4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a Bell Beaker culture grave of a woman found in Scotland

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Neolithic Europe’s Remote Heart

“CAITHNESS, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that pollen from medicinal and flowering plants has been identified on a decorated beaker placed in a young woman’s grave some 4,100 years ago. Dubbed “Ava,” the woman’s remains were unearthed 30 years ago at Achavanich, a site known for its megalithic horseshoe-shaped structure. “Of the pollen recovered the majority were from trees and shrubs including birch, pine—most likely Scots pine—hazel, and alder,” said archaeologist Maya Hoole. Traces of heather, grasses, meadowsweet, and St. John’s wort were also found in the grave. Stable isotope analysis of Ava’s bones indicates that she lived in the area. For more on archaeology in Scotland, go to “Neolithic Europe’s Remote Heart.” ref

Bell Beaker culture

“The Bell Beaker culture (also described as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon) is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the European Bronze Age. Arising from around 2800 BCE, it lasted in Britain until as late as 1800 BCE but in continental Europe only until 2300 BCE, when it was succeeded by the Unetice culture. The culture was widely dispersed throughout Western Europe, from various regions in Iberia and spots facing northern Africa to the Danubian plains, the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and also the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The Bell Beaker phenomenon shows substantial regional variation, and a study from 2018 found that it was associated with genetically diverse populations, with the sampled individuals outside of Iberia and Sicily characterized by significant levels of Pontic-Caspian steppe-related ancestry.” ref

“The Bell Beaker culture was partly preceded by and contemporaneous with the Corded Ware culture, and in north-central Europe preceded by the Funnelbeaker culture. The name Glockenbecher was coined for its distinctive style of beakers by Paul Reinecke in 1900. The term’s English translation Bell Beaker was introduced by John Abercromby in 1904. In its early phase, the Bell Beaker culture can be seen as the western contemporary of the Corded Ware culture of Central Europe. From about 2400 BCE the Beaker folk culture-expanded eastwards, into the Corded Ware horizon. In parts of Central and Eastern Europe, as far east as Poland, a sequence occurs from Corded Ware to Bell Beaker.” ref

“This period marks a period of cultural contact in Atlantic and Western Europe following a prolonged period of relative isolation during the Neolithic. In its mature phase, the Bell Beaker culture is understood as not only a collection of characteristic artifact types, but a complex cultural phenomenon involving metalwork in copper and gold, archery, specific types of ornamentation, and (presumably) shared ideological, cultural, and religious ideas. A wide range of regional diversity persists within the widespread late Beaker culture, particularly in local burial styles (including incidences of cremation rather than burial), housing styles, economic profile, and local ceramic wares (Begleitkeramik).” ref

“James Mallory (2013) notes that the Beaker culture was associated with a hypothetical cluster of Indo-European dialects termed “North-West Indo-European,” a cluster which includes the (predecessors of) Celtic, Italic, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic branches. Earlier theories suggested a link to the hypothesized Italo-Celtic, or Proto-Celtic languages.” ref

Lee et al. (2012) detected R1b two male skeletons from a German Bell Beaker site dated to 2600–2500 BCE at Kromsdorf, one of which tested positive for M269 but negative for its U106 subclade (note that the P312 subclade was not tested for), while for the other skeleton the M269 test was unclear. Haak et al. (2015) analyzed the remains of a later Bell Beaker male skeleton from Quedlinburg, Germany, dated around 2296–2206 BCE. The individual carried haplogroup R1b1a2a1a2 (R-P312). The study found that the Bell Beakers and people of the Unetice culture had less ancestry from the Yamnaya culture than from the earlier Corded Ware culture. The authors took this to be a sign of a resurgence of the indigenous inhabitants of Western Europe in the aftermath of the Yamnaya expansion.” ref

“Allentoft et al. (2015) found the people of the Beaker culture to be closely genetically related to the Corded Ware culture, the Unetice culture, and the Nordic Bronze Age. In yet another 2015 study published in Nature, the remains of eight individuals ascribed to the Beaker culture were analyzed. Two individuals were determined to belong to Haplogroup R1, while the remaining six were determined to belong to haplogroup R1b1a2 and various subclades of it. A study published in Nature in February 2018 confirmed that Bell Beaker males carried almost exclusively R1b, but the very first ones (in Iberia) had no Steppe autosomes or R at all. Papac et al. (2021) found in the region of Bohemia, Czech Republic, Bell Beaker culture’s male individuals featuring Y-haplogroup R1b-P312, radiocarbon-dated to between 2400 to 2100 BCE.” ref

Bell Beaker Culture Origins

“The Bell Beaker artifacts (at least in their early phase) are not distributed across a contiguous area, as is usual for archaeological cultures, but are found in insular concentrations scattered across Europe. Their presence is not associated with a characteristic type of architecture or burial customs. However, the Bell Beaker culture does appear to coalesce into a coherent archaeological culture in its later phase. Analyses of the “Beaker phenomenon”, published since the 2000s, have persisted in describing the origin of the “Beaker phenomenon” as arising from a synthesis of elements, representing “an idea and style uniting different regions with different cultural traditions and backgrounds.” ref

“The origin of the “Bell Beaker” artifacts has been traced to the early 3rd millennium, with early examples of the “maritime” Bell Beaker design having been found at the Tagus estuary in Portugal, radiocarbon dated to c. the 28th century BCE. The inspiration for the Maritime Bell Beaker is argued to have been the small and earlier Copoz beakers that have impressed decoration and which are found widely around the Tagus estuary in Portugal. Turek sees late Neolithic precursors in northern Africa, arguing the Maritime style emerged as a result of seaborne contacts between Iberia and Morocco in the first half of the third millennium BCE.” ref

Bell Beaker Culture Expansion and Corded Ware contacts

“The initial moves from the Tagus estuary were maritime. A southern move led to the Mediterranean where ‘enclaves’ were established in south-western Spain and southern France around the Golfe du Lion and into the Po Valley in Italy, probably via ancient western Alpine trade routes used to distribute jadeite axes. A northern move incorporated the southern coast of Armorica. The enclave established in southern Brittany was linked closely to the riverine and landward route, via the Loire, and across the Gâtinais Valley to the Seine Valley, and thence to the lower Rhine. This was a long-established route reflected in early stone ax distributions, and via this network, Maritime Bell Beakers first reached the Lower Rhine in about 2600 BCE.” ref

“Another expansion brought Bell Beaker to Csepel Island in Hungary by about 2500 BCE. In the Carpathian Basin, the Bell Beaker culture came in contact with communities such as the Vučedol culture (c. 3000–2200 BCE), which had evolved partly from the Yamnaya culture (c. 3300–2600 BCE). In contrast to the early Bell Beaker preference for the dagger and bow, the favorite weapon in the Carpathian Basin during the first half of the third millennium was the shaft-hole ax. Here, Bell Beaker people assimilated local pottery forms such as the polypod cup. These “common ware” types of pottery then spread in association with the classic bell beaker.” ref

“The Rhine was on the western edge of the vast Corded Ware zone (c. 3100–2350 BCE), forming a contact zone with the Bell Beaker culture. From there, the Bell Beaker culture spread further into Eastern Europe, replacing the Corded Ware culture up to the Vistula (Poland). A review in 2014 revealed that single burial, communal burial, and reuse of Neolithic burial sites are found throughout the Bell Beaker zone. This overturns a previous conviction that single burial was unknown in the early or southern Bell Beaker zone, and so must have been adopted from Corded Ware in the contact zone of the Lower Rhine, and transmitted westwards along with the exchange networks from the Rhine to the Loire, and northwards across the English Channel to Britain.” ref

“The earliest copper production in Ireland, identified at Ross Island in the period 2400–2200 BCE, was associated with early Beaker pottery. Here, the local sulpharsenide ores were smelted to produce the first copper axes used in Britain and Ireland. The same technologies were used in the Tagus region and in the west and south of France. The evidence is sufficient to support the suggestion that the initial spread of Maritime Bell Beakers along the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean, using sea routes that had long been in operation, was directly associated with the quest for copper and other rare raw materials.” ref

Migration vs. acculturation

“While Bell Beaker (Glockenbecher) was introduced as a term for the artifact type at the beginning of the 20th century, recognition of an archaeological Bell Beaker culture has long been controversial. Its spread has been one of the central questions of the migrationism vs. diffusionism debate in 20th-century archaeology, variously described as due to migration, possibly of small groups of warriors, craftsmen or traders, or due to the diffusion of ideas and object exchange.” ref

