Historical and prehistorical site-seeing

As I told my youngest son the other day while we were sitting and eating some reasonably good Texas style barbecue brisket (as good as we're likely to find up here in the northern Midwest, anyway), while I have a real fascination for history, and I love reading history—especially ancient, classical and Medieval history—what really gets me excited is parahistory; the stuff that we can almost but not quite see because either it happened outside of the areas where literate peoples recorded their history, or before they did. And it's not just history; it's also the cultural anthropology, the linguistics—I wish I knew a good deal more about my "deep ancestry" not only cultural, linguistic and genetic (of course, there's a very large degree of overlap there) than we ever will know in this lifetime, because the data simply doesn't exist, and it can't be found, it's been lost forever, and the fact that such data once existed can only be inferred from other data that we do have, like archaeogenetics and archaeology.

I wish there was some way to spend some time; a good year or two, living with and observing some of these older populations, learning their language as well as that of their neighbors, and seeing how they lived, what they looked like, what their economy and culture was all about, etc. Of course, I also had to pick when and where I'd like to go see, and he asked me what I'd do if I could do that. He was curious, but not really, because quickly I got into esoteric archaeological cultures that didn't mean anything to him. I hadn't really tried to spell that out in my mind before, but I thought it a fun thought exercise, so here I'll talk about it. I think a decent gap between observation sessions is important, so I can see really significantly different changes in society as I go from one to another, so I decided that 1,000 years (roughly) would be the way to go. Of course, in order to do this, I'd miss some stuff, and I couldn't really go back much further than half a dozen or so of these before we eclipsed our knowledge and I didn't even know what to look for or why anymore. Anyway, to get a survey of my cultural, genetic and linguistic ancestry and how it developed, here's the stops I'd make:

—c. 1,000 years back. More exact date; let's go back to 1065 and stay for two years. I'd like to see the last of the years of Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England (and, ironically, the first since the years of Viking rule under Cnut before his reign.) After his death, both Viking contenders (Harald Hardrada) from the line of Cnut, Anglo-Saxon contenders (Harold Godwinson, from a rival house than that of Wessex, Alfred the Great and Edward's group) and of course a Norman claimant, William the Conqueror all fought for the throne.  During this time, the various Kings were starting to get quite intermarried, and a King and or his consort may well have been a non-native. Edward the Confessor, for example, was the son of an Anglo-Saxon, but his mother was a Norman, who as well as being married to his father, later married Cnut himself, the Danish king of England (and Scandinavia). The Vikings, Normans and English, at least within the Royal Houses, were substantially intermarried and interbred with each other, and would have been at least culturally indistinguishable, if not indistinguishable by personality. Not only seeing such important events as the Battle of Hastings and the establishment of the Norman aristocracy over an Anglo-Saxon England, which eventually evolved into the actual English nation as we know it, would be fascinating enough, but I could also learn late Old Enlish, Old Normal French, late Old Norse, and go wander about the border country learning an older version of Scottish Gaelic

—c. 2,000 years back. More exact date; I'd actually like to go just a tad farther, to about 60 BC, which is right on the eve of the Gallic Wars (58-52 BC.) I'd get to see Gaul before it collapsed, I'd get to see the Roman Republic kind of on the eve of it becoming the Roman Empire, and I'd get to do my first exploration of some stuff that we know about only tangentially, from the commentary of Caesar himself, most of the time. Were the Belgae linguistically and culturally significantly different from the Gauls? Were the Aquitanians linguistically and culturally related to the Basques? What was really the relationship like along the Gallic/Germanic border? Which tribes were Germanic and which were Gallic, and how did they interact? While I'm at it, maybe I can check out the kingdom of the Dacians, which allegedly Caesar considered attacking instead of Gaul, if events hadn't given him the opportunity that it did.  I mean, I can learn languages here that people don't know much, if anything about, even, as well as see cultures that are more well known. Classic Latin, Gallic Celtic, early Germanic, Dacian, and if Gaul truly was a multilingual affair with significant ethno-linguistic boundaries between Gaul Celtica, Gaul Aquitania and Gaul Belgica, maybe even more. And, of course, I'd prefer to have a guide who could take me deeper into the Nordic Iron Age cultures, where I could explore stuff that Caesar only guessed at among many of my more immediate ancestors. The Gauls aren't really my ancestors at all, except to the extent that the Belgae of Gaul and the Belgae of Britain were the same people, but they were the Golden Age of the Celtic peoples, whereas as an Anglo-American, my ancestors among the Celts were the more fringe peoples rather than the center of Celtic gravity that was represented by Gaul.

