Friday, November 16, 2018

Another series of Indo-European themed maps

I found some more maps; these are really quite nice, because they show the extent of a much broader array of archaeological cultures than any other alternatives I can find.  I'm not showing every map in the series (notably there's a paleolithic and mesolithic map on the front end that don't do much to show what I think are the relevant to Indo-European studies, and since we know too little about what to make of the ethno-linguistic identities of those cultures, it's kind of an intellectual cul-de-sac with little relevance on any subject about which we know much period.  There's also some later maps, but those are better represented by historical atlases I've seen rather than as specifically archaeological cultures from the historical period.)  The maps are color-coded, but the key given below is surprisingly unhelpful when it comes to interpreting the colors.  Luckily, I know enough about the literature that I can kind of make something of it as needed.


The first of these maps predates Indo-European proper, although it shows the cultures that gave rise to Indo-European as they themselves evolved into the Yamnaya horizon.  These cultures are in purple and dark blue respectively; the Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk.  It also shows the Suvorovo spread that is best associated with the early movement of pre-Indo-European proto-Anatolian peoples into the Balkans and from there, eventually, into Anatolia.

The green cultures are the Balkan Old Europe; the light blue are mostly far northern hunter-gatherer types that are linguistically anonymous, but which probably made up a significant substrate to later northern Indo-European languages.  And the brown spots, Botai and Teresk cultures, are similarly anonymous; they seem to represent Y-DNA haplogroups that were dead ends, so to speak, and their relation to any other cultures in the general area is dubious.  In the earlier map which I didn't post, he had Keltiminar moving out of the Fergana region, which I suppose means that the maker of this map believes that they were related to the Burushaski-speaking population today, or some such.  That seems are reasonable as anything else, although it's obviously speculative.

Note also that neither the Maykop nor Kura-Araxes cultures exist yet, although the pre-Maykop is labelled.


An early Eneolithic, right on the eve of the Yamnaya horizon, and representing a very early Proto-Indo-European after the Anatolians are gone.  Afanasevo is shown as removed already, in pink in the far east.  I'm not sure why Baden and North Italian is shown in a sorta purplish color, which would imply linkages with the steppe that would be considered controversial, certainly.  Baden may have been an early push of "kurganization" but more likely it's a development out of the TRB culture, like Globular Amphora with which it overlaps.  Globular Amphora has been shown in genetic studies to be linked to the EEF Old Europe population, not the steppes.

Maykop and Kura-Araxes are also present, which always get talked about a lot in Proto-Indo-European studies due to inevitable proximity and apparent archaeological and trade interactions, although of the two only Maykop has ever been proposed as actually Indo-European, and that seems to be even more unlikely than ever now due to genetic analysis showing no admixture between Maykop and the pre-Yamnaya steppe.

Given that this map has Baden (but not Yamnaya) it must be a snapshot of the period between 3,600 BC and 3,500 BC, since the inception of Baden is the former date and the inception of Yamnaya is the latter.  I'm not sure I'm confident in the accuracy of dating to that fine a level for much of these cultures, but hey, this is someone's interpretation, and they've gotta do something.


This map now shows the Yamnaya horizon and the Corded Ware horizon (keep in mind that the guy who made this map subscribes to the Corded Ware Uralic substrate hypothesis, which is almost certainly incorrect.  Uralic seems to be closely tied with the N1 haplogroup which arrived later form the northest with the Seima-Turbino complex.)  Indo-Europeanization (or kurganization to use Gimbutas' term) has started in earnest in the Balkans, but according to the most likely interpretation, it's also done so in northern central and eastern Europe with the Corded Ware.  Kura-Araxes is at it's nearly greatest extent, and there's an interesting hypothesis I've now seen that the Kura-Araxes people, who almost certainly represent an early proto-Hurrian population, were able to spread peacefully because they were the guys who did viticulture, and wine was a renewable yet constrained luxury good that the developing proto-Imperial Middle Eastern states would have valued.

I still think it's very curious that the Botai-Teresk guys are right there nearly adjacent to the westward spread of Yamnaya and between Yamnaya and Afanasevo, which is genetically identical to Yamnaya.  And yet, they seemed to have played little to no part in the development of either.


Later in the Eneolithic, the Yamnaya horizon is starting to break up, as is the Corded Ware.  The Indo-Europeanized Balkans have spread further westward and become the Beaker people, and been color-coded red (which is unusual, because red was in the prior map the non-Indo-European cultures of far Western Europe).  The remnants of Balkan Old Europe have been swept away culturally and probably linguistically except for what I presume he means to be Pelasgians and Minoans in the Grecian peninsula, Crete and Cyprus (although steppe intrusions into Greece may have already started by now.)  It's unclear to what extent that represented population turnover as opposed to cultural turnover.  In the northern Corded Ware horizon, the population is represented as being largely intrusive from the steppe, made up of R1a Y-DNA haplogroups associated with the Sredni Stog culture of the western steppe, but in the Balkans and further abroad, like Anatolia, central and western Europe, it's much less clear-cut.

There are still big gaps in the vast area of Turkestan; just because no cultures are shown here shouldn't be interpreted to mean that the area was completely depopulated.  Although it might well have been relatively empty; a Bond event climate cooling (and drying) is known to have taken place around this time, probably prompting much of the migration that we do see.  And while we're at it, probably making the more arid eastern steppes and desert to its south much less inviting and hospitable than it had been before.  We're still talking about Eneolithic technology, and the carrying capacity of such a climate is not high.


In the Early Bronze Age, Anatolian is well established (in Anatolia) and most of the cultures not in the Middle East (excepting BMAC, Egypt, Harappan and those Seima Turbino cultures in the northeast would all be Indo-European by now (well, maybe that little green dot in south-central Europe is still "Old European").  What is notable is the spread of Corded Ware successors further east, and the spread of the vast Andronovo horizon, many of which blended with eastward spreading Corded Ware successors to form interesting hybrids like Sintashta.