“Given the unusual form and fabric of Beaker pottery, and its abrupt appearance in the archaeological record, along with a characteristic group of other artifacts, known as the Bell Beaker “package”, the explanation for the Beaker culture until the last decades of the 20th century was to interpret it as the migration of one group of people across Europe.” ref

“Gordon Childe interpreted the presence of its characteristic artifact as the intrusion of “missionaries” expanding from Iberia along the Atlantic coast, spreading knowledge of copper metallurgy. Stephen Shennan interpreted the artifacts as belonging to a mobile cultural elite imposing itself over the indigenous substrate populations. Similarly, Sangmeister (1972) interpreted the “Beaker folk” (Glockenbecherleute) as small groups of highly mobile traders and artisans. Christian Strahm (1995) used the term “Bell Beaker phenomenon” (Glockenbecher-Phänomen) as a compromise in order to avoid the term “culture”.” ref

“Heyd (1998) concluded that the Bell Beaker culture was intrusive to southern Germany, and existed contemporarily with the local Corded Ware culture. The burial ritual which typified Bell Beaker sites appears to be intrusive to Western Europe, from Central Europe. Individual inhumations, often under tumuli with the inclusion of weapons contrast markedly to the preceding Neolithic traditions of often collective, weaponless burials in Atlantic/Western Europe. Such an arrangement is rather derivative of Corded Ware traditions.” ref

Cultural diffusion

“British and American archaeology since the 1960s have been skeptical about prehistoric migration in general, so the idea of “Bell Beaker Folk” lost ground. A theory of cultural contact de-emphasizing population movement was presented by Colin Burgess and Stephen Shennan in the mid-1970s. Under the “pots, not people” theory, the Beaker culture is seen as a ‘package’ of knowledge (including religious beliefs, as well as methods of copper, bronze, and gold working) and artifacts (including copper daggers, v-perforated buttons, and stone wrist-guards) adopted and adapted by the indigenous peoples of Europe to varying degrees. This new knowledge may have come about by any combination of population movements and cultural contact. An example might be as part of a prestige cult related to the production and consumption of beer, or trading links such as those demonstrated by finds made along the seaways of Atlantic Europe.” ref

“Palynological studies including analysis of pollen, associated with the spread of beakers, certainly suggests increased growing of barley, which may be associated with beer brewing. Noting the distribution of Beakers was highest in areas of transport routes, including fording sites, river valleys and mountain passes, Beaker ‘folk’ were suggested to be originally bronze traders, who subsequently settled within local Neolithic or early Chalcolithic cultures, creating local styles. Close analysis of the bronze tools associated with beaker use suggests an early Iberian source for the copper, followed subsequently by Central European and Bohemian ores. AOO and AOC Beakers appear to have evolved continually from a pre-Beaker period in the lower Rhine and North Sea regions, at least for Northern and Central Europe.” ref

Renewed emphasis on migration

“Investigations in the Mediterranean and France recently moved the discussion to re-emphasise the importance of migration to the Bell Beaker story. Instead of being pictured as a fashion or a simple diffusion of objects and their use, the investigation of over 300 sites showed that human groups actually moved in a process that involved explorations, contacts, settlement, diffusion, and acculturation/assimilation. Some elements show the influence from the north and east, and other elements reveal the south-east of France to be an important crossroad on an important route of communication and exchange spreading north. A distinctive ‘barbed wire’ pottery decoration is thought to have migrated through central Italy first. The pattern of movements was diverse and complicated, along the Atlantic coast and the northern Mediterranean coast, and sometimes also far inland. The prominent central role of Portugal in the region and the quality of the pottery all across Europe are forwarded as arguments for a new interpretation that denies an ideological dimension.” ref

“Genetic findings also lend support to the migratory hypothesis. Price et al. (1998), in a strontium isotope analysis of 86 people from Bell Beaker graves in Bavaria, suggest that 18–25% of all graves were occupied by people who came from a considerable distance outside the area. This was true of children and adults, indicative of some significant migration wave. Given the similarities with readings from people living on loess soils, the general direction of the local movement, according to Price et al., is from the northeast to the southwest.” ref

“Archaeogenetics studies of the 2010s have been able to resolve the “migrationist vs. diffusionist” question to some extent. The study by Olalde et al. (2017) found only “limited genetic affinity” between individuals associated with the Beaker complex in Iberia and in Central Europe, suggesting that migration played a limited role in its early spread. However, the same study found that the further dissemination of the mature Beaker complex was very strongly linked to migration. This is true, especially for Britain, where the spread of the Beaker culture introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry, resulting in a near-complete transformation of the local gene pool within a few centuries, to the point of replacement of about 90% of the local Neolithic-derived lineages.” ref

“One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney.  Nestled between two lakes on the remote Orkney archipelago in Scotland, the site known as the Ness of Brodgar contains a succession of Neolithic stone buildings spanning 1,000 years—and was likely an important ceremonial center.  On Orkney, a remote archipelago of 70 islands 10 miles off the north coast of Scotland, sits in a stunning natural setting, on a narrow strip of land between two sparkling lochs, and is equidistant from two of the most significant Neolithic stone circle monuments: the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, each less than a mile away. An unearthed notched slab of stone was uncovered that held beneath it was thought there might be a side panel from a Bronze Age stone coffin. And thus the belief was that this find seemed to imply that there were human remains under the field, so a test trench was opened.” ref 

“Rather, they have a prime view of one of the most spectacular Neolithic ceremonial complexes ever discovered. Spanning a millennium of activity beginning around 5,000 years ago, these exquisitely preserved buildings, including foundations and low walls, are revealing how Neolithic society changed over time, and why Orkney—despite its seemingly remote location—was at the center of Neolithic Europe. Instead of digging up a Bronze Age coffin in the test trench, as they expected, the archaeologists uncovered part of a finely crafted Neolithic wall. “It had sharp internal angles, beautifully coursed stonework, and fine corner buttresses. Realizing that they were looking at a major Neolithic complex, it was decided that they should open up a larger area.” ref 

“So far they have identified more than 20 structures, and observed even more through geophysical tests such as magnetometer surveys and ground-penetrating radar, all enclosed by the remains of a thick boundary wall delineating a six-acre complex—the size of three soccer pitches. Carbon dating of animal bone, wood, and charcoal indicates at least 1,000 years of continuous activity, from around 5,300 – 4,300 years ago. The site was likely in use for even longer. “In many cases one structure is built on top of another structure. The whole thing is sitting on a jelly of earlier structures,” says Card. “What we are seeing really is just the tip of the iceberg.” So far the archaeologists have concentrated on a small portion of the site—just 10 percent of the total area—and only excavated down to the floor level of the uppermost structures. In the layers of building foundations, Card and his team are seeing a clear progression in building style and architecture—a pattern they think may reflect some of the changes occurring in Neolithic society over that time.” ref 

“Orkney (Scots: Orkney, Scottish Gaelic: Àrcaibh), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the isle of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of the coast of Caithness and comprises approximately 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, Mainland, is often referred to as “the Mainland”, and has an area of 523 square kilometres (202 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles.[6] The largest settlement and administrative centre is Kirkwall.” ref 

“A charred hazelnut shell, recovered during excavations in Tankerness on the Mainland has been dated to 8,820–8,660 years ago indicating the presence of Mesolithic nomadic tribes. The earliest known permanent settlement is at Knap of Howar, a Neolithic farmstead on the island of Papa Westray, which dates from 5,500 years ago. The village of Skara Brae, Europe’s best-preserved Neolithic settlement, is believed to have been inhabited from around 5,100 years ago. Other remains from that era include the Standing Stones of Stenness, the Maeshowe passage grave, the Ring of Brodgar and other standing stones. Many of the Neolithic settlements were abandoned around 4,500 years ago, possibly due to changes in the climate.” ref 

“During the Bronze Age fewer large stone structures were built although the great ceremonial circles continued in used as metalworking was slowly introduced to Britain from Europe over a lengthy period. There are relatively few Orcadian sites dating from this era although there is the impressive Plumcake Mound near the Ring of Brodgar and various islands sites such as Tofts Ness on Sanday and the remains of two houses on Holm of Faray.  The Norse knew Mainland, Orkney as Megenland “Mainland” or as Hrossey “Horse Island”.  Norwegian settlers arriving from the late ninth century reinterpreted orc as the Old Norse orkn “seal” and added eyjar “islands” to the end so the name became Orkneyjar “Seal Islands”. The plural suffix -jar was later removed in English leaving the modern name “Orkney”. According to the Historia Norwegiæ, Orkney was named after an earl called Orkan.” ref

