Violence or Peaceful European Displacement before and after 7,000 to 4,000 years ago?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Emerging Violence in Europe: related to Siberian hunters, Middle East farmers, and Steppe herders.

Emerging Violence in Europe: related to Siberian hunters, Middle East farmers, and Steppe herders

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Farming Didn’t Spread Across Europe. Farmers Did

“Around 8,500 years ago, farming appeared in southeastern Europe and moved northwest across the continent over the following three millennia. Did the idea travel between existing communities, or did farmers themselves migrate? Ancient DNA answered the question: people. Most present-day Europeans descend from a mixture of at least three ancient populations: Western Hunter-Gatherers, Early European Farmers, and Ancient North Eurasian/Eastern Hunter-Gatherer/Western Steppe Herders. The Neolithic transition was not one event. It was a long, uneven, regionally specific process, and its genetic signature varies by region. Early European farmers were not converted locals. Genetically, they resemble populations from Anatolia far more than the hunter-gatherers already living where they settled. Farmers and hunter-gatherers coexisted for centuries in some regions, and hunter-gatherer ancestry rises again in later Neolithic populations after an initial decline — a resurgence, not a clean sweep.” ref

Evidence of Conflict and Violence

• Displacement and Replacement: Genetic data show that incoming Anatolian farmers replaced roughly 98% of the local Balkan hunter-gatherer gene pool, a shift driven by major demographic expansion rather than quiet cultural assimilation. [1]
• Defensive Structures: Early farming villages in Greece and the Balkans featured defensive measures such as ditches, earth banks, and settlement enclosures (such as in areas around 6000 BCE). [1]
• Weaponry and Stockpiles: Archaeological sites across the region have yielded large quantities of clay sling projectiles (e.g., at Ceslo in Greece) and stone mace heads/spheres, pointing to organized intergroup hostility or deterrents against rivals. [1]
• Skeletal Trauma and Mass Graves: Bioarchaeological studies covering early and later Neolithic farming cultures reveal evidence of blunt-force trauma, weapon injuries, and mass-fatality sites where entire communities were destroyed. [1, 2]

Coexistence vs. Friction

• Complex Interaction: Recent computer simulations and aDNA mapping (such as research along the Danube corridor) suggest that the encounter was not a single, continuous war. Instead, it included prolonged periods of local coexistence, slow interbreeding, and trade alongside localized competition for fertile land. [1, 2]
• Escalating Tensions: As farming populations grew denser and resource pressure increased, interpersonal and intercommunal violence escalated sharply, laying the structural groundwork for formalized prehistoric warfare. [1, 2]

“Bioarchaeological evidence of interpersonal violence and early warfare presents important insights into conflict in past societies. This evidence is critical for understanding the motivations for violence and its effects on opposing and competing individuals and groups across time and space. Focusing on Neolithic northwestern Europe, this paper examines the variation and societal context of violence recorded in human skeletal remains from this region as a key element of human welfare. Compiling data from various sources, it becomes apparent that violence was endemic in Neolithic Europe, sometimes reaching levels of intergroup hostilities that ended in the utter destruction of entire communities. While precisely quantifying healed and unhealed trauma remains a fundamental problem, patterns suggest conflict likely grew from increasing competition between settled, growing communities, e.g., for access to arable land for food production. Further development of contextual information is paramount to test hypotheses about the motivations, origins, and evolution of violence, as human remains are the most direct indicator of actual small- and large-scale violence.” ref

I think violence was more common than not, but I do think there was not always violence either.  

Violence Theory for DNA Bottleneck Drop

“Between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago, many clan wars caused a massive collapse in male genetic diversity—dropping to roughly one reproducing man for every 17 to 20 women. After the onset of farming and herding around 12,000 years ago, societies grew increasingly organized around extended kinship groups, many of them patrilineal clans – a cultural fact with potentially significant biological consequences. The key is how clan members are related. While women may have married into a clan, men in such clans are all related through male ancestors and therefore tend to have the same Y chromosomes. From the perspective of those chromosomes at least, it’s almost as if everyone in a clan has the same father. That applies only within one clan, however, and considerable variation could still exist between clans. To explain why even between-clan variation might have declined during the bottleneck, the researchers hypothesized that wars, if they repeatedly wiped out entire clans over time, would also wipe out a good many male lineages and their unique Y chromosomes in the process.” ref

Peace Theory for DNA Bottleneck Drop

“Studies have found a pronounced decline in male effective population sizes worldwide around 3000–5000 years ago. This bottleneck did not affect female effective population sizes, which continued to increase over time. Until now, researchers have interpreted this remarkable genetic pattern as the result of ancient structuring of human populations into patrilineal groups (gathering closely related males) that violently competed with each other. In this scenario, violence is responsible for the repeated extinctions of patrilineal groups, leading to a significant reduction in male effective population size. Here, we propose an alternative hypothesis by modeling a segmentary patrilineal system based on anthropological literature. We show that variance in reproductive success between patrilineal groups, combined with lineal fission (i.e., the splitting of a group into two new groups of patrilineally related individuals), can lead to a substantial reduction in the male effective population size without resorting to the violence hypothesis. Thus, a peaceful explanation involving ancient changes in social structures, linked to global changes in subsistence systems, may be sufficient to explain the reported decline in Y-chromosome diversity.” ref

“The estimated timeframe of this bottleneck varies between world regions, ranging from 8,300 years ago in the Near East to 1,400 years ago in Siberia, and was estimated to be 5,000 years ago in Europe according to Karmin et al. using a mutation rate of 0.74 × 10⁻⁹ mutations/bp/year for the Y chromosome. Using a slightly higher mutation rate (1.0 × 10⁻⁹ mutations/bp/year), Batini et al. estimated a more recent bottleneck (4,200 to 2,100 years ago for Near Eastern and European populations). Several authors have noted that interpreting patterns in human genetic diversity requires accounting for fine-scale socio-cultural factors highlighted by archaeological and anthropological studies. The first socio-cultural model proposed to explain the Y chromosome bottleneck involved violent competition between patrilineal kin groups and the killing of large numbers of men. Thus, Zeng et al. simulated a human population structured into competing patrilineal kin groups. In this model, kin groups—referred to as descent groups in the present article, following Fox’s terminology—are genetically homogeneous for the Y-chromosome because men in the same group share a recent common paternal ancestor. Violent competition between these different patrilineal groups results in the extinction of certain groups. By increasing the rate of loss of Y-chromosomal lineages and accelerating genetic drift, it induces a severe decrease in Y-chromosome diversity.” ref

“However, it is questionable whether violence is necessary to explain the genetic signal observed by Karmin et al., as the level of violence worldwide at these times remains uncertain (Zeng et al.’s model assumes that 15% of males were killed at each generation). Using ethnographic and/or archaeological data, some authors have claimed that Pleistocene hunter-gatherers exhibited low levels of warfare, while others came to the opposite conclusion, fuelling the long-standing debate between Rousseauians and Hobbesians about human nature. Furthermore, a study using data from various Old World archaeological sites found that violence remained stable from when Homo sapiens diverged from other primates until the Bronze Age, but increased significantly during the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. (I don’t agree with this claim) Other studies report increases in violence in earlier periods, such as the Early Neolithic in Central Europe and the Copper Age and Late Bronze Age in the Middle East. These inconsistencies likely result from the nature of the archaeological record, which suffers from numerous biases, including the particularly small sample sizes for the earliest periods.” ref

