were made to domesticate Nubian goats before the arrival of domesticated goats from Asia. And yes Africans independently domesticated dogs too and possibly cats as there is debate where the oldest domesticated cat is from (Egypt or the Levant), although its wild ancestor is the African in origin via Natufian ancestors.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Another issue that gets little attention is the crucial role that women played in inventing horticulture including agriculture. Within the Paleolithic economy of hunter-gatherers, since women had the role of gatherers of vegetation it makes since they were the ones who founded the process of domestication of the vegetation. This is why in every Neolithic center there was a preponderance of female figurines and most of the wealthy so-called elite graves were those of women. This was was the basis of the 'matriarchy' theories of many feminists which more or less tends to get exaggerated or distorted. Here is one feminist source that still makes the relevant points:
When it comes to agriculture, the women selectively bred grain to be more nutritious but with a cost. As the grains they bred yielded higher calories, their seeds became to heavy to be dispersed by wind and the seeds also had to buried deeper in the earth. Thus cultivation became much more labor intensive.
This is why it's likely that Neolithic religions were based on the agricultural cycle that was itself a spiritual metaphor for the cosmic cycle in which goddesses were prominent. One recurrent mythological character was the 'Planter-Queen' who was the prototypical farm-lady. She was often wed to the 'Husbandman-King' who was the prototypical animal pastor.
As farming became more physically burdensome, men began to take over many roles and it was likely the plow itself was invented and utilized by men first before beasts of burden. Thus came the Planter King figure which prefigures later patriarchal cultures.
These Neolithic female figurines are quite interesting since some of them reminds somewhat of the much older Paleolithic "Venus" figurines from different parts of Europe. It has been speculated a lot about what they mean, one theory is that they were some kind of fertility goddesses or symbols.
Paleolithic Venus figurines from Europe
Also in Paleolithic (and Mesolithic) time the role of women was important, they probably gathered vegetables but it is also thought they made and used nets for small game hunting and for fishing (which still occur in some hunter gatherer societies and other traditional societies which combine horticulture with hunting, gathering and fishing). One also believes that they made clothes, baskets and many other important tasks.
Fishing implements used by women in a modern hunter gatherer society (Jarawas in the Andaman islands),
Fishing implements used by Humbukushu women from Okavango in Botswana, a present day small scale subsistence society, with farming, fishing and also some live stock herding Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ You are absolutely correct.
Here is a good article from Dashu: They are not "Venus" figurines: The language we use matters, and images matter very much I’ve spent fifty years studying the cultural record, searching for societies where women were free, and attempting to decolonize the history (and myths about history) that have been handed down as “truth” in the narratives of “Western Civilization” (and other patriarchies). Scanning through archaeological reports, I found that the farther back in time I looked, the more female figurines appeared in the excavations. In fact, these ancient statuettes—in stone, ivory, bone, and ceramic — turned out to be the central icons of the paleolithic and neolithic. They are the earliest human representations, and they are overwhelmingly female. I created the Female Icons, Ancestral Mothers poster in 2008 (shown below) to demonstrate that the global scope of these ancient female icons, from the paleolithic to recent times.
It took decades of digging through obscure specialist journals to find out how global this phenomenon was. Caught up in their search for rulers, chieftains, and weapons, writers and editors disregarded this female iconography. They often deemed the cultures where the female icons were prominent to be unimportant. They commonly dismissed the small female icons dismissed as toys, “dancing girls,” and “concubines,” and most commonly of all, as “fertility idols.” Even now archaeologists and other academics persist in reducing them to this reductive stereotype, which flattens out a richer examination of their cultural and spiritual significance. And it is tainted with the anti- “idolatry” prejudices of patriarchal religions.
The term “Venus figurine” is also widely used, which imposes an alien interpretative framework, not only because of its eurocentrism, but because it projects a narrow presumption of “sex object” onto iconography that has a far broader range of meanings and ceremonial uses. Some will say, “But Venus was a goddess — what’s wrong with that?” Few people are even aware that the naming itself originates from the Marquis de Vibraye’s sardonic description of a small paleolithic statuette found in 1864 on his Laugerie-Basse estate in Dordogne. The classically-educated aristocrat called her a "Vénus impudique,” seeing her as “immodest” in contrast to the Roman archetype of Venus Pudica...
You can watch her video series 'Ancestral Mothers of the Paleolithic' parts 1, 2, and 3.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
quote:They commonly dismissed the small female icons dismissed as toys, “dancing girls,” and “concubines,” and most commonly of all, as “fertility idols.”