Skara Brae: Prehistoric Scottish Village 

“Skara Brae is a prehistoric village that was in use between roughly 3100 B.C. and 2500 B.C. Located on the west coast of the main island of Orkney, in Scotland, what makes the site special is its good state of preservation. Visitors can still see the furniture of the stone houses that people used 5,000 years ago. After it was abandoned, it was covered with sand dunes and wasn’t discovered until A.D. 1850, when a ferocious winter storm blew part of the turf off the ruins.  Located within walking distance of a stone circle at Brodgar, the village was part of a prehistoric landscape on Orkney that included other stone villages, farmsteads, tombs and stone circles.” ref 

“While the village’s buildings were modified throughout its 600-year history, the site was never large and consisted of about 10 houses that, in total, probably housed no more than 100 inhabitants at any one time. Eventually, a series of roofed passages were constructed that made it easy to go house-to-house in the middle of winter. “The villagers were real neighbors living cheek by jowl, their houses connected by walled, sometimes decorated, alleyways,” said Simon Schama, a professor at Columbia University, in a BBC documentary aired in 2000. “It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine gossip traveling down those alleyways after a hearty seafood supper.” Today, Skara Brae is by the sea although in prehistoric times it would have been a few miles from the coast. Erosion has led to the coast of Orkney moving closer to the site over the millennia.” ref 

Stone houses

“The houses at Skara Brae each consist of one room made of locally available stones that were held together with a “sticky midden material that provided both insulation and stability. Each house had a central hearth where a fire would have kept the inhabitants warm. The houses also had stone beds that would have been softened with furs, straw or dry seaweed. Archaeologists found that the houses usually had one large stone dresser that typically had three shelves divided into two bays,. The houses even had open areas with drains that would likely have been used as prehistoric toilets.” ref 

“How the houses were roofed is a mystery; it’s possible that driftwood, thatch, turf, whalebones or other material was used. The roof may have contained a hole that allowed some of the smoke to escape. The village’s inhabitants used a sophisticated array of stone tools. “Some are heavy tools such as mattocks and shovels, others are more delicate, such as pins and needles. Additionally, archaeologists have found beads that could have been fastened into necklaces, as well as pieces of pottery, some of it decorated with patterns, providing a fleeting glimpse into the art created by the villagers.” ref 

A communal lifestyle

“How the inhabitants of Skara Brae organized themselves is a mystery with few clues for researchers to work with. Presumably, each house held an extended family that included grandparents and perhaps other relatives. Archaeologists have found no evidence of an elite residence at Skara Brae, which suggests that the people of the village made decisions in a communal way. However, within the houses “between the dresser and the hearth there is sometimes a block of stone,” good for sitting, writes archaeologist Anna Ritchie in her book “Prehistoric Orkney” (Historic Scotland, 1995). She writes that this could be a “seat of honor” of sorts.” ref 

“Archaeologists do know that the villagers were connected to other inhabitants in Orkney and must have played a role in the rituals carried out at the great stone circles and other monuments on the island. “They had contacts across Orkney and the great monuments at Brodgar and Stenness (both of which have stone circles) are likely to have played an important part in their lives, as did the tombs such as Maeshowe, where they could get in touch with the ancestors and where some of the community was buried.” ref 

A village workshop?

“One puzzling house, given the rather bland name “house eight,” appears different from the others. It is not connected to the other buildings and has a porch, of sorts, by its entrance. It also has no beds or dressers but instead has many niches and recesses on the walls. Archaeologists cannot be sure what this structure was used for, although one possibility is that it was a workshop. And one of only two houses “to be embellished by carved patterns on their walls.” ref 

Bull’s head on a bed

“While “house eight” is mysterious, “house seven” (the other house with carved patterns) is perhaps the strangest of all. When archaeologists excavated it, they found two human burials (both of adult females). Furthermore, archaeologists found that “the skull of a bull lay in one bed, a bone dish full of red, ochre pigments lay on the floor (and) there was a cache of jewelry. Of note is that this house continued to be used after the rest of the village was abandoned. These burials “may have been inserted towards the end of its (the house’s) use.” Towards the end of Skara Brae’s existence, its soil was becoming infertile as sand dunes advanced toward it. The settlement was gradually abandoned and the burials at house seven may have been a final act.” ref 

“Skara Brae, like other coastal sites around the world, may be threatened by rising sea levels caused by global warming, a modern-day problem that threatens a site that has withstood 5,000 years of time.” ref 

R1 Origin and dispersals

“The Mal’ta–Buret’ culture is an archaeological culture of around 24,022 to 15,022 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic on the upper Angara River in the area west of Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, Russia. At this site and time, a boy whose remains were found near Mal’ta is usually known by the abbreviation MA-1 (or MA1), the remains have been dated to around 24,022 years ago. MA-1 belonged to a population related to the genetic ancestors of Siberians, American Indians, and Bronze Age Yamnaya and Botai people of the Eurasian steppe.” ref 

“MA-1 is the only known example of basal Y-DNA R* (R-M207*) – that is, the only member of haplogroup R* that did not belong to haplogroups R1, R2 or secondary subclades of these. The mitochondrial DNA of MA-1 belonged to an unresolved subclade of haplogroup U. The term Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) has been given in genetic literature to an ancestral component that represents descent from the people similar to the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture or a population closely related to them. The ANE population is considered to have been “basal to modern-day western Eurasians” but not especially related to east Asians, and suggested to have perhaps originally lived in Europe or Western Asia. According to Lazaridis et al. 2014, the common ancestor of ANEs and WHGs (western European hunter-gatherers) separated from eastern Eurasians around 40,000 BCE, and ANEs split from WHGs around 22,000 BCE (ANE is also described as a lineage “which is deeply related to Paleolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe…”). Genomic studies by Raghavan et al. (2014) and Fu et al. (2016) found Mal’ta Buret boy had brown eyes, dark hair and dark skin.” ref

“A people similar to MA1 and Afontova Gora were important genetic contributors to Native Americans, Siberians, Europeans, Caucasians, Central Asians, with smaller contributions to Middle Easterners and some East Asians. Lazaridis et al. (2016) notes “a cline of ANE ancestry across the east-west extent of Eurasia.” A 2016 study found that the global maximum of ANE ancestry occurs in modern-day Kets, Mansi, Native Americans, and Selkups. Additionally, it has been reported in ancient Bronze-age-steppe Yamnaya and Afanasevo cultures. Between 14 and 38 percent of Native American ancestry may originate from gene flow from the Mal’ta–Buret’ people, while the other geneflow in Native Americans appears to have an Eastern Eurasian origin. MA1 is also related to two older Upper Paleolithic Siberian individuals found at the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site called Ancient North Siberians (ANS).” ref

“The age of R1 was estimated by Tatiana Karafet et al. (2008) at between 12,522 and 25,700 years ago, and most probably occurred about 18,500 years ago. Since the earliest known example has been dated at around 14,022 years ago, and belongs to R1b1a (R-L754), R1b must have arisen relatively soon after the emergence of R1. Three genetic studies in 2015 gave support to the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas regarding the Proto-Indo-European homeland. According to those studies, haplogroups R1b-M269 and R1a, now the most common in Europe (R1a is also common in South Asia) would have expanded from the West Eurasian Steppe, along with the Indo-European languages; they also detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European languages.” ref 

“Early human remains found to carry R1b include:

• Villabruna 1 (individual I9030), a Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), found in an Epigravettian culture setting in the Cismon valley (modern Veneto, Italy), who lived circa 14000 BP and belonged to R1b1a.
• Several males of the Iron Gates Mesolithic in the Balkans buried between around 11,222 and 8,222 years ago carried R1b1a1a. These individuals were determined to be largely of WHG ancestry, with slight Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) admixture.
• Several males of the Mesolithic Kunda culture and Neolithic Narva culture buried in the Zvejnieki burial ground in modern-day Latvia c. 9522–6022 years ago carried R1b1b. These individuals were determined to be largely of WHG ancestry, with slight EHG admixture.
• Several Mesolithic and Neolithic males buried at Deriivka and Vasil’evka in modern-day Ukraine c. 9522-7022 years ago carried R1b1a. These individuals were largely of EHG ancestry, with significant WHG admixture.
• A WHG male buried at Ostrovul Corbuli, Romania c. 8722 years ago carried R1b1c.
• A male buried at Lepenski Vir, Serbia c. 8222-7922 years ago carried R1b1a.
• An EHG buried near Samara, Russia 7522 years ago carried R1b1a1a.
• An Eneolithic male buried at Khvalynsk, Russia c. 7222-6022 years ago carried R1b1a.
• A Neolithic male buried at Els Trocs, Spain c. 7200-7088 years ago, who may have belonged to the Epi-Cardial culture, was found to be a carrier of R1b1.
• A Late Chalcolithic male buried in Smyadovo, Bulgaria c. 6522 years ago carried R1b1a.
• An Early Copper Age male buried in Cannas di Sotto, Carbonia, Sardinia c. 6472 years ago carried R1b1b2.
• A male of the Baalberge group in Central Europe buried c. 5622 years ago carried R1b1a.
• A male of the Botai culture in Central Asia buried c. 5522 years ago carried R1b1a1 (R1b-M478).
• Males of the closely related Yamnaya culture (c. 5322-4822 years ago) Afanasievo culture (5322-4522 years ago), Catacomb culture (4800-3700 BP), Poltavka culture (4722-4122 years ago), and Bell Beaker culture (4822-3822 years ago) of Eurasia overwhelmingly carry R1b1a1a2a2.” ref