—c. 3,000 years back. I'd round this even further to the tune of being a bit older, and go to about 1250 BC or so and see the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War. I'd love to see Bronze Age Achaean Greece, the Hittites in their glory, the Assuwa confederation, and the rest of what was happening prior to the great Bronze Age Collapse.  I'd also be super curious about what's happening to the immediate north of this area, in the Balkans, and see what the story is with the Thracians, Macedonians, Dorian Greeks (whoever exactly they were, and if they came from outside Mycenaean civilization, or just from the hinterlands within Greece itself), the Illyrians, etc. So much to discover that we don't know very much about yet. If I could actually learn the languages of some of these groups that are mentioned by the Greeks but who we don't really understand very well, like the Thracians, Luwians, Illyrians, etc. this could go a long way towards untangling the origin of the Balkans prior to the arrival of the Slavs and Turks. Not to mention seeing Bronze Age Empires in their prime; the Mitanni, the Hittites, the New Kingdon Egyptians, the Assyrians/Babylonians, etc. And lacking any historical anchors, I'd also very much like to get up north and see what the Urnfield and Nordic Bronze Age was like. The Tollense battle took place at about the same time as the Trojan War, although it may be magnified in apparent importance just based on the fact that we know about it, rather than because it truly was important. While this stuff, except up north, is less genetically crucial to the formation of someone like me, it was an important part of our developing culture, and Western Civilization can't exist without not only the Germanic nations (and the Hajnal Line that corresponded with them), Christianity, and the Classical Graeco-Roman tradition. Which is why I'd like to see both Rome and Greece, but I'd also really like to see Urnfield and Nordic Bronze Age. Although I don't know specifically what to look for there other than "conditions generally."

—c. 4,000 years back. If the last stop is fraught with only vaguely dated historical anchors, we now have moved into territory where there are no historical anchors at all, just archaeology. Given this, the destinations have to be more vague, and the trips would have to be more exploratory; we don't know what questions to ask to know what to see yet. Much of Europe during this phase belongs to the Unetice culture, which right at 2,000 BC went from it's Older to its Younger phase. The Unetice culture is the heir to the Bell Beaker phenomenon, and likely represents a culture at a stage of Indo-European where the Italic, Celtic and Germanic branches were still united. As the Unetice spread and splintered, it eventually led to the founding of the Nordic Bronze Age (probably represented by a super-imposition of some Unetice elites over a local substrate) and southward to eventually form the Italic group, while the Celtic and some probable para-Celtic languages developed in situ. In any case, this posits a period where there's still a general unity between these groups. We think.

—c 5,000 years back. Here we round again, but this time we round younger rather than older, and go back to about 2,800 BC. Here we'll see a fundamental transformation of Europe, especially Northern Europe, as the Bell Beakers and the Corded Ware cultures are still at their early stages (with the probable origin of the Bell Beakers as we know them among the Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware. At this point, we're early enough that Indo-European hasn't yet shed most of its branches to begin with, and we can still talk about a very late stage of near-unity between the various Indo-European branches. With the possible exception of Tocharian, some paleo-Balkan languages, and of course the Anatolian languages, all of Indo-European was still wrapped up in the Corded Ware culture. This the very beginning of Europe becoming Europe as we know it, and everybody in Europe today (except for recent immigrants, of course, and the Sardinians and some of the other fringe, southern populations) have at least a third of their ancestry from Corded Ware derived steppe groups. And that's just by genetics; linguistically and culturally, that's where Europe as we know it really comes from. My own ancestry from Great Britain, for example, had a tremendous population turnover as the Bell Beakers arrived; about 95% of the total population is new. In places like Iberia (where I also have a junior lineage from my great grandfather) 95% or so of the male lineages were replaced, although it seems like the invading bad boys took local girls so the total genetic turnover is really only remarkable on the male lineages, not the total population. In any case, the Yamnaya is the eastern neighbor, and while in the past it was assumed that the Yamnaya guys were ancestral to Corded Ware, it now appears almost certain that they were cousins rather than direct ancestors to the Corded Ware, and the expansion of the Yamnaya may well have either sparked the migration of the ancestors of the Corded Ware into northern and central Europe in the first place (or maybe the pre-Corded Ware moved first, opening up the territory for Yamnaya expansion. I'd also see the end of the Globular Amphora and TRB cultures, for whatever that's worth, since it appears they were not Indo-European groups after all. But no doubt they made up an important substrate population who's genetics still run through my DNA today.