The last label might not be so inaccurate. If crop cultivation was women's work in Neolithic European societies, having a female deity oversee agriculture and the fertility of fields might make sense.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ That where these concepts of the 'Planter Queen' or 'Grain Maiden' come from in virtually every agricultural society. In Sumer, there is Ashnan the Wise who was like the Greek Demeter and Italian Ceres. There is also the Celtic Tailtiu and Rosmerta, and Teutonic Gefjon the ploughing mistress, Slavic Mokosh, mother of moist earth etc. Many rural villages have a strikingly similar custom of making female effigies of straw and using them in various farming rituals. Many of these ancient Neolithic religions survived into the Iron Age with religions like the Eleusinian Mysteries centered around Demeter and her daughter Persephone whose death and rebirth reflected the agricultural cycle. In some cases the sacrificial figure is replaced by a male like in Egypt (Ausar) and in SW Asia (Adonis, Dumuzid). In some Amerindian cultures the Corn Maiden is sometimes literally sacrificed and dismembered in a belief that it brings renewal to the land!
What's significant about all these religions is the belief in resurrection of the dead which is the basis of Judaism and Christianity.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Here's a recent paper from last year on the beginnings of the Neolithic in the island of Sicily.
Sicily and the Process of Neolithisation: A Review of the Archaeobotanical Data Abstract This review paper analyses the first steps of the spread of domestic plants into Sicily. Despite being the biggest island of the Mediterranean and its central position, the process of arrival and diffusion of crops in Sicily is still poorly understood. Starting from the limited but significant record from Grotta dell’Uzzo, the plant macrofossil data are presented and discussed with some comparison with the pollen, zooarchaeological and obsidian data. The closest regions to Sicily, from where these domesticates may have come, are discussed. The arrival of domesticated plants in Sicily fits perfectly with the model of dispersal by sea. The introduction of crops was a slow process that covered the whole of the Neolithic period. The intention is to raise interest in this field and to inspire researchers to analyse more plant macro- and micro-remains from prehistoric archaeological contexts in Sicily.
Introduction The origins and spread of agriculture from southwest Asia to Europe have been some of the most significant topics in archaeological research for the last 40 years (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1979; Pinhasi et al. 2005; Renfrew 2017; Shennan 2018). In the dispersal of the Neolithic from its sources of origin, various routes were followed, including the crossing of shorter or longer stretches of the Mediterranean Sea. Islands, due to being geographically circumscribed, are models for the dispersal of plants, animals and humans by sea (Warren et al. 2015). For example, the latest research in Cyprus and Crete has allowed archaeologists to accurately describe the arrival and spread of Early Neolithic communities, and this has radically changed our knowledge of the start of the Neolithic there (Guilaine 2017; Lucas and Fuller 2020).
Surprisingly, despite being the biggest island and forming a central region where the concept of the northern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean loses its sense, the process of Neolithisation in Sicily is still poorly understood. And in contrast to Sardinia and other Mediterranean islands, Sicily is quite close to the mainland of Italy, being just 3 km away from Calabria across the straits of Messina. So, potentially, the spread of domestic plants and animals, together with other aspects of the Neolithic culture, could be the result of both a very short or a longer distance sea crossing.
The earliest dated Neolithic archaeological complexes in Sicily are characterized by the Impresse Arcaiche pottery, which started to appear in the island between the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th millennium BCE (Natali and Forgia 2018). Most of the archaeological sites lie in the north-western part of the island and are limited to the coast and in caves, and no open-air settlement is known. The cave sites of Grotta dell’Uzzo, near San Vito Lo Capo, Grotta d’Oriente on the island of Favignana, and Grotta del Kronio, near the town of Sciacca in southwestern Sicily, represent the most significant dated sequences for these early Neolithic phases, together with the finding of Impresse Arcaiche in other caves in the area of Trapani and Palermo. Grotta del Kronio is the only site on the southwestern coast of the island where a sequence from Impresse Arcaiche to Impresse Evolute and the Kronio styles of pottery were identified (Tiné and Tusa 2012). Lithic technology, mostly found on flint tools, shows a continuity between the Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic industries, with very few exceptions (Collina 2012). All of these records show the early arrival of the Neolithic on the western part of the island, while eastern Sicily has very few signs of Neolithisation before the 6th millennium BCE (Tiné and Tusa 2012). The introduction of domestic animals like Bos taurus (cattle), Ovis aries (sheep) and Capra hircus (goat) is known from the Early Neolithic phase of Grotta dell’Uzzo and Grotta d’Oriente (Tagliacozzo 2005/2006; Martini et al. 2012).
With the development of Stentinello ware or Impresse Evolute (phases I and II) during the 6th millennium BCE, decoration with complex patterns on pottery became more common and the first open air settlements with huts are recorded, even if they are limited to very few “villages with enclosures” that instead characterize the late Early and Middle Neolithic in southern Italy (Tiné and Tusa 2012). Islands like the Isole Eolie (Aeolian or Liparian archipelago) northeast of Sicily (Fig. 1) were occupied at least by the middle of the 6th millennium BCE, when Stentinello pottery was already associated with the painted Tricromica ware, mostly in northern and western Sicily (Natali and Forgia 2018). Stentinello phase II is also marked by a significant increase in the spread of obsidian from Lipari, that reached its peak in the mid 5th millennium BCE (Freund et al. 2015), together with a general demographic growth (Giannitrapani 2023), even in the inner areas of the island as indicated at the sites of Rocche di Roccapalumba and Stretto Partanna (Tiné and Tusa 2012). The presence of domesticated livestock during the 6th millennium is shown by remains of ovicaprines (sheep or goats) both at coastal and inland sites (Prillo et al. in press).