“Moreover, although a large number of individuals have been found buried with weapons in the archaeological records of the Bronze Age, this does not coincide with an increase in interpersonal violence in either Europe or the Middle East, suggesting that the idealization of the social persona of the warrior may not reflect an intensification of warfare. Previous studies have shown that kinship systems, particularly residence and descent rules, leave a profound signature on uniparental genetic diversity without requiring violent competition. For instance, patrilocality, a residence rule in which a married couple settles in the husband’s or his father’s household, has been shown to reduce local Y-chromosome diversity relative to mtDNA because men remain in their native village while women migrate between villages with their mtDNA upon marriage. This pattern has been reported in various populations, such as hill tribes in Northern Thailand, food producers in Sub-Saharan Africa, tribes in Western New Guinea, and Sumatran populations. On the other hand, matrilocality, the rule according to which the couple settles near the wife’s place of birth, is known to reduce diversity on mtDNA compared to the Y chromosome within groups (e.g., in the West Timor population, Ngazidja of the Comoros Islands, and South-East Asian populations).” ref

“The patrilineal descent rule, according to which individuals are affiliated with the descent group of their father, is also known to reduce Y-chromosome diversity. Indeed, within patrilineal lineages or clans, men are closely related on paternal genealogical lines and share similar Y chromosomes. In Central Asia, present-day patrilineal populations have lower male than female effective population sizes and reduced Y-chromosome diversity compared with non-patrilineal (but patrilocal) populations. These populations practice group exogamy, which results in women migrating between descent groups. Here we test the hypothesis that the Y-chromosome bottleneck results from a global shift toward patrilineal systems, associated with the transition to new subsistence systems across all continents over the past 12,000 years. Supporting this hypothesis, previous work has shown that kinship systems covary with production systems. Marlowe showed that patrilocality is overrepresented in contemporary non-forager populations (mainly farmers and herders) compared to forager populations (60% and 34%, respectively). Similarly, non-foragers are overrepresented in patrilineal descent compared to foragers (47% and 14%, respectively). This has been famously summarised by Aberle: ‘the cow is the enemy of matriliny.” ref

“More recently, Holden and Mace confirmed that such relationships between subsistence and kinship systems exist in the Bantu populations even after correcting for the historical relationships between populations. We can therefore assume that the emergence of agro-pastoralism was accompanied by a change in the kinship system through the practice of patrilineality and patrilocality. Two main hypotheses explain the relationship between subsistence strategies and kinship systems. According to structural functionalists, patrilocality and patrilineality arise when resources can be accumulated. With movable property, prosperous men can offer a bride price to the parents of marriageable young women rather than move in with their in-laws for bride service. In this way, daughters are separated from their parents, while men remain in their place of birth after marriage. More generally, movable property is thought to empower men to resist matrilineal and matrilocal traditions. According to evolutionary anthropologists, patriliny is more prevalent in wealth-accumulating societies because this inheritance rule better maximizes reproductive success, given males’ higher reproductive potential than females.” ref

“Two features of patrilineal systems may be particularly relevant for the evolution of uniparental genetic diversity. First, in contemporary patrilineal populations not necessarily involved in violent conflict, demographic stochasticity causes some groups to grow over time as the number of descendants of the group founder increases, while others may die out by chance. As Fox wrote, ‘it is the problem of all societies based on unilineal descent groups that these groups are subject to such fluctuations—some expanding and growing abnormally large, while others decline and become extinct. Differential access to resources and differences in social status between groups may reinforce this process, with the high-status groups having greater reproductive success than the low-status groups. This variance in reproductive success between descent groups has been observed, for example, in China, where high-status imperial lineages from the 18th to 19th centuries have higher growth rates and lower extinction rates compared to low-status patrilineages. This pattern also appears in northwest Ireland, where about one in five males likely descends from a very powerful, long-lived early medieval dynasty: the Uí Neíll. In both cases, reproductive success is transmitted within descent groups, and groups with a high social status tend to have more children in each generation than groups with a low social status. Such variance in reproductive success between descent groups, and its intergenerational transmission, are expected to accelerate the growth of certain lineages and the extinction of others faster than in a population with no status differences.” ref

“Secondly, some patrilineal systems, known as segmentary patrilineal systems, are characterized not only by patrilineal descent but also by the segmentation (also called fission) of descent groups when they become too large. These systems account for 14% of patrilineal systems. Fissions likely occur linearly, following paternal genealogical lines. In other words, paternally related men cluster together in the newly formed patrilineal groups. This type of fission reduces genetic diversity within groups and increases differentiation between groups more severely than random fission, where newly formed descent groups arise randomly, without regard to paternal relatedness between men. Although Zeng et al.’s model accounts for fissions in patrilineal descent groups, it models these events as random fissions rather than lineal fissions. Because lineal fission clusters paternally related men together, it is expected to be more efficient than random fission at increasing Y-chromosome similarity within groups. It accelerates the loss of Y-chromosome diversity as compared to random fission when groups become extinct.” ref

AI Overview: Info on violence in different ages

We still know there were several massacre sites in Europe (especially Germany) between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago. Herxheim, Germany (7,300–6,950 years ago): remains of 1,000. Asparn an der Zaya (Schletz), Austria (7,000 years ago): remains of up to 300. Schöneck-Kilianstädten, Germany (7,000 years ago): remains of 26. Talheim, Germany (7,000 years ago): remains of 34. Achenheim and Bergheim, France (as old as 6,300 years ago): remains of up to 24. San Juan Ante Portam Latinam, Spain(over 5,000 years ago): remains of 338. Koszyce, Poland (4,800 to 5,000 years ago): remains of 15.

“Around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago, the population of Germany was mostly replaced by Yamnaya-related steppe genetics (likely with Indo-European languages).” ref, ref 

“Around 4,400 to 4,000 years ago, the arrival of the Bell Beaker culture from continental Europe replaced roughly a third of Ireland’s existing population within just a few centuries. This turnover raises the possibility that Indo-European languages, perhaps early Celtic, arrived with it. Irish Bronze Age haplotypic similarity is strongest within modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations.” ref, ref, ref

“Bell Beaker culture from continental Europe (like Germany and Belgium), starting around 4,400 years ago (with several hundred years of migrations), caused a 90% genetic replacement of Britain’s existing lineages within a few centuries.” ref

“Ancient migration transformed Spain’s DNA: Spain and the rest of the Iberian Peninsula saw 90% to nearly 100% replacement of male Y-chromosome lineages over 400 years during the Bronze Age (between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago).” ref

“Populations of the Anatolian Neolithic derived most of their ancestry from the Anatolian hunter-gatherers (AHG), with minor gene flow from Iranian/Caucasus and Levantine-related sources, suggesting that agriculture was adopted in situ by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region. Ancestors of AHGs and EEFs are believed to have split from Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHGs) between 45,000 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, and from Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers (CHGs) between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago. A 2025 study found that the spread of Neolithic cultures in Western Anatolia and the Aegean was a complex phenomenon involving admixture between Central Anatolian farmers as well as Western Anatolian hunter-gatherers who adopted farming, leading to the formation of the classic “Anatolian Farmer” genetic profile sometime after 7000 BCE, and that in Western Anatolia the adoption of agriculture was not necessarily a purely migratory phenomenon, but involved cultural exchange.” ref 

