This week, another branch of science -- genetics -- gave the exercise a try, as two separate teams of scientists published reports detailing how they used DNA to map out human migrations that took place thousands of years ago. Their discoveries helped shed light on decades-old questions about the origins of European languages.
At issue is anthropologists' understanding of the huge cultural changes that swept through during the Bronze Age in Europe and Central Asia, around 3000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. Some scholars have argued that the spread of new cultures at the time was the result of people staying in place and spreading their ideas. Others believe that populations relocated, migrating and carrying their way of life -- and perhaps, the rudiments of the languages we speak today -- with them.
In the two new studies, both published by the journal Nature, genetics researchers bolstered one side of the argument: that it was people, not ideas, who did the moving.
"Our findings show that these transformations involved migrations," wrote University of Copenhagen evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev and his coauthors, in one of the reports.
Combined, Willerslev's study and a separate effort led by Harvard Medical School geneticist David Reich looked at DNA from the remains of 170 individuals who lived across Europe and Central Asia between about 6,000 B.C. to 900 B.C.
Because the DNA samples were very old, their quality was relatively poor. But they were good enough, wrote University of Chicago geneticist John Novembre in an editorial accompanying the studies, to "discern broad brushstrokes of human migration."
Significantly, both teams noticed strong genetic similarities between members of the early Bronze Age Yamnaya culture, of the Russian steppes, and members of the later Corded Ware culture, of central Europe -- suggesting that Yamnaya people had migrated north and west.
That supports the so-called steppe hypothesis, which argues that the precursor of today's Indo-European languages (such as Hindi, Germanic, Romance and Slavic tongues) originated from the steppes and was spread through Europe by members of the Corded Ware culture.
"Ancient DNA cannot prove how language spread, of course ... but expansions of Yamnaya-related peoples add weight to the steppe hypothesis. If genes were moving en masse, it is likely that words were, too," Novembre wrote. "It will be exciting to see what the careful use of ancient DNA will reveal about the history of other language families and their speakers."
Corded Ware culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Geographical range | Europe |
|---|---|
| Period | Chalcolithic Europe |
| Dates | circa 2,900 B.C.E. — circa 2,350 B.C.E. |
| Major sites | Bronocice |
| Preceded by | Narva culture |
| Followed by | Beaker culture |
| Chalcolithic Eneolithic, Aeneolithic or Copper Age |
|---|
| ↑ Stone Age ↑ Neolithic |
|
Metallurgy, Wheel, Domestication of the horse, |
| ↓ Bronze Age |
Boat-shaped battle axe from Närke
The Corded Ware culture is the major north and central European cultural grouping of the Copper Age, stretching from the Netherlands and Switzerland in the west, across southern Scandinavia and Central Europe as far east as the upper Volga (Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture) and middle Dnieper (Middle Dnieper culture). The culture is reflected primarily by its burials, which consisted of inhumation under tumulus with various artifacts (notably battle-axes). Corded Ware coincides considerably with the earlier north-central European Funnelbeaker culture (TRB), with which it shares a similar physical type and several cultural characteristics, suggesting that the Corded Ware originated with the TRB at least in some regions.[3] In other regions the Corded Ware appears to herald a new culture and physical type.[3]
Because of their possession of both the horse and wheeled vehicles, apparent warlike propensities, wide area of distribution and rapid intrusive expansion at the assumed time of the dispersal of Indo-European languages, the Corded Ware culture was originally suggested as the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.[3] Today, a Corded Ware origin of these characteristics has lost currency in favour of an origin in the Black Sea-Caspian region, although this has been criticized.[3] Corded Ware is however still generally considered ancestral to the Celts, Germanic peoples, Balts and Slavs.[3] According to J. P. Mallory the origins and dispersal of Corded Ware culture is one of the pivotal unresolved issues of the Indo-European Urheimat problem.[3]
Contents
Extent
It encompassed most of continental northern Europe from the Rhine River on the west, to the Volga River in the east, including most of modern-day Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, northwestern Romania, northern Ukraine, and the European part of Russia, as well as coastal Norway and the southern portions of Sweden and Finland.The contemporary Beaker culture overlapped with the western extremity of this culture, west of the Elbe, and may have contributed to the pan-European spread of that culture. Although a similar social organization and settlement pattern to the Beaker were adopted, the Corded Ware group lacked the new refinements made possible through trade and communication by sea and rivers.[4]
Nomenclature
It receives its name Corded Ware from the ornamentation of its characteristic pottery, Single Grave from its burial custom, and Battle Axe from its characteristic grave offering to males, a stone battle axe.Origins and development
Concerning the origin of the Corded Ware culture, there is broadly a division between archaeologists who see an influence from pastoral societies of the steppes north of the Black Sea and those who think that Corded Ware springs from central Europe.In places a continuity between Funnelbeaker and Corded Ware can be demonstrated, whereas in other areas Corded Ware heralds a new culture and physical type.[3] On most of the immense, continental expanse that it covered, the culture was clearly intrusive, and therefore represents one of the most impressive and revolutionary cultural changes attested by archeology.[4] The degree to which cultural change generally represents immigration is a matter of debate, and such debate has figured strongly in discussions of Corded Ware.