“Analysis of ancient Y-DNA from the remains from early Neolithic Central and North European Linear Pottery culture settlements have not yet found males belonging to haplogroup R1b-M269. Olalde et al. (2017) trace the spread of haplogroup R1b-M269 in western Europe, particularly Britain, to the spread of the Beaker culture, with a sudden appearance of many R1b-M269 haplogroups in Western Europe ca. 5022–4522 years ago during the Early Bronze Age. In the 2016 Nature article “The genetic history of Ice Age Europe. Also, R1b subclades have also been found in Han Chinese from Shandong, Heilongjiang, and Gansu provinces.” ref 

ref, ref, ref, ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians

“The ANE lineage is defined by association with the MA-1, or “Mal’ta boy”, remains of 24,000 years ago in central Siberia Mal’ta-Buret’ culture 24,000-15,000 years ago. The Ancient North Eurasians (ANE) samples (Afontova Gora 3, Mal’ta 1, and Yana-RHS) show evidence for minor gene flow from an East Asian-related group (simplified by the Amis, Han, or Tianyuan) but no evidence for ANE-related geneflow into East Asians (Amis, Han, Tianyuan), except the Ainu, of North Japan.” ref 

“The ANE lineage is defined by association with the MA-1, or “Mal’ta boy”, remains of 24,000 years ago in central Siberia Mal’ta-Buret’ culture 24,000-15,000 years ago “basal to modern-day Europeans”. Some Ancient North Eurasians also carried East Asian populations, such as Tianyuan Man.” ref

“Bronze-age-steppe Yamnaya and Afanasevo cultures were ANE at around 50% and Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) at around 75% ANE. Karelia culture: Y-DNA R1a-M417 8,400 years ago, Y-DNA J, 7,200 years ago, and Samara, of Y-haplogroup R1b-P297 7,600 years ago is closely related to ANE from Afontova Gora, 18,000 years ago around the time of blond hair first seen there.” ref 

Ancient North Eurasian

“In archaeogenetics, the term Ancient North Eurasian (often abbreviated as ANE) is the name given to an ancestral West Eurasian component that represents descent from the people similar to the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture and populations closely related to them, such as from Afontova Gora and the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site. Significant ANE ancestry are found in some modern populations, including Europeans and Native Americans.” ref 

“The ANE lineage is defined by association with the MA-1, or “Mal’ta boy“, the remains of an individual who lived during the Last Glacial Maximum, 24,000 years ago in central Siberia, Ancient North Eurasians are described as a lineage “which is deeply related to Paleolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe,” meaning that they diverged from Paleolithic Europeans a long time ago.” ref

“The ANE population has also been described as having been “basal to modern-day Europeans” but not especially related to East Asians, and is suggested to have perhaps originated in Europe or Western Asia or the Eurasian Steppe of Central Asia. However, some samples associated with Ancient North Eurasians also carried ancestry from an ancient East Asian population, such as Tianyuan Man. Sikora et al. (2019) found that the Yana RHS sample (31,600 BP) in Northern Siberia “can be modeled as early West Eurasian with an approximately 22% contribution from early East Asians.” ref

“Populations genetically similar to MA-1 were an important genetic contributor to Native Americans, Europeans, Central Asians, South Asians, and some East Asian groups, in order of significance. Lazaridis et al. (2016:10) note “a cline of ANE ancestry across the east-west extent of Eurasia.” The ancient Bronze-age-steppe Yamnaya and Afanasevo cultures were found to have a noteworthy ANE component at ~50%.” ref

“According to Moreno-Mayar et al. 2018 between 14% and 38% of Native American ancestry may originate from gene flow from the Mal’ta–Buret’ people (ANE). This difference is caused by the penetration of posterior Siberian migrations into the Americas, with the lowest percentages of ANE ancestry found in Eskimos and Alaskan Natives, as these groups are the result of migrations into the Americas roughly 5,000 years ago.” ref 

“Estimates for ANE ancestry among first wave Native Americans show higher percentages, such as 42% for those belonging to the Andean region in South America. The other gene flow in Native Americans (the remainder of their ancestry) was of East Asian origin. Gene sequencing of another south-central Siberian people (Afontova Gora-2) dating to approximately 17,000 years ago, revealed similar autosomal genetic signatures to that of Mal’ta boy-1, suggesting that the region was continuously occupied by humans throughout the Last Glacial Maximum.” ref

“The earliest known individual with a genetic mutation associated with blonde hair in modern Europeans is an Ancient North Eurasian female dating to around 16000 BCE from the Afontova Gora 3 site in Siberia. It has been suggested that their mythology may have included a narrative, found in both Indo-European and some Native American fables, in which a dog guards the path to the afterlife.” ref

“Genomic studies also indicate that the ANE component was introduced to Western Europe by people related to the Yamnaya culture, long after the Paleolithic. It is reported in modern-day Europeans (7%–25%), but not of Europeans before the Bronze Age. Additional ANE ancestry is found in European populations through paleolithic interactions with Eastern Hunter-Gatherers, which resulted in populations such as Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers.” ref

“The Ancient North Eurasians (ANE) split from the ancestors of European peoples somewhere in the Middle East or South-central Asia, and used a northern dispersal route through Central Asia into Northern Asia and Siberia. Genetic analyses show that all ANE samples (Afontova Gora 3, Mal’ta 1, and Yana-RHS) show evidence for minor gene flow from an East Asian-related group (simplified by the Amis, Han, or Tianyuan). In contrast, no evidence for ANE-related geneflow into East Asians (Amis, Han, Tianyuan), except the Ainu, was found.” ref

“Genetic data suggests that the ANE formed during the Terminal Upper-Paleolithic (36+-1,5ka) period from a deeply European-related population, which was once widespread in Northern Eurasia, and from an early East Asian-related group, which migrated northwards into Central Asia and Siberia, merging with this deeply European-related population. These population dynamics and constant northwards geneflow of East Asian-related ancestry would later gave rise to the “Ancestral Native Americans” and Paleosiberians, which replaced the ANE as dominant population of Siberia.” ref

Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians

“Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) is a lineage derived predominantly (75%) from ANE. It is represented by two individuals from Karelia, one of Y-haplogroup R1a-M417, dated c. 8.4 kya, the other of Y-haplogroup J, dated c. 7.2 kya; and one individual from Samara, of Y-haplogroup R1b-P297, dated c. 7.6 kya. This lineage is closely related to the ANE sample from Afontova Gora, dated c. 18 kya. After the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) and EHG lineages merged in Eastern Europe, accounting for early presence of ANE-derived ancestry in Mesolithic Europe. Evidence suggests that as Ancient North Eurasians migrated West from Eastern Siberia, they absorbed Western Hunter-Gatherers and other West Eurasian populations as well.” ref

“Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) is represented by the Satsurblia individual dated ~13 kya (from the Satsurblia cave in Georgia), and carried 36% ANE-derived admixture. While the rest of their ancestry is derived from the Dzudzuana cave individual dated ~26 kya, which lacked ANE-admixture, Dzudzuana affinity in the Caucasus decreased with the arrival of ANE at ~13 kya Satsurblia.” ref

“Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG) is represented by several individuals buried at Motala, Sweden ca. 6000 BC. They were descended from Western Hunter-Gatherers who initially settled Scandinavia from the south, and later populations of EHG who entered Scandinavia from the north through the coast of Norway.” ref

“Iran Neolithic (Iran_N) individuals dated ~8.5 kya carried 50% ANE-derived admixture and 50% Dzudzuana-related admixture, marking them as different from other Near-Eastern and Anatolian Neolithics who didn’t have ANE admixture. Iran Neolithics were later replaced by Iran Chalcolithics, who were a mixture of Iran Neolithic and Near Eastern Levant Neolithic.” ref