“EEFs and their Anatolian forebears kept taurine cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats as livestock, and planted cereal crops like wheat. Genetic studies demonstrate that the introduction of farming to Europe in the 7th millennium BCE was associated with a mass migration of people from Northwest Anatolia to Southeast Europe, which resulted in the replacement of almost all (c. 98%) of the local Balkan hunter-gatherer gene pool with ancestry from Anatolian farmers. In the Balkans, the EEFs appear to have divided into two wings, which expanded further west into Europe along the Danube (Linear Pottery culture) or the western Mediterranean (Cardial Ware). EEFs nevertheless left large parts of Northern and Eastern Europe unsettled. During the Middle Neolithic, a largely male-driven resurgence of WHG ancestry emerged among many EEF-derived communities, increasing the frequency of hunter-gatherer paternal haplogroups.” ref 

“Around 7,500 years ago, EEFs originating from the Iberian Peninsula migrated into Northwest Africa, bringing farming to the region. They were a key component in the neolithization process of the Maghreb, and intermixed with the local forager communities. The most common paternal haplogroup among EEFs was haplogroup G2a. Haplogroups E1b1, and R1b have also been found. Their maternal haplogroups were mainly West Eurasian lineages, including H2, I, and T2. Significant numbers of Central European farmers belonged to the East Asian maternal lineage N9a, which is almost absent in modern Europeans but common in East Asia. Another study disputed the high frequency of the East Asian mitochondrial haplogroup N9a in Neolithic cultures of the Carpathian Basin. The Early European Farmers are believed to have been mostly dark-haired and dark-eyed, and light-skinned, with the derived SLC24A5 being fixed in the Anatolian Neolithic, although a genetic study of Ötzi the Iceman, a Chalcolithic mummy of EEF ancestry, found that he had a darker skin tone than contemporary southern Europeans.” ref 

“A study of EEF remains across Europe concluded that they most likely had an “intermediate to light skin complexion”. A 2024 paper found that risk alleles for mood-related phenotypes are enriched in Neolithic farmers’ ancestry. Cucuteni–Trypillia settlements, such as Talianki in western Ukraine, were among the largest in Eurasia, and possibly the world, dating to the 5th millennium BCE. Research indicates that the settlements had a three-level settlement hierarchy, with the possibility of state-level societies. An excavated mega-structure suggests public buildings for meetings or ceremonies. Genetic analysis of individuals found in Neolithic tombs suggests that at least some EEF peoples were patrilineal (tracing descent through the male line), with the tombs’ occupants mostly consisting of the male descendants of a single male common ancestor and their children, as well as their wives, who were genetically unrelated to their husbands, suggesting female exogamy.” ref 

“The people of the Funnelbeaker culture (4100–2800 BCE) had haplogroup I2, while a smaller number belonged to R1b-V88, Q-FTF30, and G2a. mtDNA haplogroups included U, H, T, R, and K, suggesting that these burials were based on a patrilineal social organization. The oldest graves were wooden chambered cairns inside long barrows, but later took the form of passage graves and dolmens. Those in southern Scandinavia were largely of EEF descent, with slight hunter-gatherer admixture, suggesting that the Neolithic in Scandinavia resulted from migration from the south. The Funnelbeakers were genetically very different from people in the neighboring hunter-gatherer Pitted Ware culture. The Pitted Ware culture carried no EEF admixture and was instead genetically similar to other European hunter-gatherers.” ref, ref  

“The TRB techno-complex is divided into a northern group including Northern Germany and southern Scandinavia (TRB-N, roughly the area that previously belonged to the Ertebølle-Ellerbek complex), a western group in the Netherlands between the Zuiderzee and lower Elbe that originated in the Swifterbant culture, an eastern group centered on the Vistula catchment, roughly ranging from Oder to Bug, and south-central groups (TRB-MES, Altmark) around the middle and upper Elbe and Saale. In the southern and eastern groups especially, local variant sequences emerged. In the late 4th millennium BCE, the Globular Amphora culture (3400–2800 BCE) preceded the Corded Ware culture (2900-2300 BCE; with steppe-related ancestry considered a likely vector for spreading many Indo-European languages across Europe and Asia) in its central area. In this context, and given its area of occupation, scholars have identified this culture as the underlying culture of a Germanic–Baltic–Slavic continuum. It replaced most eastern, and later southern, TRB groups, reducing the TRB area to modern northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.” ref, ref

“Globular Amphora culture: a genetic analysis of fifteen samples of mtDNA majority of the samples belonged to subclades U and H, along with J, W, and K. The remains were found to be closely related to Early European Farmers and Western Hunter-Gatherers, with little genetic relation to the Yamnaya culture of Western Steppe Herders in the east. The authors suggested that the Globular Amphora culture may have been in contact with the Yamnaya, but that interaction would have been mostly cultural, with very limited migration, if any. Moreover, genetic analysis of eight males from the Globular Amphora culture showed the following: Three carried I2a2a1b and a subclade of it; two carried I2a2; one carried I2; one carried BT; and one carried CT. They also had about 70% Early European Farmer ancestry and 30% Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, with some showing negligible Eastern Hunter-Gatherer and Yamnaya traces. Furthermore, a genetic analysis of fifteen samples from the Koszyce mass grave in southern Poland, ascribed to the Globular Amphora culture, showed they were all members of an extended family and were buried with great care by someone who knew them well. Most were female children. All had been executed by a violent blow to the head, perhaps by invading Corded Ware groups. The fifteen mtDNA samples consisted of various subclades of T, H, J, K, and HV. With about 70% Early European Farmer ancestry and 30% Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, the population differed from neighboring Corded Ware groups by lacking steppe-related ancestry. The older males of the family are missing from the grave, which may suggest that they were away, disposed of in a method not found, possibly made slaves, or had fled. Of the eight Y-DNA samples, all belonged to I2a-L801. Archaeological and genetic evidence from the grave indicated that the Globular Amphora culture was patrilineal, patrilocal, patriarchal, and kinship-oriented, which appears to have been the norm for Late Neolithic communities in Central Europe. Lastly, a genetic analysis of three Globular Amphora samples from Vlineves in the Czech Republic had mainly Early European Farmer ancestry and about 25–30% Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. The 3 Globular Amphora culture males in the study belonged to Y-haplogroup R1b–V88.” ref 

“Corded Ware culture: The majority of Corded Ware culture men carried R1a-M417; the remaining ones carried R1b and I2a. R1a-M417, R1b-L51, R1b-M269, and R-L11 haplogroups spread into Europe from the East after 3,000 BCE. Most early Corded Ware culture males in Bohemia carried R1b-L151, while R1a lineages became predominant over time. Male haplogroup diversity appears to decline over time, from five lineages in early Corded Ware culture to a single dominant lineage, R1a-M417(xZ645), in late Corded Ware culture. Neither R1a nor R1b-M269 has been reported among Neolithic populations in central and western Europe, although they were common among earlier Eastern European hunter-gatherers. R1b-M269 is the major lineage associated with the arrival of Steppe ancestry in western Europe after 2500 BCE. Yamnaya males mainly carried R1b-Z2103, suggesting that Corded Ware culture males cannot be directly patrilineally descended from Yamnaya individuals. The Corded Ware culture is genetically similar to the Beaker culture, the Únětice culture, and the Nordic Bronze Age. People of the Nordic Bronze Age and Corded Ware show the highest lactose tolerance among Bronze Age Europeans. The study also found a close genetic relationship between the Corded Ware culture and the Sintashta culture, suggesting that the Sintashta culture emerged from an eastward expansion of Corded Ware peoples. The Sintashta culture is in turn closely genetically related to the Andronovo culture, by which it was succeeded. Many cultural similarities between the Sintashta/Andronovo culture, the Nordic Bronze Age, and the people of the Rigveda have been detected.” ref