Sites mentioned in the text; arrows showing potential routes for the spread of domesticates during the Neolithic, dashed lines mean uncertain routes; 1, Gorgo Basso and Lago Preola; 2, Lago di Pergusa; 3, Urio Quattrocchi; 4, Biviere di Gela; red dots, sites with no archaeobotanical analyses; blue dots, lake/ponds with pollen analyses; yellow dots, some of the sites with the most ancient Neolithic occupation; red * indicates archaeobotanical analyses Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
As far as nautical cultures using stone tools are concerned, the Austronesians have to be the most impressive in terms of how far they traveled. Starting from their point of origin in Taiwan, they spread as far west as Madagascar (where they mixed with people of mainland African origin), as far south as New Zealand, and as far east as Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) in the Pacific. I believe there is genetic evidence of Polynesians admixing with Native Americans before Columbus, as is also suggested by the Polynesian adoption of South American sweet potatoes.
The Neolithic mariners of the Mediterranean appear to have rowed far and wide too, but the Austronesians' unique outrigger technology seems to have given them an edge when it came to overseas travel.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ Indeed. Of course the expansion of Austronesians in so vast an area took much longer time and multiple waves of colonization but you are correct about the outrigger boats and stone technology. Interestingly, there are many striking parallels between the Neolithic Anatolians and the Neolithic Proto-Austronesians of Formosa (Taiwan).
advanced boat technology: single-hull dugout, the single-outrigger canoe, the double-outrigger canoe (i.e., dugout canoe, with light outriggers on both sides), and the double canoe (i.e., two true approximately equal dugout hulls held a few feet apart by crosswise struts).
farming domesticates: Plants-- 3 grains- rice [Oryza sativa] (javanica variant), adlay millet [Coix lacryma-jobi] (domesticated before rice), and djulis [Chenopodium formosanum] a.k.a. Asian quinoa; grasses like bamboo and sugarcane; root crops like taro and ube (purple yam); peppers; and a variety fruits like figs; and trees for wood like mastwood, sandalwood, etc. 3 Animals-- pigs [Sus scrofa (vittatus)], chicken [Gallus domesticus], and dog [Canis domesticus] (Southeast Asian Village variety) distinct from the Papuo-Australian hunting dogs.
advanced stone tools which enabled them to utilize obsidian and jade. obsidian Jade
The origins of the Megalithic cultures in Europe remains controversial, but it appears to have emerged as a fusion of cultures from Mesolithic West Europeans with Near Eastern farmers who had migrated along Mediterranean coasts. DNA testing of remains from Megalithic burials showed that paternal ancestry was overwhelmingly Mesolithic European, while maternal ancestry was predominantly East Mediterranean.
The oldest megalith in Europe is the Cromlech of the Almendres in central Portugal, built in the 6th millennium BCE. It was followed by the constructions of the Cairn of Barnenez (c. 4800 BCE) in Brittany, the Tumulus of Bougon (c. 4700 BCE) in central-western France, and the Dolmen de Alberite (c. 4300 BCE) in southern Andalusia. It is only from 4000 BCE that megaliths start appearing more widely around Western Europe. From 3500~3400 BCE, megaliths builders start moving into the Low Countries, Germany and Scandinavia, where they would integrate the Funnel-beaker culture.
Megalithic structures include the stone circle, the dolmen (portal tomb), the passage grave, the gallery grave (aka wedge tomb), and standing stones (known as menhirs in France).
The most famous megaliths include the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, England, the passage graves of Brú na Bóinne (Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth) and Carrowmore in Ireland, Maes Howe in Orkney, and Gavrinis in France, and the Carnac stones in Brittany, France.
Their Neolithic agricultural economy was based primarily on the cultivation of crops from the Fertile Crescent, especially as wheat and barley. Megalithic farmers bred livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, but to a lower extent also goats and pigs.
Like in other Neolithic cultures, most tools were made of stone, bones or antlers. Flints and quarzes were used to make blades, cutters, scrapers and drills. Large jade alpine axes were very common in France, Belgium, and the Rhineland, and were found more sporadically in northern Spain, Britain, Ireland and Denmark.
The last centuries of the Megalithic cultures were contemporaneous with the Bell Beaker trade network, which connected the Atlantic economies to those of Central Europe. It is during this period that Steppe people carrying Y-haplogroup R1b migrated to western Europe, replacing most of the Neolithic lineages in the region (except in Iberia where their impact was more limited at first).
Ancient DNA tests have shown that Atlantic Megalithic people had a variety of skin tones ranging from pale-intermediate to dark. Almost all had brown or black hair. The majority had brown eyes. They were lactose intolerant.
Something went on in Western Europe ideologically, likely religiously. Indeed many scholars postulate a religious revolution of some sort that lead to the construction of all these megaliths.