“Ancient Beringian/Ancestral Native American are specific archaeogenetic lineages, based on the genome of an infant found at the Upward Sun River site (dubbed USR1), dated to 11,500 years ago. The AB lineage diverged from the Ancestral Native American (ANA) lineage about 20,000 years ago.” ref

“West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer (WSHG) are a specific archaeogenetic lineage, first reported in a genetic study published in Science in September 2019. WSGs were found to be of about 30% EHG ancestry, 50% ANE ancestry, and 20% to 38% East Asian ancestry.” ref

“Western Steppe Herders (WSH) is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents descent closely related to the Yamnaya culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. This ancestry is often referred to as Yamnaya ancestry or Steppe ancestry.” ref

“Late Upper Paeolithic Lake Baikal – Ust’Kyakhta-3 (UKY) 14,050-13,770 BP were mixture of 30% ANE ancestry and 70% East Asian ancestry.” ref

“Lake Baikal Holocene – Baikal Eneolithic (Baikal_EN) and Baikal Early Bronze Age (Baikal_EBA) derived 6.4% to 20.1% ancestry from ANE, while rest of their ancestry was derived from East Asians. Fofonovo_EN near by Lake Baikal were mixture of 12-17% ANE ancestry and 83-87% East Asian ancestry.” ref

“Hokkaido Jōmon people specifically refers to the Jōmon period population of Hokkaido in northernmost Japan. Though the Jōmon people themselves descended mainly from East Asian lineages, one study found an affinity between Hokkaido Jōmon with the Northern Eurasian Yana sample (an ANE-related group, related to Mal’ta), and suggest as an explanation the possibility of minor Yana gene flow into the Hokkaido Jōmon population (as well as other possibilities). A more recent study by Cooke et al. 2021, confirmed ANE-related geneflow among the Jōmon people, partially ancestral to the Ainu people. ANE ancestry among Jōmon people is estimated at 21%, however, there is a North to South cline within the Japanese archipelago, with the highest amount of ANE ancestry in Hokkaido and Tohoku.” ref

Haplogroup R possible time of origin about 27,000 years in Central Asia, South Asia, or Siberia:

• Mal’ta–Buret’ culture (24,000-15,000 years ago)
• Afontova Gora culture (21,000-12,000 years ago)
• Trialetian culture (16,000–8000 years ago)
• Samara culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)
• Khvalynsk culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)
• Afanasievo culture (5,300-4,500 years ago)
• Yamna/Yamnaya Culture (5,300-4,500 years ago)
• Andronovo culture (4,000–2,900 years ago) ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

ref, ref, ref, ref

MtDNA haplogroup C4a belongs to North Tungusic haplotypes (Evenks and Evens)

North Aisains’ C4a in MtDNA lineages of ancient Southeast Europe (Yamnaya/Yamna culture C4a2)

“MJ-network of mtDNA haplogroup C4a. The North Tungusic haplotypes are colored by population (Evenks of North Asia: Russia, China, or Mongolia and Evens from Siberia and the Russian Far East) rather than a subgroup. The size of the nodes is proportional to the number of individuals carrying that node, and the number of mutations is indicated along the branches.” ref

MtDNA lineages of ancient Southeast Europe with C4a2 (seen in Yamnaya/Yamna culture)

“A distinct inclusion of lineages of east Eurasian origin belonging to mtDNA haplogroup C was observed in the Yamna group of western. The two C-bearing Yamna specimens from the L kurgan appear to possess a similar, albeit different at two nucleotide positions, SNP motif at HVR-1 in the C4a2 lineage of haplogroup C. Specimen L8, the chronologically older of the two C4a2-carrying specimens in our study, is more derived than L15, suggesting, on the one hand, an ex situ diversification of C4a2 lineages before their arrival in western NPR. On the other hand, it is equally likely that these lineages had diversified on the local substrate of the Neolithic builders of Mariupol-type cemeteries of extended burials of the Dnieper–Donets Culture Complex from the Dnieper Rapids in the central part of the NPR, specimens from which featured representatives of the C haplogroup.” ref

“In fact, both EBA lineages of C presented in this study could be viewed as derived from the lineage of the Dnieper–Donets Culture Complex specimen Ya34 from the Mariupol-type cemetery at Yasinovatka6 via the transition at 16218. Sequence matches to the HVR-1 nucleotide motif of Ya34 have been identified in modern Siberian populations from the circum-Baikal area as well as Sherpa populations from Tibetan highlands. The lack of coding region polymorphism for the C lineages in the NPR limits our understanding of their phylogenetic relationships. Anthropological data support a link between NPR’s Dnieper–Donets Culture Complex and EBA populations, as well as connecting them with northern Europe, including the Mesolithic population of the South Olenij Ostrov. The latter was featured as a part of the Mesolithic North European population in our PCA and genetic distance analyses, both indicating a mtDNA haplogroup frequency similarity between the NPR EBA and Mesolithic North European populations. Representatives of east Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups such as C and D have been found on Olenij Ostrov.” ref 

MtDNA C in ancient Ukraine extends East Eurasian genetic lineages in Neolithic Central and Eastern Europe

“Although the majority of identified mtDNA haplogroups belonged to the traditional West Eurasian lineages of H and U, three specimens were determined to belong to the lineages of mtDNA haplogroup C. This find extends the presence of East Eurasian lineages in Neolithic Europe from the Carpathian Mountains to the northern shores of the Black Sea and provides the first genetic account of Neolithic mtDNA lineages from the North Pontic Region. During the Neolithic, the North Pontic Region was home to major prehistoric cultural conglomerates, among them—the Dnieper-Donets cultural complex.” ref

“The Dnieper-Donets culture has been studied in approximately 200 sites in Ukraine and Byelorussia, including settlements and large collective cemeteries of the Mariupol-type. The main feature of Mariupol-type cemeteries is inhumation burial in the supine position. This burial rite differs from most local Mesolithic burial traditions and is characteristic of the ‘Euro-Siberian’ zone of extended burials, which are found from Lake Baikal and the forest and forest-steppe zones of the East European Plain to the northern part of Central Europe and Scandinavia. The distinct burial tradition of Neolithic populations of the North Pontic Region as well as their anthropological characteristics suggests an influx of external population sources.” ref

Mariupol culture

“The Mariupol culture (Mariupol-type cemeteries) was a transitional culture of the Neolithic and Eneolithic (Copper Age) in the Pontic Steppe during the second half of the 5th millennium BCE. The final stages of this culture are described as the Post-Mariupol culture. The Post-Mariupol culture was superseded by Sredny Stog culture. In older works, it is referred to as a part of wider Dnieper-Donetsk culture also known as the Mariupol type cultures. D. Ya. Telegin, an expert on Neolithic and Eneolithic Eastern Europe, asserts that the Mariupol-type cemeteries seem to have had their origins in the late Mesolithic and endured into the Copper Age: a period of more than two thousand years (c. 6500–4000 cal BCE). They were primarily fisher-hunter-gatherers familiar with livestock through exchange or pastoralism. In terms of biological anthropology, Mariupol remains appear to be Caucasoid and physically larger than their contemporaries.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

DNA of Bronze Age Proto-Indo-Europeans

“The so-called Kurgan hypothesis, which postulates that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language arose in the Pontic steppe. During the Yamna period, one of the world’s first Bronze Age cultures, Proto-Indo-European speakers migrated west towards Europe and east towards Central Asia, then South Asia, spreading with them the Indo-European languages spoken today in most of Europe, Iran, and a big part of the Indian subcontinent. The Kurgan model is the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins. Most linguists agree that PIE may have been spoken as a single language (before divergence began) around 3500 BCE, which coincides with the beginning of the Yamna culture in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and of the related Maykop culture in the northwest Caucasus. .” ref

“There is now compelling genetic evidence that haplogroups R1a and R1b, the most common paternal lineages in Europe, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia, were mainly propagated by the Indo-European migrations during the Bronze Age. A sizeable part of European maternal lineages also seem to be of Indo-European origin, although the proportion varies a lot across Europe, but generally correlating to a large extent with the proportion of Y-haplogroups R1a and R1b. Other paternal lineages, such as G2a3b, J2b2, and T1a, are thought to have spread the Copper Age from the Balkans to modern Ukraine, then to have been absorbed by the expansion of R1a and R1b people respectively from central Russia (Volga basin) and southern Russia (Kuban, northwest Caucasus).” ref

“The first PIE expansion into Europe was the Corded Ware culture, which so far have yielded only R1a samples. R1b is thought to have invaded the Balkans, then followed the Danube until Germany, from where it spread to western Europe and Scandinavia. The Asian branch originated around the Volga basin, then expanded across the Urals with the Sintashta culture, then over most of Central Asia and southern Siberia.” ref