“During the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age, the EEF-derived cultures of Europe were overwhelmed by successive migrations of Western Steppe Herders (WSHs) from the Pontic–Caspian steppe, who carried roughly equal amounts of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestries. These migrations led to EEF paternal DNA lineages in Europe being almost entirely replaced with WSH-derived paternal DNA (mainly subclades of EHG-derived R1b and R1a). EEF maternal DNA (mainly haplogroup N) was also substantially replaced, being supplanted by steppe lineages, suggesting the migrations involved both males and females from the steppe. EEF ancestry remains widespread throughout Europe, ranging from about 60% near the Mediterranean Sea, peaking at 65% in Sardinia, and diminishing northwards to about 10% in northern Scandinavia. According to early 2020s studies, the highest EEF ancestry found in modern Europeans ranges from 67% to over 80% in modern Sardinians, Italians, and Iberians, with the lowest EEF ancestry found in modern Europeans ranging around 35-40% in modern Finns, Lithuanians, and Latvians. EEF ancestry is also prominent in living Northwest Africans, such as Moroccans and Algerians.” ref

Social inequality and Yamnaya expansion with few Y-DNA subclades

“Ancient DNA data have provided evidence that the Yamnaya were indeed a society in which power was concentrated among a small number of elite males. The Y chromosomes the Yamnaya carried were nearly all of a few types, suggesting that a limited number of males were extraordinarily successful at spreading their genes. In contrast, the Yamnaya had more diverse mitochondrial DNA sequences. The descendants of the Yamnaya, or their close relatives, spread their Y chromosomes into Europe and India, and this expansion had a profound demographic impact: the Y-chromosome types they carried were absent in Europe and India before the Bronze Age but are now predominant in both places. This Yamnaya expansion also cannot have been entirely friendly, as the proportion of Y chromosomes of steppe origin in both western Europe and India today is much larger than the proportion of the rest of the genome. This preponderance of male ancestry from the steppe implies that Yamnaya male descendants with political or social power were more successful at competing for local mates than men from local groups. The most striking example I know is from Iberia in far southwestern Europe, where Yamnaya-derived ancestry arrived suddenly at the onset of the Bronze Age between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago. In the earliest Iberians with Yamnaya-derived ancestry, Yamnaya ancestry across the whole genome is almost never more than about 15 percent. However, around 90 percent of males carrying Yamnaya ancestry have a Y-chromosome type of steppe origin that was absent in Iberia before then. Extraordinary hierarchies and power imbalances were at work in the Yamnaya expansions. R1b-M269 expanded with the Yamnaya (through the Bell Beaker expansion) into Iberia; hence, yes, 90% of modern Basque male lineages have a steppe origin, like R1b-DF27, and their common ancestor spoke Late Proto-Indo-European. Indian R1a paternal ancestors came from the steppe.” ref

“Around 6700 years ago, Neolithic Europe saw the emergence of megalithic monuments in northern France, followed by a rapid spread to the rest of the continent. However, whether this was driven by the transmission of ideas (cultural diffusion) or the movement of people remains debated. To test whether this spread coincided with population movements, we reconstructed the population history of the European Neolithic (∼6,500–4,800 years ago) by analyzing genomic data from 2963 ancient individuals, including 46 unpublished genomes from megalithic and related contexts. To assess the alternative scenario whereby megaliths spread through contact networks, as expected under cultural diffusion, we integrated archaeological evidence with radiocarbon chronologies to reconstruct past trading networks. We identify northern France, where megaliths first emerged, as a zone of genetic admixture and cultural influence from the two major early Neolithic divisions: the Cardial of the Western Mediterranean and the Linear Pottery traditions of central Europe. From this admixed population, we uncover several migrations associated with the formation of the Funnel Beaker Culture in north-central Europe and the neolithisation of Scandinavia and the British Isles. We find that megaliths were spread exclusively within regions impacted by Cardial-related genetic ancestry, but only in the British Isles and Ireland did their emergence coincide with the time of the migration. The temporal delay between the migrations and the spread of megaliths elsewhere reveals that neither population movements nor cultural diffusion alone fully explains the geospatial distribution of the megalithic tradition. Rather, megaliths diffused across different Neolithic groups whose long-distance trade networks formed in the wake of earlier population movements. Our findings highlight the need to move beyond simplistic interpretations that present migrations or cultural diffusion as isolated events bringing technological and cultural innovations.” ref

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I added info

“Haplogroup IJ is a Y-DNA haplogroup, 49,700–44,600 years ago (Possible place of origin: Southwest Asia/South Caucasus) an immediate descendant of Haplogroup IJK, IJK is a branch of Haplogroup HIJK. With the immediate descendants of IJ are Haplogroup I and Haplogroup J.” ref

“Haplogroup I (I-M170) is a haplogroup, 43,000 years ago (Possible place of origin: Southeastern Europe/West Balkans) an immediate descendant of haplogroup IJ, with subclades I1 and I2 that can be found in most present-day European populations, with peaks in some Northern European and Southeastern European countries.” ref

“The remains of one adult male and two twin boys from a 31,000 years ago Gravettian site in Austria. All belonged to haplogroup Y-Haplogroup I.” ref, ref

“Haplogroup I1 (I1-M253) is a primary branch of Haplogroup I-M170 (I*). Haplogroup I1 is believed to have been present among Upper Paleolithic European hunter-gatherers as a minor lineage, but due to its near-total absence in pre-Neolithic DNA samples, it cannot have been very widespread. Neolithic I1 samples are very sparse as well, suggesting a rapid dispersion connected to a founder effect in the Nordic Bronze Age. All known living members descend from a common ancestor 6 times younger than the common ancestor with I2. More than 99% of living men with I1 belong to the DF29 branch, which is estimated to have emerged in 2400 BCE. All DF29 men share a common ancestor born between 2500 and 2400 BCE. The oldest ancient individual with I1-DF29 found is Oll009, a man from early Bronze Age Sweden. A 2024 study found that I1 expanded rapidly during a migration from the eastern or northeastern parts of Scandinavia into Southern Sweden, Denmark, and Norway around 2000 BCE and was associated with the introduction of stone cist burials. The study concluded that the spread of Y-DNA haplogroup I1 was associated with a genetic cluster labeled as “LNBA phase III” and that this genetic cluster formed the predominant ancestry source for Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking Age Scandinavians, as well as other ancient European groups with a documented Scandinavian or Germanic association (for example, Anglo-Saxons and Goths).” ref

“BAL0051 could be assigned to haplogroup I1 hunter-gatherer from the Azilian site of Balma Guilanya in Spain 13,466 years ago, classified as having a now extinct branch of I-Z2699, an upstream lineage of Haplogroup I1 (I-M253 18,000 BCE).” ref, ref, ref

“Haplogroup I1, burial RISE179. Date: 2010-1776 BCE – An individual found in a kurgan burial dating to the late Neolithic Dagger Period in Scandinavia labeled RISE179. The grave is located close to Abbekås on the south coast of Skåne RISE179 had a genetic affinity to the populations of the Corded Ware culture and the Unetice culture.” ref

“Haplogroup I1, burial oll009 Date:1930-1750 BCE – A LNBA individual from Southern Sweden. oll009 and was sequenced in the study titled “The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon”. Oll009 is dated to the Scandinavian late Neolithic and was found in a burial in Sweden close to Öllsjö on the east coast of Skåne. Similar to RISE179, he carried a high percentage of Western Steppe-Herder ancestry and had a genetic affinity to the population of the Battle Axe culture and other populations of the Corded Ware horizon. oll009 has Y11204 but does not seem to have Y164553 or Y11205.” ref