Megalithic Centers
^ Many of these megaliths, specifically the menhirs appear to be feminine in nature as Dashu has pointed out here: Megalithic Women The custom of engraving vulvas onto rock walls and boulders was carried over to some megalithic statues of women. A number of west European megaliths, such as those in Huelva, Spain, and the capstone known as Le Déhus at Guernsey Island, bear these vulva signs. So do some of the Cycladic marbles. A vulva is the most prominent feature on a rough, high-relief statue from Thera, circa 1600 BCE. Her face is abstracted to a beaked nose.
Megalithic women with hands clasped around a large vulva are found in the Bada valley of Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia. They too have abstract mask-like faces, somewhat concave with upturned edges, and no mouths. Menhirs known as bülbül (“grandmother”) are scattered across the central Asian steppe, from Mongolia to Ukraine. Some place their hands over the womb; others hold a chalice there. The Yakut people still make carvings of women holding a ceremonial choron in this manner; in their religion, it is women who preside over the great spring festival in which people gather in great circles to dance around chorons elevated on pillars.
On a series of impressive stelas at Cerro Jaboncillo, Ecuador, women proudly display their vulvas, as if emanating power. They have clear shamanic overtones: one woman’s hands are modelled to look like birds, while others are flanked by spiral-tailed monkeys. Fantastic lizard-beings are carved on the obverse side of the stelas. Some of the women are seated on curved thrones. Carved stone seats have been found at hilltop sites. Though some commentators are quick to assign the thrones to male chieftains, only women are depicted sitting on them. [Little historical attention has been paid to these stelas; Saville 1907 still seems to be the best source, with many photos. The first image in this article is from Cerro Jaboncillo.]
In the San Agustín complex of Colombia, megalithic women clasp their breasts or hold a child in front of their body. One smiles broadly, showing jaguar teeth. Some of the female megaliths of Pasemah in southern Sumatra also carry children; others ride on the backs of water buffalo, a symbol of the living matriarchaat of the neighboring Minangkabau. The women wear necklaces, earhoops, and circular leg-bands. They belong to a megalithic complex that includes dolmens, burial cists and stone basins.
Breasts and necklaces are a distinctive theme in megalithic art of northern Africa and western Europe. They appear in the Aveyron region of southern France and in the Paris basin, Marne and Oise regions of northern France; at Arno in the Italian Tyrol; and at Silté in southern Ethiopia. A megalith at Pedras Mamuradas in Sardinia has breasts but no necklaces, while others have necklaces but no breasts (at Toninuelo and Bulhôa in southern Portugal and Tabelbalet in the Algerian Sahara). The famous Sardinian marble from Senorbi has breasts and a sketchy necklace (though at 42 cm. she is hardly a megalith).
Breasts and necklaces were the iconographic focus in northern France, with the faces rendered simply as brow-over-nose. Women were carved as freestanding stone statues as well as in dramatic rock-cut reliefs in the hypogea of Collorgues, Gard region. These ancestral women stand like guardians at the entrances to underground funerary sanctuaries cut out of the living rock. [See von Cles-Reden 1962; Gimbutas 1991; and Twohig 1981 for pictures and discussion of the European megaliths. Documentation for the Sahara and the rest of Africa is sparse; much more research needs to be done.]
The face of the ancestor, defined by a schematic brow-and-nose, turns up in many places. It is extensively used in the Jomon figurines of ancient Japan, in neolithic sites in western Asia and the Balkans, and in the classic cultures of Brazil and Argentina, to name a few. One of these ancestor-faces surmounts a clay shrine-house in Macedonia, circa 6000. Another appears on a female megalith from Georgia (Caucasus) around the 7th century BCE. This motif is sometimes described as an owl-face, which fits in some cases, like the offering vessels in Danish megaliths or the Jomon “horned owl” dogu. But frequently the eyes are not rounded—sometimes they’re barely marked—and most lack a beaked nose. Mouths are often entirely missing (as at Tabelbalet in Algeria and Collorgues in France). As folklore attests, this sign often indicates a connection with the dead. These are not portraits of individuals, but ancestral presences. In megalithic Europe, they are usually associated with collective burials. The female ancestor represented with hands on belly is another common megalithic theme. She is common in western European megaliths (Fivizzano, Liguria; Toninuelo, Portugal; Collorgues-du-Gard and many other French sites). The ancestral woman is represented in over fifty megaliths from the Aveyron region of southern France. Again, the face is a spare geometric mask. It is framed by multiple necklaces on the most impressive of these megaliths, a cloaked figure from St Sernin. The horizontal patterns on her cheeks may represent face-paint or tattoos. The St-Sernin icon bears a strong thematic resemblance to Ethiopian megaliths planted in the earth at Silté, in the mountains south of Addis Ababa. Both groups are dressed slabs decorated in low relief that highlights the breasts, thick layers of necklaces, and hands over belly. The Ethiopian women are larger and more richly carved with other symbols and patterns. Sorghum, the staff of life over much of north Africa, appears in the lower body of several. (On one megalith it doubles as a vulva.) Another statue holds staves in her hands and wears a cup suspended from her necklace. Most of the Silté monuments appear to have have been decapitated, although at least one survivor shows a head carved in the round. Many bear rows of cupules (circular borings into the stone). [Crawford 1991: 134-5; plates 39-41]
Cupules (or “cup-marks”) are also found on European megaliths, and on petroglyph stones all over the world. This animist ritual practice originated in very ancient times. It persisted into the middle ages, when it was practiced even on the walls of certain Christian churches, such as the cathedral of Nuremburg. Devotional scrapings have also hollowed out the vulva of a medieval serpent-woman at Sanchi, India. Many of Irish sheila-na-gigs (sculptures of women displaying their vulvas) show clear traces of this boring or scraping process. [See photos in Anderson 1977] The old statue from Seir Kiaran is an archtypical Irish sheila: a hairless crone, with prominent ribs and small, pendant dugs (a far cry from the porn queen favored by some post-structuralist interpretions of vulvan iconography). Like the Cailleach Bhéara, a woman of legendary age who was remembered as the mother of nations and peoples, the Seir Kiaran sheila is old, a progenitor and ancestor. A ring of borings circles her womb, with the deepest, representing the vaginal portal all sheilas display, at the base. Atop the sheila’s bald head are two holes, placed as if to attach a headdress, or a pair of horns.