“In the Chalcolithic (5,022-4,022 years ago), a series of complex cultures developed that would give rise to the peninsula’s first civilizations and to extensive exchange networks reaching to the Baltic, Middle East, and North Africa. Around 4,822 – 4,722 years ago, the Beaker culture, which produced the Maritime Bell Beaker, probably originated in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary in Portugal and spread from there to many parts of western Europe.” ref

“R1b is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 80% of the population in Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, western Wales, the Atlantic fringe of France, the Basque country, and Catalonia. It is also common in Anatolia and around the Caucasus, in parts of Russia, and in Central and South Asia. Besides the Atlantic and North Sea coast of Europe, hotspots include the Po valley in north-central Italy (over 70%), Armenia (35%), the Bashkirs of the Urals region of Russia (50%), Turkmenistan (over 35%), the Hazara people of Afghanistan (35%), the Uyghurs of North-West China (20%) and the Newars of Nepal (11%). R1b-V88, a subclade specific to sub-Saharan Africa, is found in 60 to 95% of men in northern Cameroon.” ref

“The oldest forms of R1b (M343, P25, L389) are found dispersed at very low frequencies from Western Europe to India, a vast region where could have roamed the nomadic R1b hunter-gatherers during the Ice Age. The three main branches of R1b1 (R1b1a, R1b1b, R1b1c) all seem to have stemmed from the Middle East. The southern branch, R1b1c (V88), is found mostly in the Levant and Africa. The northern branch, R1b1a (P297), seems to have originated around the Caucasus, eastern Anatolia, or northern Mesopotamia, then to have crossed over the Caucasus, from where they would have invaded Europe and Central Asia. R1b1b (M335) has only been found in Anatolia/Turkey.” ref

Neolithic cattle herders

“It has been hypothesized that R1b people (perhaps alongside neighboring J2 tribes) were the first to domesticate cattle in northern Mesopotamia some 10,500 years ago. R1b tribes descended from mammoth hunters, and when mammoths went extinct, they started hunting other large game such as bisons and aurochs. With the increase of the human population in the Fertile Crescent from the beginning of the Neolithic (starting 12,000 years ago), selective hunting and culling of herds started replacing indiscriminate killing of wild animals. The increased involvement of humans in the life of aurochs, wild boars, and goats led to their progressive taming. Cattle herders probably maintained a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence, while other people in the Fertile Crescent (presumably represented by haplogroups E1b1b, G and T) settled down to cultivate the land or keep smaller domesticates.” ref

“The analysis of bovine DNA has revealed that all the taurine cattle (Bos taurus) alive today descend from a population of only 80 aurochs. The earliest evidence of cattle domestication dates from circa 8,500 BCE in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures in the Taurus Mountains. The Taurus Mountains (Turkish: Toros Dağları), are a mountain complex in southern Turkey, separating the Mediterranean coastal region of southern Turkey from the central Anatolian Plateau. The two oldest archaeological sites showing signs of cattle domestication are the villages of Çayönü Tepesi in southeastern Turkey and Dja’de el-Mughara in northern Iraq, two sites only 250 km away from each others. This is presumably the area from which R1b lineages started expanding – or in other words the “original homeland” of R1b.” ref, ref

“The early R1b cattle herders would have split in at least three groups. One branch (M335) remained in Anatolia, but judging from its extreme rarity today wasn’t very successful, perhaps due to the heavy competition with other Neolithic populations in Anatolia, or to the scarcity of pastures in this mountainous environment. A second branch migrated south to the Levant, where it became the V88 branch. Some of them searched for new lands south in Africa, first in Egypt, then colonizing most of northern Africa, from the Mediterranean coast to the Sahel. The third branch (P297), crossed the Caucasus into the vast Pontic-Caspian Steppe, which provided ideal grazing grounds for cattle. They split into two factions: R1b1a1 (M73), which went east along the Caspian Sea to Central Asia, and R1b1a2 (M269), which at first remained in the North Caucasus and the Pontic Steppe between the Dnieper and the Volga. It is not yet clear whether M73 actually migrated across the Caucasus and reached Central Asia via Kazakhstan, or if it went south through Iran and Turkmenistan.” ref

“In any case, M73 would be a pre-Indo-European branch of R1b, just like V88 and M335. R1b-M269 (the most common form in Europe) is closely associated with the diffusion of Indo-European languages, as attested by its presence in all regions of the world where Indo-European languages were spoken in ancient times, from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Indian subcontinent, which comprised almost all Europe (except Finland, Sardinia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Anatolia, Armenia, European Russia, southern Siberia, many pockets around Central Asia (notably in Xinjiang, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan), without forgetting Iran, Pakistan, northern India, and Nepal. The history of R1b and R1a are intricately connected to each others.” ref

The British Isles’ introduction of Farming around 7,000 years ago began Radical Change

“The British Isles have been populated by human beings for hundreds of thousands of years, but it was the introduction of farming around 7,000 years ago that began a process of radical change. Over the millennia there were phases of extreme cold, when large areas of Britain were covered in ice, followed by warmer times. Around 10,000 years ago, the latest ice age came to an end. Sea levels rose as the ice sheets melted, and Britain became separated from the European mainland shortly before 8,000 years ago. The people living on the new islands of Britain were descendants of the first modern humans, or Homo sapiens, who arrived in northern Europe around 30,000 – 40,000 years ago. Like their early ancestors, they lived by hunting and gathering. The introduction of farming, when people learned how to produce rather than acquire their food, is widely regarded as one of the biggest changes in human history. This change happened at various times in several different places around the world. The concept of farming that reached Britain between about 7,000 – 6,500 years ago had spread across Europe from origins in Syria and Iraq between about 13,000 -11,000 years ago.” ref

“So the majority of early farmers were probably Mesolithic people who adopted the new way of life and took it with them to other parts of Britain. This was not a rapid change – farming took about 2,000 years to spread across all parts of the British Isles. The ‘Neolithic revolution according to radiocarbon dates, shows that the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer was relatively gradual. We know, for example, that hunters in the Mesolithic ‘managed’ or tended their quarry. They would make clearings in woodland around sources of drinking water, and probably made efforts to see that the herds of deer and other animals they hunted were not over-exploited.” ref

“The switch from managed hunting to pastoral farming was not a big change. The first farmers brought the ancestors of cattle, sheep, and goats with them from the continent. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars, which lived in the woods of Britain. Neolithic farmers also kept domesticated dogs, which were bred from wolves. It is probable that the earliest domesticated livestock were allowed to wander, and may be tended by a few herders. Sheep, goats, and cattle are fond of leaves and bark, and pigs snuffle around roots. These domestic animals may have played a major role in clearing away the huge areas of dense forest that covered most of lowland Britain.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Pic ref 

Ancient Women Found in a Russian Cave Turn Out to Be Closely Related to The Modern Population https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-women-found-in-a-russian-cave-turn-out-to-be-closely-related-to-the-modern-population

Abstract

“Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place independently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil’s Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The similarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulchi imply a high level of genetic continuity in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrasts with that reported for Europe.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

ref

ref, ref, ref, ref

Kurgan Hypothesis

“The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory or Kurgan model) or Steppe theory is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Russian kurgan (курга́н), meaning tumulus or burial mound. The Steppe theory was first formulated by Otto Schrader (1883) and V. Gordon Childe (1926), then systematized in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas, who used the term to group various prehistoric cultures, including the Yamnaya (or Pit Grave) culture and its predecessors. In the 2000s, David Anthony instead used the core Yamnaya culture and its relationship with other cultures as a point of reference.” ref

“Gimbutas defined the Kurgan culture as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including the Samara and Seroglazovo cultures of the Dnieper–Volga region in the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BCE). The people of these cultures were nomadic pastoralists, who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium BCE had expanded throughout the Pontic–Caspian steppe and into Eastern Europe. Recent genetics studies have demonstrated that populations bearing specific Y-DNA haplogroups and a distinct genetic signature expanded into Europe and South Asia from the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the third and second millennia BCE. These migrations provide a plausible explanation for the spread of at least some of the Indo-European languages, and suggest that the alternative Anatolian hypothesis, which places the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Neolithic Anatolia, is less likely to be correct.” ref

“Cultures that Gimbutas considered as part of the “Kurgan culture”:

• Bug–Dniester (6th millennium)
• Samara (5th millennium)
• Khvalynsk (5th millennium)
• Dnieper–Donets (5th to 4th millennia)
• Sredny Stog (mid-5th to mid-4th millennia)
• Maikop–Dereivka (mid-4th to mid-3rd millennia)
• Yamnaya (Pit Grave): This is itself a varied cultural horizon, spanning the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe from the mid-4th to the 3rd millennium.
• Usatovo culture (late 4th millennium)” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art 

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref  

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Paganism (beginning around 12,000 years ago)

Paganism (such as that seen in Turkey: 12,000 years ago). Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” around 12,000 years ago. Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago. Pagan-Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and 12,000 – 10,000 years old Paganistic-Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt. Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago and Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 10,000 years ago.