“Despite the high frequency of haplogroup I1 in present-day Scandinavians, I1 is completely absent among early agriculturalist DNA samples from Neolithic Scandinavia. Except for a single DNA sample (SF11), it is also absent from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Scandinavia. I1 first starts to appear in Scandinavia in notable frequency during the late Neolithic in conjunction with the entrance of groups carrying Western Steppe Herder ancestry into Scandinavia, but does not increase significantly in frequency until the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age. Due to the very low number of ancient DNA samples that have been assigned to I1 that date to earlier than the Nordic Bronze Age, it is currently unknown whether I1 was present as a rare haplogroup among Scandinavian forager cultures such as Pitted Ware before becoming assimilated by the Battle Axe culture, or if it was brought into Scandinavia by incoming groups such as Battle Axe who may have assimilated it from cultures such as the Funnelbeaker culture in Central Europe; or the steppe itself. Future research will most likely be able to determine which one of these two possible origins turns out to be the case. Samples SF11 and BAB5 are unlike other ancient DNA samples assigned to I1 in the sense that they both seem to represent now-extinct branches of I1 that hadn’t fully developed into I-M253 yet. They are therefore unlikely to have been ancestral to present-day carriers of I1, who all share a common ancestor that lived around 2600 BCE.” ref

“Haplogroup I2 (I2-M438) is a primary branch of Haplogroup I-M170 (I*). Haplogroup I2 originated sometime around 26,000–31,000 BCE. It originated in Europe and developed into several main subgroups: I2-M438*, I2a-L460, I2b-L415, and I2c-L596. The haplogroup can be found all over Europe and reaches its maximum frequency in the Dinaric Alps (Balkans) via founder effect, related to the migrations of the Early Slavs to the Balkan peninsula. Haplogroup I2a was the most frequent Y-DNA among Mesolithic Western European hunter-gatherers (WHG) belonging to the Villabruna Cluster.” ref

“Goyet Caves located in Belgium burial GoyetQ-2 (15,230-14,780 years ago I2a1a1b1) associated with the Magdalenian culture.” ref, ref

“Individual with haplogroup I2 found at Hohle Fels cave from Germany, dated to at least 14,200 years old. The Magdalenian occupation at Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany dates to approximately 16,300 to 15,000 years ago, representing human resettlement of the region after the Last Glacial Maximum.” ref, ref, ref

“Grotte du Bichon cave Azilian site with a skeleton of a hunter-gatherer of the Azilian (late Upper Paleolithic to early Mesolithic), dubbed “Bichon man”. 20 to 23 years old, dated to 13,770–13,560 years ago, with Y-DNA haplogroup I2a and of mt-DNA haplogroup U5b1h.” ref, ref

“Ukraine human finds dated to 9500–6000 BCE show an intermediate between Eastern hunter-gatherer and Scandinavian hunter-gatherers. Samples of Y-DNA extracted from these individuals belonged exclusively to subclades of R1b1 and R1a and haplotype subclades of I2.” ref

“Four males surveyed the remains of six Scandinavian hunter-gatherers buried at Motala, Sweden, between 6000-5700 BCE. Of the four males surveyed, three carried the paternal haplogroup I2a1 or various subclades of it, while the other carried I2c.” ref

While Early European Farmers from Anatolia and later the Steppe peoples colonized and invaded Europe, initially diminishing hunter-gatherers with Y-DNA haplogroup I, they later made a strong comeback.

AI Overview: The trajectory of Y-DNA Haplogroup I—the oldest major indigenous paternal lineage in Europe—is one of the most fascinating examples of resilience and demographic resurgence in human archaeogenetics. [1, 2]

While the Early European Farmers (EEF) from Anatolia (bringing Haplogroup G2a) and the later Western Steppe Herders (WSH) from the Yamnaya culture (bringing Haplogroups R1b and R1a) fundamentally overhauled Europe’s gene pool, the indigenous hunter-gatherer male lines did not disappear. Instead, they executed a major multi-stage comeback. [1, 2, 3]

📉 The Initial Collapse (Early Neolithic: ~7000–5000 BCE)

Before agriculture, Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG) carrying various subclades of Haplogroup I (predominantly I2) dominated Europe. When Anatolian farmers advanced into Europe, they initiated a massive demographic shift. For the first several centuries, the two groups lived apart; early Neolithic graveyards contain almost exclusively the farmer paternal marker G2a. Indigenous hunter-gatherers were marginalized, pushed to the geographical fringes (forests, mountains, and coastlines). [1, 2, 3, 4]

🔄 The First Comeback: The Middle-to-Late Neolithic Resurgence (~4500–3000 BCE)

The first turnaround happened long before the Steppe peoples arrived. Over millennia, farming communities suffered from soil depletion, crop failures, and social collapses (such as the disintegration of the Linear Pottery Culture, or LBK). [1, 2]

As the rigid social boundaries between populations frayed, marginalized hunter-gatherer groups slowly integrated back into agrarian societies. Crucially, this integration was heavily male-biased. Local I2 males began marrying into farmer communities. By the Late Neolithic, cultures like the Funnelbeaker Culture in Scandinavia and Germany, and the Globular Amphora Culture in Eastern Europe, saw their paternal lineages almost entirely replaced by Haplogroup I2, even though their overall autosomal DNA remained largely Anatolian-farmer derived. [1, 2, 3]

⚔️ The Second Comeback: Piggybacking on the Steppe Expansions (Bronze Age: ~3000 BCE onward)

When the Indo-European Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists swept across Europe, they brought massive cultural changes and an overwhelming wave of R1a and R1b paternal lines, drastically reducing the farmer lineage G2a. Yet, Haplogroup I survived this second shock and thrived by assimilating into the new Bronze Age systems. [1, 2, 3]

• The Rise of I1 (The Nordic Bronze Age): While I2 was the dominant Mesolithic lineage, a highly specific sister branch—Haplogroup I1—underwent a massive genetic bottleneck. For thousands of years, it remained nearly invisible in the ancient record. However, during the Late Neolithic and Nordic Bronze Age, a single I1 lineage successfully integrated into the emerging pre-Germanic Corded Ware / Bell Beaker hybrid societies. This single lineage exploded in population, ultimately becoming the defining paternal signature of Scandinavia (found in over one-third of modern Swedish and Norwegian men). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• The Survival of I2 (The Slavic and Balkan Expansion): Subclades of I2 clung to pockets of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Much later, during the Migration Period, specific branches of I2a experienced massive population founder effects alongside Slavic expansions, cementing its status as a dominant lineage in Southeastern Europe today. [1, 2]

Summary of Paternal Shifts in Prehistoric Europe

Ultimately, while Europe’s modern autosomal DNA is a roughly tripartite blend of Farmers, Steppe Herders, and Hunter-Gatherers, its paternal landscape reveals that the indigenous ice-age hunters (Haplogroup I) successfully weathered two separate migrations to claim a massive share of the modern European population. [1, 2, 3]

Would you like to explore a specific branch of Haplogroup I, such as the evolutionary bottleneck of I1 in Scandinavia or the Slavic expansion of I2 in the Balkans? Alternatively, I can provide more details on how social structures (like patrilocality) impacted these shifts. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