Rock dust from these icons was revered as potent in healing, blessing, conception, and protection. [Flint 1991: 257] Present-day accounts report that in some parts of Ireland, the sheilas still figure in devotional “patterns” that involve walking around sacred sites. Sometimes, even today, these ritual courses include touching or rubbing the stone vulva, as Mara Freeman witnessed at an old church at Ballyvourney, Cork. She was amazed to see a devout Catholic matron who had been performing the Stations of the Cross reach up through a window and rub the vulva of a sheila perched above it. [Mara Freeman, “Sheelas,” Online: The Celtic Culture List, Celtic-L@listserv.hea.ie, March 1, 1998]
These archaic devotions persist within the conservational gravity field of folk culture. Even in modern times, women in some districts of Europe went to sacred stones and megaliths said to confer the power to conceive. They rubbed their bellies or vulvas against the rock, or lay in a rock “bed,” often sleeping in it overnight. [Sebillot 1904: Vol IV, 56-57] Or they slid down a boulder, as Scottish women did on the Witches’ Stone near Edinburgh, which was carved to resemble a vulva, and as Estonian women did on the cupule-studded Sliding Stone of Kostivere. Animist practices of this kind draw on the sacred power of the living rock. The vulva stones and megalithic icons express this power through signs of female generativity, sexuality, nurture, and immanent vitality. Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
One researcher who has worked extensively with the spread of Megalithic culture in Europe is Bettina Schulz Paulsson from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. A part of her research is the collecting of c 2400 radiocarbon dates to refine the Megalithic chronology. She is a part of the NEOSEA project mentioned in this thread.
quote:Radiocarbon dates show the origins of megalith graves and how they spread across Europe
How did European megalith graves arise and spread? Using radiocarbon dates from a large quantity of material, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg has been able to show that people in the younger Stone Age were far more mobile than previously thought, had quite advanced seafaring skills, and that there were exchanges between different parts of Europe.
Bettina Schulz Paulsson’s study has been published in the prestigious scientific journal PNAS. With the aid of modern technology, she has been able to answer a question which has occupied researchers for over a hundred years: How and where did megalith graves arise?
Today, there are approximately 35,000 megaliths – ancient monuments constructed from one or more blocks of stone – that remain all across Europe. Most of them come from the Neolithic period (the final part of the Stone Age) and the Copper Age (the transition period between the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age) and are concentrated in coastal areas.
The question scientists have long been asking is whether the tradition of constructing megalith graves spread across Europe from a single point of origin, or if this tradition arose at different locations, independent of each other.
More than 2,400 radiocarbon dates
Bettina Schulz Paulsson, who is an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, has analysed more than 2,400 radiocarbon dates from megalithic, pre-megalithic and contemporaneous non-megalithic sites throughout Europe, which she collected over a 10-year period in the research literature and on field trips.
The earliest megalith graves arose 6,500 years ago over a period of 200-300 years in Northwest France, along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, and in the Mediterranean region.
Pre-megalithic structures were found only in Northwest France. Megalith graves emerge on the Iberian Peninsula, in the British Isles and in France in the first half of the 5th millennium BCE, and in Scandinavia during the second half of the same millennium.
In the early 20th century, researchers such as Oscar Montelius and Gordon Childe assumed that the megaliths had developed in one region (although they disagreed on where) and then spread from there. But apart from these two, until now the scientific community had thought and assumed that the construction of megalith monuments developed independently in five separate regions.
Diffused via sea routes
For the first time, Bettina Schulz Paulsson’s study establishes that this practice was not developed in and then spread from different places independently of each other – and also where the first ones were constructed.