Corded ware pottery in the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Berlin). Ca. 2500 BC
In the western regions this revolution has been proposed to be a quick, smooth and internal change that occurred at the preceding Funnelbeaker culture, having its origin in the direction of eastern Germany.[7] Whereas in the area of the present Baltic states and Kaliningrad Oblast (former East Prussia), it is seen as an intrusive successor to the southwestern portion of the Narva culture.
In summary, Corded Ware does not represent a single monolithic entity, but rather a diffusion of technological and cultural innovations of different, contemporaneous peoples, living in close proximity to each other and leaving different archaeological remains.
In 2015 researchers reported that, based on the DNA analysis of 98 ancient skeletons from Europe and Russia, there had been a massive migration of Yamna culture people from the North Pontic steppe into Europe about 4,500 years ago. About 75% of the DNA of late Neolithic Corded Ware skeletons found in Germany were the same as the Yamnaya DNA.[8][9]
Economy
There are very few discovered settlements, which led to the traditional view of this culture as exclusively nomadic pastoralists. However, this view was modified, as some evidence of sedentary farming emerged. Traces of Emmer wheat, bread wheat and barley were found at a Corded Ware site at Bronocice in south-east Poland. Wheeled vehicles (presumably drawn by oxen) are in evidence, a continuation from the Funnelbeaker culture era.[3]Cows' milk was used systematically from 3400 BC onwards in the northern Alpine foreland. Sheep were kept more frequently in the western part of Switzerland due to the stronger Mediterranean influence. Changes in slaughter age and animal size are possibly evidence for sheep being kept for their wool at Corded Ware sites in this region.[10]
Graves
Inhumation occurred in flat graves or below small tumuli in a flexed position; on the continent males lay on their right side, females on the left, with the faces of both oriented to the south. However, in Sweden and also parts of northern Poland the graves were oriented north-south, men lay on their left side and women on the right side - both facing east. Originally, there was probably a wooden construction, since the graves are often positioned in a line. This is in contrast with practices in Denmark where the dead were buried below small mounds with a vertical stratigraphy: the oldest below the ground, the second above this grave, and occasionally even a third burial above those. Other types of burials are the niche-graves of Poland. Grave goods for men typically included a stone battle-axe. Pottery in the shape of beakers and other types are the most common burial gifts, generally speaking. These were often decorated with cord, sometimes with incisions and other types of impressions.
Late battle axe from Gotland
In April 2011, it was reported that a deviant Corded Ware burial had been discovered in a suburb of Prague.[11] The remains, believed to be male, were orientated in the same way as women's burials and were not accompanied by any gender-specific grave goods. The excavators suggested the grave may have been that of a "member of a so-called third gender, which were people either with different sexual orientation or transsexuals or just people who identified themselves differently from the rest of the society",[11] while media reports heralded the discovery of the world's first "gay caveman".[12][13] Archaeologists and biological anthropologists criticised media coverage as sensationalist. "If this burial represents a transgendered individual (as well it could), that doesn't necessarily mean the person had a 'different sexual orientation' and certainly doesn't mean that he would have considered himself (or that his culture would have considered him) 'homosexual,'" anthropologist Kristina Killgrove commented. Other items of criticism were that someone buried in the Copper Age was not a "caveman" and that identifying the sex of skeletal remains is difficult and inexact.[14] A detailed account of the burial has not yet appeared in the scientific literature.