—c. 6,000 years back. 4,000 BC would be smack dab in the middle of the Sredni Stog and Khvalynsk cultures on the steppe, where my ancestors are from. Although if I rounded two or three centuries younger, I'd like to see some of their neighbors, like early Maykop and Kura-Araxes in the Caucasus, and the TRB/Funnelbeakers to the North, Tripolye in the Balkans, etc. I'm very curious about the interactions between Khvalynsk and Sredni Stog in particular, as well as the interactions of both with their immediate neighbors, and how that stew of interactions and whatnot contributed to early or archaic Proto-Indo-European, which presumably at least the Sredni Stog guys spoke and maybe the Khvalynsk spoke something closely related as well.  If I get further east, I might see the early Botai people; either the domestication of the horse was happening here somewhere during this time period, which is also another landmark (if vaguely dated) achievement of my ancestors. Also to the east is the late phase Kelteminar culture, and I'm curious is learning their language as well as that of the steppes would highlight any potential relationships between them, as well as refute or confirm the somewhat surprising, yet popular, notion that the Keltiminar spoke some kind of archaic proto-Uralic language.

—c. 7,000 years back. c. 5,000 years ago is the start of the Dnieper-Donets material culture, and the earliest one for which any kind of very early/archaic proto-Indo-European roots can confidently be ascribed. It seems to have been a different physical type than the later Sredni Stog guys; and they are interpreted as a largely EHG (with some WHG admixture) population that had not yet acquired the CHG admixture that later defined the area and which was an important component of some sort in the development of Indo-European, to say nothing of the EEF admixture (which was a product of the Indo-European expansion out of the steppes, mostly, anyway). However, the Dnieper-Donets male lineages seem to be what you'd expect from archaic proto-Indo-European, so probably the later admixture of CHG and EEF ancestry came through women taken through exogamous marriages. This would also predate, presumably, the Caucasian substrate, if the Caucasian substrate hypothesis is an accurate hypothesis on how Indo-European formed. The Dnieper-Donets is also the first Neolithic culture in the area (it's predecessor is the Mesolithic hunter-foragers of the largely EHG group like the Pit-Comb culture from further north—although not the Kunda and Narva cultures, in spite of the geographic proximity.) Going much farther back than this, and we have only very vague genetic and archaeological material to work with. That's not to say that the Dnieper-Donets people jump up out of the earth fully formed, of course—like I said, they probably represent a migration of some near relatives of the Pit Comb Ware culture, but exactly what relationship they, or anyone else, has with Indo-European when you go back farther than this, is impossible to say. In any case, it's also not clear the extent to which the neighboring Samara culture; presumably ancestral to the Khvalynsk and later Yamnaya cultures, had on the development of Indo-European either. While Indo-European seems mostly to have been a development of the Western steppe languages; the pre-Corded Ware rather than Yamanya horizons, in reality, of course, the two courses of cultural evolution appear very similar, probably had intense contacts with each other, were probably culturally, genetically and linguistically closely related, and if Yamnaya isn't really the best candidate for Proto-Indo-European anymore, it almost certainly was para-Proto-Indo-European; a closely related sister group. And, of course, the relationship and contacts between Dnieper-Donets and the Bug-Dniester and even further west Cris cultures of EEF peoples is something I'd like to understand better; although genetic flow seems to mostly post-date this phase and these specific cultures. And, assuming it's reasonable to do, I'd like to also wander a bit and see what the Ertebolle culture, for instance, were like, since they probably were an important component (well, their distant descendants were, anyway) as a substrate to the Corded Ware that developed eventually into the Nordic Bronze Age. There's even a theory that the Nordic Bronze Age is a fusion of a SHG/Ertebolle-derived population with a Corded Ware super-strate that later acquired a second superstrate from Unetice; which explains the high proportion of pre-Corded Ware hunter-gather Y-DNA lineages, as well as the curious apparent similarities between Germanic and Balto-Slavic; if it had a substrate that was an archaic Balto-Slavic relative, that would make some sense. Because of the nature of the Scandinavian population and its density, the substrates lingered as more important components than in some other areas, meaning that my ancestry, while culturally and linguistically very closely tied to the steppes, no doubt has some important Scandinavian Hunter Gatherer elements too.

But as I said, we're now getting so speculative that I couldn't possibly look at any earlier culture or time period than this, like the Pit Comb Ware, or Swiderian, or whatever, and make any claims with confidence that they contributed much of anything—if anything—to me. In other words, other than geographic overlap with people who later were unequivocally my cultural, linguistic or genetic ancestors, or their close relatives, I have no idea who these people were. So, I think it's probably foolish at this point to try and go any further back, if I could in fact do this. Although, I should point out, that making these trips, if it were something I could do, would teach me things about the immediate predecessors; just because I don't know much about where the Dnieper-Donets people came from, for instance, doesn't mean that I wouldn't after having lived among them. And maybe after living among their descendants, like the Sredni Stog would teach me that other groups were just as important as the Dnieper-Donets in terms of what I'd want to check out.