“My results show that Northwest France was where Europe’s first megalith graves arose and that the megalith tradition then gradually diffused in largely three phases. All in all, the results indicate that there was great mobility via sea routes,” says Bettina Schulz Paulsson.
“This is the first time that this has actually been shown. The distribution of these graves suggests that the megalith tradition was diffused via sea routes. The maritime skills and technologies of megalithic societies appear to have been more advanced than previously thought,” says Bettina Schulz Paulsson.
The study entitled Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model of megaliths in Europe was published in the scientific journal PNAS on 11th February.
^ From Paulsson's paper: Results The radiocarbon dates suggest that the first megalithic graves in Europe were closed small structures or dolmens built above-ground with stone slabs and covered by a round or long mound of earth or stone. These graves emerge in the second half of the fifth millennium calibrated years (cal) BC within a time interval of 4794 cal BC to 3986 cal BC (95.4%; 4770 cal BC to 4005 cal BC, 68.2%)(Dataset S3,M7-2 to M29-4), which can be reduced most probably to 200 y to 300 y, in northwest France, the Channel Islands, Catalonia, southwestern France, Corsica, and Sardinia. Taking the associated cultural material into consideration, megalithic graves from Andalusia, Galicia, and northern Italy presumably belong to this first stage (Fig. 3). There are no radiocarbon dates available from the early megalithic graves in these regions, or their calibrated ranges show an onset extending into the fourth millennium cal BC, as is the case for Galicia. Of these regions, northwest France is the only one which exhibits monumental earthen constructions before the megaliths (SI Appendix, Fig. S2). The Passy graves in the Paris Basin have no megalithic chamber yet, but are impressive labor-intensive structures with a length of up to 280 m. These graves seem to be the earliest monumental graves in Europe; the first individual buried in the Passy necropolis died in 5061 cal BC to 4858 cal BC(95.4%;5029 cal BC to 4946 cal BC, 68.2%)(Dataset S3,M1-4).Somewhat later, the first monumental graves emerge in Brittany, and especially in the region of Carnac, in the form of round tumuli covering pit burials, stone cists, and dry-wall chambers
Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking this megalithic trend may very well have something to do with the two Neolithic cultures-- cardial ware and ribbon ware-- converging in that area of France??
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
To Bring up Brandon's point about the language(s) spoken by the Neolithic forebears, it's difficult to say because the proto-historical time the Greeks documented a number of languages being used in the Mediterranean from Pelasgian, to Eteo-Cretan (Minoan) to Etruscan and Iberian. It's possible there could have been more than one language brought out of Anatolia-- at least 2 if one were to go by the two wave/two ceramic tradition. Then there is the issue of the multiple languages already spoken in Mesolithic Europe by the indigenous hunter-gatherers and how much of the language(s) they adopted from the immigrant farmers. We know that culture can be adopted without necessarily language and vice versa.
^ The Aquitanian language documented by the Romans seems to correspond with modern Euskara (Basque) and likely part of the isolate family. I am curious about the finding that Germanic and the Goidelic branch of Celtic preserves pre-Indo-European substrates but I don't have a yet enough info on this. I don't know if Archeopteryx who is a Germanic speaker knows more about this. As far as Goidelic speakers I have read in several sources that the Irish myth of the indigenous Fomorians could very well describe the Neolithic people since the myths describe them as being the makers of giant standing stone structure and as seafaring pirates with magical powers.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking this megalithic trend may very well have something to do with the two Neolithic cultures-- cardial ware and ribbon ware-- converging in that area of France??
Some signs indicate that already the hunter gatherers built megalithic monuments and that the farmers continued the traditions. Obviously there was some exciting cultural exchange going on
quote:The very earliest dates she found came from megaliths built in northwestern France, including the famous Carnac stones from around 4700 BC, when the region was inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Engravings on standing stones from the region depict sperm whales and other sea life, which suggests the builders may also have been mariners.
Over the next few thousand years, stone monuments start to appear all over Europe in several distinct phases, along coastal sites, and then further inland. Stonehenge is thought to have been built around 2400 B.C., but other megaliths in the British Isles go back to about 4000 B.C.
She also suggests that the evidence may indicate that the concept spread along sea routes, and that sea faring technology may have been more advanced than we think.
Bettina also points out that north western France only region where megalithic structures are preceded by enormous earthen monuments dating to around 5000 BC, which could feasibly be the inspiration for the stone ones which emerged a little later.
Archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson said in Science Mag that while the study does a good job establishing that the first builders were in north western France, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of later cultures inventing them too.
It looks like the century-old debate will continue, but for monument lovers everywhere, this is a landmark piece of research (literally!), and Bettina’s paper is well worth a read.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti I am curious about the finding that Germanic and the Goidelic branch of Celtic preserves pre-Indo-European substrates but I don't have a yet enough info on this.