The multi-cordoned ware culture, in the area formerly occupied by Yamnaya, is often associated with proto-Thracians, and as the Andronovo gradually evolved into the Scythians, may have pushed them into what later became Thrace.  A portion of them might also have been the Cimmerians, for that matter, which are often interpreted as a Thracian subgroup. I really wish we knew more about the Thracians, Dacians and other such groups.  There's a fascinating backstory that we only see very dimly through the later writings of the Greeks and Romans.

Note also that the Afanasevo culture has disappeared and its territory overrun by Andronovo cultures, but the prevailing opinion is that the Tarim mummies are ethnically and linguistically descended from Afanasevo.


By the Middle Bronze Age, we start to have written history of the Middle East, so we know a fair bit about what's happening there.  The Hittites and Luwians have emerged from linguistically ambiguous steppe intrusions as Anatolian languages in Anatolia, and Mycenean Greek has emerged as well.  Europe is still illiterate, so although we have archaeological cultures, it's hard to determine who they are linguistically, and several known linguistic groups have to spring from them somehow, distinct from each other.  So, it's one thing to say that there is broad archaeological continuity from the Unitece culture in the last map to the Tumulus culture shown here to the Urnfield culture of Late Bronze Age, but who were they?  Archaic proto-Celtic?  If so, where did the other language groups spring from?  Dunno.  There's a lot going on culturally in Europe and interpreting it is difficult.

In the Middle East it's easier because cultures were literate, and further east it's also easier because there are much larger, simpler, broader horizons.  Andronovo has started to filter through BMAC to become Yaz, Gandhara Grave, etc.  The splitting out of the Indic from the earlier Indo-Iranian identify of the earlier Andronovo is starting to show up, both in Mitanni and in northern India/Pakistan—although that really long arrow from Tazabagyeb to Mitanni may not have happened quite like that; most likely they staged from somewhere close to the Caspian Sea, and the Indic horizon was broader (geographically speaking) than we can identify today.

Note also the Srubna culture's appearance, indicating that the way of life of the original Yamnaya, in the territory of the original Yamnaya, continued, although it's not clear exactly which daughter language groups it was associated with.  The tentative consensus, such as it is, suggests that the Srubna may have been the Cimmerians before they invaded Phrygia, and may have been a relative of Thracian linguistically.  Note also the westward movement of Seima Turbino, bringing with it, most likely, the Uralic languages.  Uralic is interesting; although the N1c haplogroup seems to be associated with them, they also were a language family that assimilated more locals rather than imposing a new genetic and physical phenotype on the areas that later emerged speaking one of their languages.  This is why the Estonian and Finnish peoples are both physically and genetically more similar to the neighboring Swedes, Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc. then they are to Khanty or Mansi speaking peoples, for instance.


This map is called Late Bronze Age, but it appears to show the immediate after-effects of the Bronze Age collapse; Luwians and Phrygians have replaced Hittites, Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Elamites have replaced the former versions, Mitanni and Mycenean Greece are gone, etc.  Of course, Greece remained Greek even though the Mycenean palace civilization collapsed to be replaced by the Greek Dark Age.  What's happening elsewhere in Europe is still somewhat difficult to interpret, but it's important to remember that not everything was Indo-European.  Etruscan in the form of the Villanovan culture is developing in Northern Italy, which was non-Indo-European, and Iberia had at least two attested probable non-Indo-European languages.  Other barely attested languages of the Italian peninsula and elsewhere are possibly (probably?) not Indo-European still, and the red right there between Iberia and what will later emerge as France is still the homeland of the non-Indo-European Basques even today.  However, the first historically attested big wave of a distinct Indo-European group over northern and central Europe is Celtic, and it has yet to emerge.

Western Iranian subgroups like the Parthians, Persians and Medes are showing up, and the Indic guys are consolidating their cultural hold on what will become India and Pakistan.  Meanwhile, the steppe way of life continues with late Andronovo variants from which the historical Scythians will emerge shortly.


As we enter the Iron Age, the Celts are finally starting to form in the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures (the big brown blob).  The steppes are now populated by known east Iranian groups, like the Scythians and Sarmatians, who have spread westward and displaced the probable Thracian speaking Cimmerians and whoever else was still lingering in that region.  Of course, most likely even as linguistic identity changed on the steppe, much of the genetics probably remained; I expect that even the Cossacks were still quite Scythian in their DNA, for instance, even though they'd been overlayed by Goths, Huns, Turks, Mongols and most especially Slavs, which language they spoke.

Armenian is in place, showing by its color coding its probably relationship with Phrygian and more distantly with Greek.  The foundation of the Achamaenid Empire is in place, displacing the Elamites and other peoples who once lived in what is today Iran.  But in the illiterate portions of Northern Europe, it's still unclear what linguistic identity these cultures should sport.  The Jastorf and Nordic Iron Age are probably early Germanic.  Probably.  The orange area is probably Baltic, but it's not clear yet that Baltic and Slavic have split from each other, or exactly what the nature of their relationship is anyway.


Classic antiquity; the last of the maps I will show, with the early Roman Empire and the Persian/Parthian empires well in place.  Most of the peoples shown here are now known to us through classical sources, although we still have to guess on occasion as to the linguistic affinities of barbarian tribes that were not well known to their writers.  That said, the Celtic heyday was over with the conquest of Gaul and Brittania, and the Germanic heyday was percolating and getting ready to spill over as the Romans dwindled.

The next two maps, which I'm not showing, were the Migration period and the Middle Ages, which still show a fair big of ethno-linguistic and cultural turnover in Europe and the steppes obviously.

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