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Siberia as the Origin and Migration place of “Light Skin” genes SLC24A5 and SLC45A2, about 22,000 to 28,000 years ago?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“An Upper Paleolithic individual from the Afontova Gora 2 site, dating to 17,000 years ago and representing Ancient North Eurasian ancestry, is the earliest known member of haplogroup Q1a1-F746/Q-NWT01.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Goats Mythology and Mythological Caprids/Caprinae: Sheep and Goats

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Catalhoyuk, a proto-city in southern Anatolia, may have established a “female-centered” social structure

Europeans descended from Neolithic DNA related to Çatal Hoyuk, genomic evidence suggests

Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)

• Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
• Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk

9,000-year-old Increased Interpersonal Violence at Catal Hoyuk

“Ancient DNA from Catal Hoyuk and related central/northwestern Turkey sites (such as Barcın Hoyuk) shows that these early Anatolian farming populations form the primary genetic foundation of Europe’s first farmers.” ref, ref, ref

“At Catal Hoyuk researchers found that 25 of the 93 skulls that they studied showed signs of healed fractures, and 12 of those people had been beaten as many as five times with round, hard objects. A number of clay balls unearthed at the site are about the right size to have inflicted the blows, the scientists note. Cranial injuries increased during the Middle period, when the population was largest and densest. One could argue that overcrowding led to higher stress and conflict within the community. Infectious diseases and environmental problems, along with violence, are thought to have brought about the town’s collapse about 7,950 years ago.” ref

“There is the presence of violence inside the homes at Catal Hoyuk. Under the floors are burials of headless, limbless bodies, separated and cached skulls. One skull was plastered in Neolithic Near East fashion, with the appearance of being fleshed again. Violence is not always a violation of someone, but can also be a way of showing love and respect. Three published works are used as methods to answer the question: Was the violence inflicted on the people the product of wanting to harm the body and soul, or was this a way to venerate loved ones? Explanations and speculations range from ritual violence to interpretations of headhunting in the Neolithic Near East. Combined with the material and art culture of murals depicting hunting scenes, vultures over headless bodies, and funerary rites; figurines with removable heads; and auroch horns and bucrania built into the architecture, a picture of violence at Catal Hoyuk emerges. The question remains: how did the people themselves view this violence? Physical evidence alone cannot answer this. Without knowing if they saw all of these examples as violence, and what their meaning was, these burials may represent violation or veneration, or both.” ref

AI Overview: The first cattle herders in Europe came from western Anatolia (Turkey) and the Near East. These Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (ANF) migrated across the Aegean Sea into the Balkans around 7000 BCE, Early European Farmers (EEF) were a group of the Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (ANF) bringing the “Neolithic package” with them—which included domesticated taurine cattle, sheep, goats, and crops like emmer wheat. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

The ritual cattle symbolism found at Çatal Höyük reflects a broader Near Eastern cultural obsession that fundamentally shaped the worldview, ideology, and identity of the Early European Farmers (EEFs). As these Anatolian herders and Levantine farmers interbred and migrated westward, they did not just transport crops and livestock; they carried a complex ideological package—often dubbed the “ideology of the bull”—that deeply influenced the spiritual and domestic frameworks of Europe’s first agriculturalists. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Lineage of Cattle Herding and Ritualism

• The Near East & Anatolian Foundation: The deep history of cattle domestication and symbolic ritualism originated in the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia, where wild aurochs were first domesticated. Massive horn cores, bovine plaster installations, and ritual burials at sites like Çatal Höyük showcase an intense ideological reverence for the bull and cow. [1, 2]
• The Balkan Crucible: As these Near Eastern populations migrated into the Balkans, they formed intermediate cultures such as the Starčevo-Körös-Criș network. Here, the cattle ritualism and ideology blended with localized European practices. The Balkans acted as a staging ground where herding strategies shifted to heavily favor cattle over Mediterranean sheep. [1, 2]
• The Linear Pottery Culture (LBK) Manifestation: Around 5500 BCE, descendant groups moved north and westward out of the northern Balkans (Carpathian Basin) to establish the Linear Pottery Culture across Central Europe. The LBK people relied extensively on cattle husbandry for meat, traction, and dairy. They encoded this multi-millennial ritual tradition directly into their material culture, frequently crafting bovine-shaped ceramic vessels, incorporating cattle symbols into household life, and burying cattle intentionally within communal landscapes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Genetic tracking of both ancient human DNA and domesticated cattle teeth confirms a direct, continuous path of demic expansion: from the early hubs of Western Asia, through the stepping stone of the Balkans, and ultimately exploding into Central Europe via the LBK longhouse communities. [1, 2, 3]

Haplogroup Y-DNA G2: Early Farmer Violence

AI Overview: Y-DNA Haplogroup G2 (specifically G2a) was the primary paternal lineage of early Neolithic farmers who expanded from Anatolia into Europe between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago. Around 7,000 years ago, genetic studies reveal a massive male demographic bottleneck where male genetic diversity plummeted, coinciding with the rise of settled farming, territorial competition, and early prehistoric warfare. [1, 2, 3, 4]

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Connection Between Haplogroup G2 and Early Farming

• Anatolian Origins: Haplogroup G2 is deeply tied to the spread of agriculture, sedentism, and domestic animals from the Near East and Anatolia. [1, 2]
• Early European Dominance: Sites belonging to early European farming cultures—such as the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), Cardial Ware, and Globular Amphora cultures—were overwhelmingly dominated by G2a paternal lineages. [1, 2]

“The overwhelming majority of Europeans belong to the G2a subclade, and most northern and western Europeans fall more specifically within G2a-L140 (or to a lower extend G2a-M406). Almost all G2b (L72+, formerly G2c) found in Europe are Ashkenazi Jews. G2b is found from the Middle East to Pakistan, and is almost certainly an offshoot of Neolithic farmers from western Iran, where G2b was identified in a 9,250 year-old sample by Broushaki et al. (2016). There has so far been ancient Y-DNA analysis from Early Neolithic Anatolia, Iran, Israel, Jordan as well as most Neolithic cultures in Europe (Thessalian Neolithic in Greece, Starčevo culture in Hungary/Croatia, LBK culture in Germany, Remedello in Italy, and Cardium Pottery in south-west France and Spain) and all sites yielded a majority of G2a individuals, except those from the Levant. The testing of Neolithic remains in various parts of Europe has confirmed that haplogroup G2a was the dominant lineages of Neolithic farmers and herders who migrated from Anatolia to Europe between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago.” ref

“The Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in south-central Anatolia was founded by cereal and pulse farmers who also brought domesticated goats and sheep. Only a few centuries later (c. 6500 BCE) were cattle introduced to Çatalhöyük and other sites in Central Anatolia, presumably by trading with their eastern neighbors. Also around 8,500 years ago, G2a Neolithic farmers arrived in northwest Anatolia and Thessaly in central Greece, as attested by the ancient genomes sequenced by Mathieson et al. (2015) and Hofmanová et al. (2015). G2a farmers from the Thessalian Neolithic quickly expanded across the Balkans and the Danubian basin, reaching Serbia, Hungary and Romania by 5800 BCE, Germany by 5500 BCE, and Belgium and northern France by 5200 BCE. Ancient skeletons from the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criș culture (6000-4500 BCE) in Hungary and Croatia, and the Linear Pottery culture (5500-4500 BCE) in Hungary and Germany, all confirmed that G2a (both G2a2a and G2a2b) remained the principal paternal lineage even after farmers intermingled with indigenous populations as they advanced. Freilich et al. (2021) analyzed seven samples from the Middle Neolithic Sopot culture in northeastern Croatia, three of which belonged to G2a (two G-PF3147 and one G-U1>L13>Z2022).” ref