We do not know much about the most ancient languages here in Scandinavia, the languages of the hunter gatherers. But there are some hints about the languages from the first farmers. Some words from them can have survived the introduction of Indo European languages.
quote:Scandinavia’s earliest farmers exchanged terminology with Indo-Europeans
ARCHAEOLINGUISTICS 5,000 years ago, the Yamnaya culture migrated into Europe from the Caspian steppe. In addition to innovations such as the wagon and dairy production, they brought a new language – Indo-European – that replaced most local languages the following millennia. But local cultures also influenced the new language, particularly in southern Scandinavia, where Neolithic farmers made lasting contributions to Indo-European vocabulary before their own language went extinct, new research shows. Most historical linguists agree that words such as ‘wheel’, ‘wagon’, ‘horse’, ‘sheep’, ‘cow’, ‘milk’ and ‘wool’ can be attributed to the Yamnaya people who migrated into Europe from the Caspian steppe 5,000 years ago. The nomadic and pastoral Yamnayans introduced their material culture to the local peoples through a new language known as Proto-Indo-European, from which most European languages descend.
However, not all words in the European languages are of Proto-Indo-European origin, linguists say; there are words for flora and fauna, which must have been incorporated into Indo-European from local cultures. But where could such cultural exchange have taken place? According to a new study published in American Journal of Archaeology by archaeologist Rune Iversen and linguist Guus Kroonen from the University of Copenhagen, southern Scandinavia 2,800 BC provides an ideal setting for such an exchange:
“The archaeological evidence tells us that between 2,800 and 2,600 BC two very different cultures co-existed in southern Scandinavia: there was the local, Neolithic culture known as the Funnel Beaker Culture with its characteristic funnel-shaped ceramics and collective burial practices and the new Single Grave Culture influenced by the Yamnaya culture. The Funnel Beaker Culture was eventually superseded by the Single Grave Culture, but the transition took hundreds of years in the eastern part of southern Scandinavia, and the two cultures must have influenced each other during this time, “says archaeologist Rune Iversen, who has specialised in this particular transitional period.
Peas, beans, turnips and shrimps Historical linguist Guus Kroonen points to a number of words for local flora and fauna and important plant domesticates that the incoming speakers of Indo-European could not have brought with them to southern Scandinavia.
“There is a cluster of words in European languages such as Danish, English, and German – the Germanic languages – which stand out because they do not conform to the established sound changes of Indo-European vocabulary. It is words like sturgeon, shrimp, pea, bean and turnip that cannot be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European ancestor,” Guus Kroonen explains and adds:
“This tells us that these words must have entered Indo-European after it had spread from the Caspian steppe to the various parts of Europe. In other words: the new Single Grave Culture is likely to have adopted much farming and hunting terminology from the local Funnel Beaker Culture that inhabited southern Scandinavia and Denmark till around 2,600 BC. When Indo-European in Northern Europe developed into Proto-Germanic, the terminology for local flora and fauna was preserved, which is why we know and can study the terms today.”
Guus Kroonen adds that this farming terminology may be vestiges of a now extinct language spoken by the people who initially brought farming to Europe from Anatolia 9,000-6,000 years ago.
Read Rune Iversen’s and Guus Kroonen’s paper Talking Neolithic: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on How Indo-European Was Implemented in Southern Scandinavia in American Journal of Archaeology.
^ Interesting. I'm not surprised that that pre-Indo-European glosses survived in certain languages. I'm just curious to know what they are.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Some signs indicate that already the hunter gatherers built megalithic monuments and that the farmers continued the traditions. Obviously there was some exciting cultural exchange going on
Yes, there was also maritime activity in the English Channel with hunter-gatherers in both the British Isles and France but it seems the farmers with more advanced technology spurred this on further and the same is true with megalithic constructions. Although I do find it somewhat odd that the majority of the megalithic activity was in Western Europe with a large gap in Central Europe and most of the Balkans. Similarly most of the megalithic activity in the Austronesian sphere was in Indonesia, Micronesia, and certain parts of Polynesia, leaving a large gap in much of the Philippine Islands, though Formosa (Taiwan) still had most of the oldest megaliths even though there were some older megaliths in Indonesia associated with hunter-gatherers.
Even the oldest megaliths in Western Asia-- Gobekli Tepe was made by hunter-gatherers prior to Neolithic food production.
^ As soon as the farming Yayoi arrived, megalithic construction only increased with more megaliths being built on the Japanese Islands than in the Yayoi homeland of the Korean Peninsula.
Posted by Archeopteryx (Member # 23193) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Interesting. I'm not surprised that that pre-Indo-European glosses survived in certain languages. I'm just curious to know what they are.
Some animal names and other words connected with the natural world are thought to descend from languages which were spoken before the spread of Indo European languages. Here is an extract from a Swedish article
quote:The original language and the pigs
We can thus assume that the Stone Age Europeans spoke several other languages before the Indo-European languages became dominant sometime at the end of the Stone Age. There are still today languages in Europe that do not belong to the Indo-European family. The most famous of these is Basque, which is spoken by about 800,000 people in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Basque does not at all resemble the Indo-European languages either in terms of grammar, vocabulary or structure. It is usually classified as a relic or a remnant language from the time before the Indo-European spread.