Paganism is approximately a 12,000-year-old belief system and believes in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife that can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals that can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife and who are guided/supported by a goddess/god, goddesses/gods, magical beings, or supreme spirits. If you believe like this, regardless of your faith, you are a hidden paganist.

Around 12,000 years ago, in Turkey, the first evidence of paganism is Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” and around 9,500 years ago, in Turkey, the second evidence of paganism is Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”. In addition, early paganism is connected to Proto-Indo-European language and religion. Proto-Indo-European religion can be reconstructed with confidence that the gods and goddesses, myths, festivals, and form of rituals with invocations, prayers, and songs of praise make up the spoken element of religion. Much of this activity is connected to the natural and agricultural year or at least those are the easiest elements to reconstruct because nature does not change and because farmers are the most conservative members of society and are best able to keep the old ways.

The reconstruction of goddesses/gods characteristics may be different than what we think of and only evolved later to the characteristics we know of today. One such characteristic is how a deity’s gender may not be fixed, since they are often deified forces of nature, which tend to not have genders. There are at least 40 deities and the Goddesses that have been reconstructed are: *Pria, *Pleto, *Devi, *Perkunos, *Aeusos, and *Yama.

The reconstruction of myths can be connected to Proto-Indo-European culture/language and by additional research, many of these myths have since been confirmed including some areas that were not accessible to the early writers such as Latvian folk songs and Hittite hieroglyphic tablets. There are at least 28 myths and one of the most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans is the myth, “Yama is killed by his brother Manu” and “the world is made from his body”. Some of the forms of this myth in various Indo-European languages are about the Creation Myth of the Indo-Europeans.

The reconstruction of rituals can be connected to Proto-Indo-European culture/language and is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from around 6,500 years ago. One of the earliest ritual is the construction of kurgans or mound graves as a part of a death ritual. kurgans were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas. Kurgans are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots.

The speakers of Pre-Proto-Indo-European lived in Turkey and it associates the distribution of historical Indo-European languages with the expansion around 9,000 years ago, with a proposed homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper in the Balkans around 7,000 years ago. The Proto-Indo-European Religion seemingly stretches at least back around 6,000 years ago or likely much further back and I believe Paganism is possibly an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system.

The earliest kurgans date to 6,000 years ago and are connected to the Proto-Indo-European in the Caucasus. In fact, around 7,000 years ago, there appears to be pre-kurgan in Siberia. Around 7,000 to 2,500 years ago and beyond, kurgans were built with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia, which display the continuity of the archaic forming methods. Kurgan cultures are divided archaeologically into different sub-cultures such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish, and Kuman–Kipchak. Kurgans have been found from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Around 5,000 years ago, kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian flat unforested grasslands, and their use spread with migration into eastern, central, northern Europe, Turkey, and beyond. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, & ref

Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago

7th millennium BC spanned the years 9,000 through 8,001 years ago

“During this time, agriculture spread from Anatolia to the Balkans. World population begins to grow at an exponential pace due to the Neolithic Revolution, reaching perhaps 10 million. In the agricultural communities of the Middle East, the cow was domesticated and use of pottery became common, spreading to Europe and South Asia, and the first metal (gold and copper) ornaments were made.” ref

• 9,000 years ago Axe found at Ireland’s earliest burial site, in Co Limerick, which has shed light on the ancient burial practices of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. ref
• 9,000 years ago  Bones of the dead were sorted and categorized before burial 
• 9,000 years ago Horse Burial Linked to Sheba
• 9,000 years ago:
• 9,000 years ago  Evidence of Londoners, “tool-making factory” in southeast London. ref
• 9,000 years ago: English Channel was formed.
• 9,000 years ago: Mesolithic site Lepenski Vir emerges in today’s Serbia.
• 9,000 years ago: Neolithic economy was established on the island of Crete (domesticated sheep or goats, pigs and cattle together with grains of cultivated bread wheat).
• 9,000  years ago: Sweden Large-scale fish processing operation established at Blekinge.
• 8,850 – 6,800 years ago: Advanced agriculture and a very early use of pottery by the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, Greece.
• 8,800 – 6,800 years ago: The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers.
• 8,500 years ago: Two breeds of non-wolf dogs in Scandinavia
• 8,500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin.
• 8,400 years ago: Cardium Pottery begins its move to west along the northern Mediterranean coast, beginning at Sesklo, Thessaly, Greece.
• 8,200 years ago: Firm date of the move of the first farmers from Turkey across the Aegean Sea and up the Danube into Romania and Serbia.
• 8,000 years ago: First traces of habitation of the Svarthola cave in Norway.
• 8,000 years ago: Agriculture appears around in the Balkans, see Old European Culture.  ref

The 6th millennium BC spanned the years 8,000 through 7,001 years ago. 

“It falls into the Holocene climatic optimum, with rising sea levels, and agriculture spreads to Europe and to Egypt. World population grows dramatically as a result of the Neolithic Revolution, perhaps quadrupling, from about 10 to 40 million, over the course of the millennium. With the earliest evidence of wine, from Georgia. dating to around 8,000 – 7,900 years ago. is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asiaand Eastern Europe, Georgia is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Archaeological finds and references in ancient sources also reveal elements of early political and state formations characterized by advanced metallurgy and goldsmith techniques that date back to the 7th century BC and beyond. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, associated with the Shulaveri-Shomu culture.” ref, ref

Changes 8,000 years ago

“Ancient European DNA collected from Spain to Russia concluded that the original hunter-gatherer population had assimilated a wave of “farmers” who had arrived from the Near Eastduring the Neolithic about 8,000 years ago. The Mesolithic era site Lepenski Vir in modern day Serbia, the earliest documented sedentary community of Europe with permanent buildings as well as monumental art precedes sites previously considered to be the oldest known by many centuries. The community’s year round access to a food surplus prior to the introduction of agriculture was the basis for the sedentary lifestyle. However, the earliest record for the adoption of elements of farming can be found in Starčevo, a community with close cultural ties. Belovode and Pločnik, also in Serbia, is currently the oldest reliably dated copper smelting site in Europe (around 7,000 years ago). Attributed to the Vinča culture, which on the contrary provides no links to the initiation of or a transition to the Chalcolithicor Copper age.” ref

Genomics of Middle Neolithic farmers at the fringe of Europe:

“Agriculture emerged in the Fertile Crescent around 11,000 years ago and then spread out from Turkey, reaching central Europe some 7,500 years ago and eventually Scandinavia by 6,000 yearsago. Recent paleogenomic studies have shown that the spread of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent into Europe was due mainly to a demic process. Such event reshaped the genetic makeup of European populations since incoming farmers displaced and admixed with local hunter-gatherers.”ref

 “The Middle Neolithic period in Europe is characterized by such interaction, and this is a time where a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry has been documented. While most research has been focused on the genetic origin and admixture dynamics with hunter-gatherers of farmers from Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, and Anatolia, data from farmers at the North-Western edges of Europe remains scarce. Here, we investigate genetic data from the Middle Neolithic from Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia and compare it to genomic data from hunter-gatherers, Early and Middle Neolithic farmers across Europe.” ref

“Of note, affinities between the British Isles and Iberia, confirm previous reports. However, there seems to be a regional origin for the Iberian farmers that putatively migrated to the British Isles. Moreover, we note some indications of particular interactions between Middle Neolithic Farmers of the British Isles and Scandinavia.Finally, our data together with that of previous publications allow us to achieve a better understanding of the interactions between farmers and hunter-gatherers at the northwestern fringe of Europe.” ref

“About 8,000 years ago, the plateau of land between what is now the east of England and the Netherlands was flooded by the sea. This brought an end to the forests and animal life that had colonized the region from other parts of Europe, including early human communities. Cores of sediment from the bottom of the North Sea in an area called Doggerland shoal Dogger Bank in the southern part of the North Sea became ice-free about 12,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age until flooding around 8,000 years ago. Some human remains including part of an ancient skull and several human artifacts, like fragments of stone tools have been recovered.” ref

How Europeans evolved white skin

“Most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago. Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations over the past 8000 years spreading rapidly throughout Europe. First, hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000 years ago, and neither could the first farmers who came from the Near East about 7,800 years ago nor the Yamnaya pastoralists who came from the steppes 4800 years ago. And there was a massive migration of Yamnaya herders from the steppes north of the Black Sea may have brought Indo-European languages to Europe about 4500 years ago. Not until about 4,300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe.” ref

“When it comes to skin color, the team found a patchwork of evolution in different places, and three separate genes that produce light skin, telling a complex story for how European’s skin evolved to be much lighter during the past 8000 years. But in the far north where low light levels favored pale skin. Seven hunter-gatherers found at a 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had light skin gene variants. And another gene which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale and blue-eyed, but those of central and southern Europe had darker skin.” ref

Our ancient ‘mother tongue’ words were spoken around 8,000 years ago.