Diffusion of metallurgy in Europe and Asia Minor. The darkest areas are the oldest.
Subgroups
Corded Ware culture
The prototypal Corded Ware culture, German Schnurkeramikkultur, is found in Central Europe, mainly Germany and Poland, and refers to the characteristic pottery of the era: twisted cord was impressed into the wet clay to create various decorative patterns and motifs. It is known mostly from its burials, and both sexes received the characteristic cord-decorated pottery. Whether made of flax or hemp, they had rope.Single Grave culture
General term used to refer to a series of late Neolithic communities of the 3rd millennium BC living in Scandinavia, northern Germany, and the Low Countries that share the practice of single burial under barrows, the deceased usually being accompanied by a battle-axe, amber beads, and pottery vessels. The cultural emphasis on drinking equipment already characteristic of the early Funnelbeaker culture, reappeared with the spread of Corded Ware traditions. Especially in the west (Scandinavia and northern Germany), the drinking vessels have a protruding foot and define the Protruding-Foot Beaker culture (PFB) as a subset of the Single Grave culture.[15] The Bell Beaker culture has been proposed to derive from this specific branch of the Corded Ware culture.Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe culture
About 3000 battle axes have been found, in sites distributed over all of Scandinavia, but they are sparse in Norrland and northern Norway. Less than 100 settlements are known, and their remains are negligible as they are located on continually used farmland, and have consequently been plowed away. Einar Østmo reports sites inside the Arctic Circle in the Lofoten Islands, and as far north as the present city of Tromsø.
The Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe culture/Boat Axe culture was based on the same agricultural practices as the previous Funnelbeaker culture, but the appearance of metal changed the social system. This is marked by the fact that the Funnelbeaker culture had collective megalithic graves with a great deal of sacrifices to the graves, but the Battle Axe culture has individual graves with individual sacrifices.
A new aspect was given to the culture in 1993, when a death house in Turinge, in Södermanland was excavated. Along the once heavily timbered walls were found the remains of about twenty clay vessels, six work axes and a battle axe, which all came from the last period of the culture. There were also the cremated remains of at least six people. This is the earliest find of cremation in Scandinavia and it shows close contacts with Central Europe.
In the context of the entry of Germanic into the region, Einar Østmo emphasizes that the Atlantic and North Sea coastal regions of Scandinavia, and the circum-Baltic areas were united by a vigorous maritime economy, permitting a far wider geographical spread and a closer cultural unity than interior continental cultures could attain. He points to the widely disseminated number of rock carvings assigned to this era, which display "thousands" of ships. To seafaring cultures like this one, the sea is a highway and not a divider.
Finnish Battle Axe culture
The Finnish Battle Axe culture was a mixed cattle-breeder and hunter-gatherer culture, and one of the few in this horizon to provide rich finds from settlements.Middle Dnieper and Fatyanovo-Balanovo cultures
Main articles: Middle Dnieper culture and Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture
The eastern outposts of the Corded Ware culture are the Middle Dnieper culture and on the upper Volga, the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture.
The Middle Dnieper culture has very scant remains, but occupies the
easiest route into Central and Northern Europe from the steppe. If the
association of Battle Axe cultures with Indo-European languages is
correct, then Fatyanovo would be a culture with an Indo-European superstratum over a Uralic substratum,[citation needed] and may account for some of the linguistic borrowings identified in the Indo-Uralic
thesis. However, according to Häkkinen, the Uralic–Indo-European
contacts only start in the Corded Ware period and the Uralic expansion
into the Upper Volga region postdates it. Häkkinen accepts
Fatyanovo-Balanovo as an early Indo-European culture, but maintains that
their substratum (identified with the Volosovo culture) was neither
Uralic nor Indo-European.[17] Genetics seems to support Häkkinen.[citation needed]
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