However, in Swedish, as well as in other languages, there are certain features that do not fit the pattern of the Indo-European languages, such features that are believed to be remnants from the original languages. It is usually called substrate language or substrate influences by researchers, and is usually mainly about proper names for natural phenomena, for example rivers, which have existed in the place since ancient times. In the Northern European countries, there seem to be words related to pigs and pig breeding that have no equivalents in other Indo-European languages. Both Swedish and Welsh, for example, have similar words for pig; Swedish sugga and Welsh hwch (pig). The common root word is reconstructed to suku.
Why were the northerners so fixated on pigs, you might wonder? Well, the pig had a very important position both as a domestic animal and as a religious cult animal throughout Northern and Central Europe before the Indo-European era. The pig was one of the earliest domesticated animals after the dog, and had great economic importance even before humans became fully settled as farmers.
Other words that are thought to originate from the Stone Age are the word "apple", which is very distinctive, but with common features in Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and Baltic languages. Some words even seem to have been actively avoided in the Indo-European language family. The word "bear" occurs very rarely, but is replaced with similes or paraphrases (so-called noa words) such as "the brown" or "honey eater". This may indicate a language taboo within Indo-European languages.
Archaeologists have yet to find evidence of a fully developed script in Anatolia prior to the Bronze Age, after which they developed Luwian hieroglyphics. Instead, there is evidence of certain symbols being used here and there but no full script that can be seen in the Neolithic cultures of the Aegean.
Vinca/Danubian Script
Dispilio Tablet from Dispilio Greece C 14-dated to 5,202 (± 123) BC
Tartarian Tablets from Transylvania, Romania dated to 5,500 BC Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Researchers from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) unearthed the monument while excavating a prehistoric site in the eastern commune of Marliens. According to a statement, the site’s anthropological history spans the Neolithic era to the First Iron Age.
From above, the structure resembles a wonky, incomplete bowtie, outlined in lines of raised, shaped earth. Its middle is a complete circle, measuring 36 feet across. Horseshoe-shaped lines protrude from either side of the circle. One of these enclosures is complete—measuring 26 feet across—while the other is dashed and gapped.
Perhaps the most interesting are the genetic findings of members of a Neolithic grave in Gurgy near the Paris Basin which reveal a patrilocal clan with female geneflow:
The descent of seven generations at Neolithic Gurgy-les-Noisats, north-eastern France, c.4700 BC. The original ancestor is found as a secondary burial in grave 270B. Image: modified by Charles Higham from Rivollat et al. 2023
Another interesting finding is the stark change in Y chromosomal lineages from Neolithic to Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age shown here.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
A Better Map of the Spread of Neolithic Culture into Europe
Neolithic cultures of Europe in ca. 4000–3500 BC
Ancient DNA Reveals Lack of Continuity between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers and Contemporary Scandinavians The driving force behind the transition from a foraging to a farming lifestyle in prehistoric Europe (Neolithization) has been debated for more than a century 1, 2, 3. Of particular interest is whether population replacement or cultural exchange was responsible 3, 4, 5. Scandinavia holds a unique place in this debate, for it maintained one of the last major hunter-gatherer complexes in Neolithic Europe, the Pitted Ware culture [6]. Intriguingly, these late hunter-gatherers existed in parallel to early farmers for more than a millennium before they vanished some 4,000 years ago 7, 8. The prolonged coexistence of the two cultures in Scandinavia has been cited as an argument against population replacement between the Mesolithic and the present 7, 8. Through analysis of DNA extracted from ancient Scandinavian human remains, we show that people of the Pitted Ware culture were not the direct ancestors of modern Scandinavians (including the Saami people of northern Scandinavia) but are more closely related to contemporary populations of the eastern Baltic region. Our findings support hypotheses arising from archaeological analyses that propose a Neolithic or post-Neolithic population replacement in Scandinavia [7]. Furthermore, our data are consistent with the view that the eastern Baltic represents a genetic refugia for some of the European hunter-gatherer populations.
Neolithic (Nordic) Cosmology? by Claus Clausen Abstract It could seem far-fetched to propose a cosmology in Neolithic time but it is never the less the subject of this paper. The hypothesis is that astronomical events could have had serious impact for the development of the culture during Neolithic times. Attention is given to the Funnel Beaker Culture (from about 4000 BC to about 2800 BC) in Northern Europe. Recent investigations of the overall layout of megalithic monument in Scandinavia concerning position and orientations show a complex pattern in clusters of megalithic monuments1. The pattern in these structures could have been inspired by the behaviour of the rising full moon during the summer period. Following these patterns it is possible that the Neolithic people in Scandinavia learned to use the full moon as a lunar ‘season pointer’ and perhaps even found a way to use lunar eclipses in burial and ritual praxis. Some evidence is perhaps found in ancient literature and local names