“Steppe people were almost exclusively cattle and horse pastoralists and first settled in flat regions like the Hungarian Plain, the North European Plain and the Baltic region. Even after reaching Western Europe, they favored relatively low lying regions like the Low Countries, western France and the British Isles, where R1b lineages now exceeds 60%, and in some places 80% of the population. In fact, the highest percentages of G2a today are found in the regions last invaded by R1a and R1b people. Indo-Europeans didn’t penetrate into Iberia until 1800 BCE and did not cover the whole peninsula until 1200 BCE, and pockets of G2a survive in particularly isolated areas like the Pyrenees, the Cantabrian mountains, or the arid highlands of La Mancha. The Proto-Italics only crossed the Alps into Italy from 1300 BCE and settled more densely in the north, explaining the north-south gradient in R1b in modern Italy, which is practically the mirror of Neolithic haplogroups like G2a and T1a. Sardinians spoke a non-Indo-European language until the Roman conquest, only 2,000 years ago. The distribution map of all G2a subclades does not impart just how thoroughly Proto-Indo-Europeans eliminated G2a lineages in the northern half of Europe because Proto-Indo-Europeans also carried one type of G2a that was assimilated around the Pontic Steppe. These G2a lineages that were Indo-Europeanized before the great migrations belonged to deep clades of G2a-L140 such as L13 and Z1816. ” ref

AI Overview: The decline of Y-DNA haplogroup G2 (common among early Neolithic farmers from Anatolia) in Europe was caused by Bronze Age migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, though scholars debate the exact role of direct violence versus demographic shifts and disease. During the early 3rd millennium BCE migration from Pontic Steppe, mainly related to Yamnaya culture, has affected European populations both culturally and genetically, however, it has long been debated to what extent this migration was male-driven, and how this replacement process took place which eliminated partially/largely Neolithic male lines over time. The data suggest that the Steppe-related ancestry arriving into Central Europe was male-driven, dominantly in the Corded Ware culture populations and lesser in the Bell Beaker populations. In fact, there is no evidence that this migration had a significant input on the mitochondrial genetic pool of all European Bronze Age populations. Analyses suggest that the Steppe-related ancestry had genetic impact the most on mainly Central-Eastern Europe.  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

What Genetic and Archaeological Evidence Shows

• Male-Specific Replacement: Ancient DNA studies show a dramatic shift in European paternal lineages, replacing Neolithic markers like G2 and I2 with Steppe-associated lineages like R1a and R1b. [1, 2, 3]
• Male-Bias: Migrations from the steppe showed a strong male bias—estimated at roughly 5 to 14 incoming males for every incoming female—which reshaped the Y-chromosome landscape far more than total autosomal ancestry. [1]
• Debate Over Violence:
• Some researchers and archaeological findings (such as Bronze Age mass graves like Koszyce in Poland or Pepkino) point to interpersonal violence, warfare, and fortifications as drivers of this turnover.
• Other scientists suggest that epidemics (such as Yersinia pestis, the plague pathogen found in ancient steppe remains) or social collapse played an equally or more decisive role in native population declines. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Persistence of G2: While G2 declined significantly across most of Europe, it did not vanish completely; it survived at higher localized frequencies in regions like the Caucasus, Sardinia, and parts of central and southern Italy. [1, 2]

7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins

AI Overview: The Linear Pottery Culture, which flourished around 5500–4500 BCE, represented the first true farming communities in Central Europe, and cattle played a central role in their economy, diet, ritual, and spiritual life.

The Role of Cattle in LBK Culture

• Diet and Cheese: While they cultivated cereal crops like emmer wheat and barley, cattle were their most valuable livestock. Isotopic analyses of lipids preserved in LBK pottery shards have provided direct molecular evidence of milk processing and cheese-making. This was crucial because early European farmers were largely lactose intolerant; converting milk into cheese or yogurt reduced the lactose content, making it a vital, storable source of protein and fat.
• Ritual and Status: Cattle were not just walking larders; they were symbols of wealth and prestige. Cattle bones are prominently featured in LBK burial sites, often placed alongside the deceased or arranged in specific ritual patterns. The slaughter of cattle was likely reserved for major communal feasts, life-cycle rituals, and seasonal celebrations.
• Daily Labor: Beyond food and ritual, cattle (specifically oxen) provided the muscle power needed to clear dense primeval European forests and pull heavy loads, fundamentally reshaping the prehistoric landscape.

AI Overview: The Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), which flourished across Central Europe from roughly 5500 to 4900 BCE, represents Europe’s first widespread farming society. Historically depicted as a peaceful expansion of pioneers, contemporary bioarchaeological and genetic research paints a far more volatile picture. The end of the LBK era was defined by systemic crises, structural inequalities, and unprecedented levels of extreme collective violence. [1, 2, 3]

Linear Pottery culture had Anatolian Roots: Genetically and culturally, Early European Farmers (EEF) traced their ancestry back to farming populations from the Near East and Anatolia who moved up through the Balkans and the middle Danube River basin. From an origin area in modern-day Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech lands, the culture rapidly expanded across Central and Western Europe—reaching from the Paris Basin in the west to the Dnieper River in Ukraine and Poland in the east. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

1. Massacres and Extreme Collective Violence

The transition to a sedentary farming lifestyle created intense resource strain (compounded by climate fluctuations), culminating in a catastrophic cycle of inter-community warfare around 5000 BCE. This is evidenced by several iconic “death pits” and massacre sites: [1, 2]

• Talheim Death Pit (Germany): Discovered in 1983, this mass grave contained the remains of 34 men, women, and children. Skeletal analysis proves they were systematically executed from behind using the culture’s signature stone adzes (shoe-last celts). [1, 2, 3]
• Schöneck-Kilianstädten (Germany): This site reveals a deeper layer of cruelty. In addition to lethal blunt-force cranial trauma, attackers systematically tortured and mutilated victims by breaking their lower limbs (tibiae and fibulae) perimortem to restrict movement or inflict agony. [1, 2, 3]
• Asparn-Schletz (Austria): A fortified settlement where over a hundred individuals were massacred and left exposed in a ditch to be scavenged by animals. Recent genetic profiling reveals that the victims were largely unrelated, challenging the old theory that massacres only wiped out single, closed families. [1, 2, 3]
• Herxheim (Germany): A massive enclosure containing the fragmented bones of over 500 individuals. The bones exhibit deliberate butchery modifications—including defleshing, skullcap shaping, and marrow extraction—pointing to a period of highly ritualized mass cannibalism during the ultimate collapse of the culture. [1]
• Vráble (Slovakia): A recently excavated site containing over 85 headless skeletons crammed into a fortification ditch, confirming deliberate decapitation near the time of death. [1] 

2. Captivity, Raid-Trafficking, and Slave Trading

While direct written records do not exist to define a formal “slave trade,” bioarchaeological demographics strongly hint at abduction, captivity, and human trafficking—specifically targeting women: [1, 2]

• The Missing Women Phenomenon: At sites like Schöneck-Kilianstädten and Asparn-Schletz, there is a striking, anomalous absence of young adult females among the dead.
• Captivity as a Motive: Rather than being slaughtered, young, reproductive-aged women were systematically taken captive by rival groups. In a society plagued by labor shortages, crop failures, and territorial warfare, abducting women served a dual economic and reproductive purpose: acquiring agricultural labor (such as grain grinding and pottery making) and bolstering the captors’ birth rates to ensure group survival. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] 

3. Gender Dynamics, Lineage, and Mobility

Gender roles within the LBK were complex, showing a blend of daily resource equality alongside strict structural boundaries: [1, 2]

