Culture Change: War Bands Hooked Up With Neolithic Farm Wome
Feb 14, 2022 12:04:17 GMT
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Post by lamburk on Feb 14, 2022 12:04:17 GMT
Nearly 5,000 years ago, a new type of pottery arose across Europe. Imprinted with elaborate cord-like designs, the pottery came to mark a mysterious culture known, appropriately enough, as the Corded Ware culture.
Now, researchers find that the appearance of these new designs may have been the result of intermarriage between Neolithic farm women of Europe and incoming warriors from the Pontic and Caspian steppes near the Black and Caspian seas. The evidence for this cultural melding comes from linguistics studies, from ancient DNA evidence and from molecular clues about the diets of these ancient peoples.
"A new material culture emerged in the meeting between the groups," said Kristian Kristiansen, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, who co-authored a new study published online April 4 in the journal Antiquity that synthesized this disparate evidence. "The point we make is that it was the women who were the agents of change." [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]
Cultural melting pot
The story emerging about the formation of the Corded Ware culture starts on the steppe, where people from a culture called the Yamnaya herded cattle and other livestock, living a nomadic life out of wagons. Right around 3000 B.C., genes matching those found in the Yamnaya people suddenly started showing up in Europe. At the same time, genes found in people belonging to earlier Neolithic farming societies in Europe became markedly less common.
There was an outbreak of plague just prior to 3000 B.C. that wiped out Neolithic farmers from Siberia to the Baltic, Kristiansen said, which may have opened up new territory for the Yamnaya people to migrate off the steppe and into eastern Europe.
Archaeological finds from the Corded Ware culture suggest that it was these Yamnaya immigrants who mixed with Neolithic farmers to form the new culture. More specifically, Yamnaya men seemed to have mixed with European Neolithic women, researchers have found. In the earliest Corded Ware burials from Jutland (the peninsula that makes up modern-day Denmark and part of Germany), 90 percent of the bodies are male, Kristiansen said.
Now, researchers find that the appearance of these new designs may have been the result of intermarriage between Neolithic farm women of Europe and incoming warriors from the Pontic and Caspian steppes near the Black and Caspian seas. The evidence for this cultural melding comes from linguistics studies, from ancient DNA evidence and from molecular clues about the diets of these ancient peoples.
"A new material culture emerged in the meeting between the groups," said Kristian Kristiansen, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, who co-authored a new study published online April 4 in the journal Antiquity that synthesized this disparate evidence. "The point we make is that it was the women who were the agents of change." [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]
Cultural melting pot
The story emerging about the formation of the Corded Ware culture starts on the steppe, where people from a culture called the Yamnaya herded cattle and other livestock, living a nomadic life out of wagons. Right around 3000 B.C., genes matching those found in the Yamnaya people suddenly started showing up in Europe. At the same time, genes found in people belonging to earlier Neolithic farming societies in Europe became markedly less common.
There was an outbreak of plague just prior to 3000 B.C. that wiped out Neolithic farmers from Siberia to the Baltic, Kristiansen said, which may have opened up new territory for the Yamnaya people to migrate off the steppe and into eastern Europe.
Archaeological finds from the Corded Ware culture suggest that it was these Yamnaya immigrants who mixed with Neolithic farmers to form the new culture. More specifically, Yamnaya men seemed to have mixed with European Neolithic women, researchers have found. In the earliest Corded Ware burials from Jutland (the peninsula that makes up modern-day Denmark and part of Germany), 90 percent of the bodies are male, Kristiansen said.