“8,000 to 5,500 years ago the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken from by all who lived on the steppes to the north of the Caspian Sea. Linguists say it evolved over time to spawn more than 440 modern languages and is the root of all Indo-European languages today. With offshoots in Anatolia (the Hittites), the Aegean (Mycenaean Greece), Western Europe (the Corded Ware culture), Central Asia (Yamna culture), and southern Siberia (Afanasevo culture.) late 6th and early 5th millennium BC: Beginning of Samara culture at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, Russia. late 6th and early 5th millennium BC: Beginning of Samara culture at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, Russia.” ref, ref

8,000 years ago, the overwhelming majority of men never reproduced!

“At this time it seems there were 17 WOMEN REPRODUCED FOR EVERY ONE MAN. Once upon a time, 4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same.  A researcher, a biological anthropologist, hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and power, leaving nothing for others. These men could then pass their wealth on to their sons, perpetuating this pattern of elitist reproductive success. If this hypothesis is correct, it would be one of the first instances that scientists have found of culture affecting human evolution.” ref

8,000 years ago Europeans used cattle

“Analyses of the residues left inside ancient pottery vessels, suggest that the consumption of dairy products from sheep, goats and cattle likely dates back into the Neolithic period – at least 8,000 years ago in Europe (6,000 BCE) and earlier in the Near East. The precise origins of cattle as engines of labour – known as traction – is also murky. In the past, investigators traditionally looked for evidence of items pulled – primarily (but not only) wagons and ploughs. Wagons – known from preserved images such as figurines and rock art – have existed for more than 5,000 years. Early ploughs, such as the ard or scratch plough, were made of wood, and do not preserve well over thousands of years. The oldest known evidence of ploughs in Europe comes from fragments of ards preserved in water-logged ancient sites. They are just under 6,000 years old. Though not nearly as effective as modern machines, early ploughs would have been far faster and easier than having to break compacted earth in fields with hand tools in order to plant crops. They allowed people to plant more crops using less labour, increasing the amount of food that could be grown each year.” ref

“Analysed such changes to cattle footbones from European archaeological sites dating to 6,000 years ago or later demonstrated the used of secondary products which must have radically changed the capabilities of ancient societies. Moreover, after studying the footbones of cattle from 11 sites in the western Balkans (modern-day Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) dating to the local Neolithic, ranging from 6100 BCE to 4500 BCE (8,000 to 6,500 years ago) compared with the same bones from wild cattle at these sites expressed the presence and absence of footbone alterations indicative of the strain of traction. Research found changes to the footbones of cattle consistent with traction across these sites that were completely absent from the control group of wild cattle footbones. The presence of these pathologies, and their absence from the control population of wild cattle hunted at these same sites, proves that humans were using cattle as engines of labour in Europe at least 2,000 years earlier than was previously thought. Furthermore, comparisons of sex-specific proportions from some of these footbones showed that humans were using both male and female cattle. In fact, female cows were more common as animal engines than male bulls.” ref

8,000 years ago Manure used by Europe’s first farmers leads 

“Europe’s first farmers used far more sophisticated practices than was previously thought. Scientists have found that Neolithic farmers manured and watered their crops. And evidence for this is abundant in manure, have been found in the charred cereal grains and pulse seeds taken from 13 Neolithic sites around Europe. The fact that farmers made long-term investments such as manuring in their land sheds new light on the nature of early farming landscapes in Neolithic times. The idea that farmland could be cared for by the same family for generations seems quite an advanced notion, but rich fertile land would have been viewed as extremely valuable for the growing of crops. We believe that as land was viewed as a commodity to be inherited, social differences in early European farming communities started to emerge between the haves and the have-nots.” ref

“The territoriality of early farming groups may help to explain documented events of the period involving extreme violence. The study cites the example of a Neolithic mass burial of the late sixth millennium BC at Talheim, Germany, which preserves the remains of a community killed by assailants wielding stone axes like those used to clear the land. The research is based on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of 124 crop samples of barley, wheat, lentil and peas, totalling around 2,500 grains or seeds. The charred remains represent harvested crops preserved in Neolithic houses destroyed by fire. The samples were from archaeological excavations of Neolithic sites across Europe, dating from nearly 8,000 to 4,400 years ago.” ref

Proto-Europe 8 000 – 5000 BC with ties to Anatolian Civilization and the Indo-European Language Spreads to Western Europe with Agriculture

“Proto-European Cultures 8,000-2,500 BCE Interactive map of the Proto-European cultures in the Balkans. It is now assumed that the pre-Indo-European or Proto-European cultures which have evolved from rich archeological finds in the Greater Balkans, Greece and Sicily/Malta in the last 50 years go back to migrations from Anatolia. The archeological objects found in the Greater Balkans by Marija Gimbutas and others show a high sophistication in sculptures, ornaments, and grave culture. The “Proto-European Culture” in the Balkans and Greece is the oldest collective “civilization” known. They preceded Egypt by 4000 and China by 6000 years. Several large urban settlements (20 000 people) have been found, possibly under a female(?) priesthood.. The earliest temple cities have been unearthed in Göbekli Tepe (9500-8000 BCE or 11,822-10,022 years ago) predating agriculture by 2000 years. The excavators believe that the large concentrations of laborers building the temples precipitated the need for agriculture.” ref

•  8,000 BC: Fully Neolithic agriculture has spread through Anatolia to the Balkans. 
• 8,000 BC: Cycladic culture begin to use a coarse local type of clay to make a variety of objects.
• 8.000 BC: Female figurines holding serpents are fashioned on Crete and may have been associated with water, regenerative power and protection of the home.
• 7,900 BC: Vinča culture emerges on the shores of lower Danube.
• c. 5900 BC: Beginning of human inhabitation in Malta.
• c. 5500 BC: Beginning of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in the region of modern-day Romania, Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine.
• 7,500 BC: Earliest evidence of cheese-making (Kujawy, Poland).
• 7,500 BC Danubian culture. ref
• 7,000-year-old Mesolithic hunter-gatherer found in Spain had dark skin and blue-eyes.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Progressed organized religion (around 5,000 years ago)

Progressed organized religion (such as that seen in Egypt: 5,000 years ago “The First Dynasty dates to 5,150 years ago”). This was a time of astonishing religion development and organization with a new state power to control. Around the time of 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, saw the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power.

*The First Dynasty* Date: 3,150 B.C.E. (5,150 years ago) and the Beginning Rise of the Unequal State Government Hierarchies, Religions and Cultures Merger

The Pharaoh in ancient Egypt was the political and religious leader holding the titles ‘Lord of the Two Lands’ Upper and Lower Egypt and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’. In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt and this reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods; but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later.
Around 4,890 years ago during the Second Dynasty, the King was linked with the divine and reign with the will of the gods. Following this, rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth, the intermediary between the gods and the people, and when he died, he was thought to become Osiris, the god of the dead. As such, in his role of ‘High Priest of Every Temple’, it was the pharaoh’s duty to build great temples and monuments celebrating his own achievements and paying homage to the gods of the land. Among the earliest civilizations that exhibit the phenomenon of divinized kings are early Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by the king Menes (now believed to be Narmer). Menes/Narmer is depicted on inscriptions wearing the two crowns of Egypt, signifying unification, and his reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods; but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later. During the Second Dynasty of Egypt 4,890-4,670 years ago King Raneb (also known as Nebra) linked his name with the divine and his reign with the will of the gods. Following Raneb, the rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth. The honorific title of `pharaoh’ for a ruler did not appear until the period known as the New Kingdom 3,570-3,069 years ago. Monarchs of the dynasties before the title of `pharaoh’ from the New Kingdom were addressed as `your majesty’ by foreign dignitaries and members of the court and as `brother’ by foreign rulers; both practices would continue after the king of Egypt came to be known as a pharaoh. Ref Ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref 

Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.

I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.

Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.

At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.

Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d  

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft

Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie

Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.

Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”

I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist. 

To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so. 

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com