• Patrilocality and Female Diversity: Strontium isotope analysis reveals a highly gendered split in mobility. Men were overwhelmingly local, staying in the region of their birth to retain ancestral land claims. Conversely, women were highly mobile, moving vast distances across Europe. This indicates a patrilocal social structure where women married out of their home communities, but it also gave women unique roles as dynamic cultural conduits across Neolithic Europe.
• Division of Labor: Funerary analysis suggests distinct but complementary gender assignments. Men are heavily associated with stone adzes used for woodworking, clearing land, and warfare. Women’s graves feature diverse configurations of pottery, ornaments, and grinding tools.
• Fluidity vs. Structure: Large-scale genomic and mortuary studies (such as those led by the University of York) note that basic resource allocation and diets were remarkably similar between sexes. Furthermore, correspondence analysis reveals a portion of burials where social gender roles did not fit a strict binary, showing a degree of biological “body plasticity” and fluidity based on daily activities rather than rigid caste norms. [1, 2, 3, 4] 

4. Wealth and Social Inequality

The emergence of social inequality during the LBK is a subject of intense regional debate among archaeologists: [1]

Overall, the Linear Pottery Culture shows that early farming did not automatically create a linear path to stratified states. Instead, the pressures of surplus production, land ownership, and localized wealth accumulation eventually broke the society apart—fueling a brutal, catastrophic end marked by scorched villages, mass abductions, and massacres. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

“Human history has been shaped by global dispersals of technologies; the emergence of pottery among hunter-gatherer communities in Europe dispersed far faster than previously thought. Pottery first emerged among East Asian hunter-gatherers toward the end of the Late Pleistocene, and it spread from East Asia across Northern Eurasia during the Early Holocene^. Analysis of the forms, decoration, and technological choices suggests that knowledge of pottery spread through cultural transmission. This correlation between the physical properties of pots and they use reflects social traditions inherited by successive generations of hunter-gatherers. Together, the evidence supports kinship-driven, super-regional communication networks that existed long before other major innovations such as agriculture, writing, urbanism or metallurgy.” ref

“The earliest ceramic vessels of the world have been produced in southern China by Late Glacial hunter-gatherers in the remote times around 20,000 years ago. Pottery from China starts to appear in small quantities at a number of sites on the Amur River in the Russian Far East between circa 16,000 and 12,000 years ago.” ref, ref

“The region east of Lake Baikal provides some of the earliest pottery assemblages outside the initial ceramic-producing areas in the Far East. East of Lake Baikal in Siberia is one of a small number of regions in Eurasia where pottery was already used in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, dating to the 12th millennium cal BCE. Moreover, early pottery dates to around 11,000 cal BCE at the Ust’-Karenga complex in Northern Trans-Baikalia. On the western side of Lake Baikal, the earliest pottery complexes are much later, dating to the 7th millennium cal BCE. According to current data, Paleolithic hunter-gatherers first used pottery technology in Southern China during the Last Glacial Maximum, around 18,000 years ago. Over the following millennia, the new technology became known among forager communities in the Russian Amur region, Japan, Korea, Transbaikalia and the Northern parts of Indochina.” ref

Hunter-gatherer pottery in West Siberia, east of the Urals and north of Kazakhstan

“West Siberia is a key area for early hunter-gatherer pottery dispersals in North Eurasia and dates back to the end of the 7th millennium BCE, making it a crucial transition zone in the spread of ceramic technology across Eurasia. Reliable evidence of early hunter-gatherer ceramics in the West Siberian forest-steppes and Urals foothills dates to around the end of the 7th millennium BCE. Hunter-gatherer Ceramic Mesolithic (9,000 to 5,850 ago in Northeastern Europe and west of Lake Baikal in Siberia) pottery technology either spread continuously from East Asian and Amur River centers across Siberia to the Urals and Europe, or local hunter-gatherer groups invented it independently. The early pottery horizon coincides with a unique set of innovations and intensification in the settlement system and the socio-economic sphere, including the appropriation of vast previously barely settled regions, the emergence of complex and even fortified settlements, and ritual mounds. The earliest Ceramic Mesolithic finds of this pottery type may be from the region around Lake Baikal in Siberia. It appears in the Yelshanka “Elshanka” culture on the Volga 9,000 years ago, and from there spread via the Dnieper-Donets culture to the Narva culture of the Eastern Baltic. Spreading westward along the coastline, it is found in the Ertebølle culture of Denmark and Ellerbek of Northern Germany, and the related Swifterbant culture of the Low Countries.” ref, ref, ref

“The Elshanka culture was a Subneolithic or very early Neolithic culture that flourished in the middle Volga region in the 7th millennium BCE. The sites are mostly individual graves scattered along the Samara and Sok rivers. They revealed Europe’s oldest pottery. The culture extended along the Volga from Ulyanovsk Oblast in the north through the Samara Bend towards Khvalynsk Hills and the Buzuluk District in the south. No signs of permanent dwellings have been found. Elshanka people appear to have been hunters and fishermen who had seasonal settlements at the confluences of rivers. Most grave goods come from such settlements. Elshanka is believed to be the source from which the art of pottery spread south and westward towards the Balkans (with one particularly important site being the Surskoy Island in the Dnieper Rapids where pottery was made from 6200 to 5800 BCE). Elshanka pots, dated from 6700 BCE onwards, usually have simple ornaments, though some have none. They were made “of a clay-rich mud collected from the bottoms of stagnant ponds, formed by the coiling method, and baked in open fires at 450-600 degrees Celsius”. A man buried at Lebyazhinka IV (a site usually assigned to the Elshanka culture) had the Haplogroup R1b. I. Vasiliev and A. Vybornov, citing the similarity of pottery, assert that Elshanka people were the descendants of the Zarzian culture who had been ousted from Central Asia by progressive desertification. Other researchers see the Elshanka ceramic industry as a local attempt at reproducing Zarzian pots. A rapid cooling around 6200 BCE and influences from the Lower Volga region led to the Elshanka culture being succeeded by the Middle Volga culture (with more complex ceramic ornaments), which lasted until the 5th millennium BCE. It was succeeded in the region by the better-known Samara culture. Linguist Asko Parpola (2022) associates the Elshanka culture with the Pre-Proto-Indo-European language, stating that Elshanka expanded northwards into the forest zone as the Kama culture, reflecting a migration of Pre-PIE speakers into the Pre-Proto-Uralic-speaking area and thus possibly explaining the Indo-Uralic linguistic parallels.” ref

“The Kama culture (also known as Volga-Kama or Khutorskoye from finds near the Khutorskoye settlement) is an Eastern European culture from the 6th millennium to the 4th millennium BCE. The area of Kama, Vyatka, and the Ik–Belaya watershed (Perm and Kirov regions, Udmurtia, Tatarstan, and Bashkortostan). The Kama culture developed in three stages, and V.P. Denisov and L.A. Nagovitchin combined the Kama Neolithic finds with combed ceramics into a single Khutorskoye culture, synchronous with the Poluden culture in the Ural Mountains. Its comb-decorated pottery is similar to that of the Upper Volga culture. The Kama culture is also culturally close and genetically related to the Volosovo culture. There are scholars who also believe that the culture is related to the Dnieper-Donetsk. In the developed Neolithic, a population of Trans-Ural origin penetrated the upper and middle Kama. In this period, local variants formed: Verkhnekamsk, Ikska-Belsky, and Nizhnekamsk. At the end of the Neolithic, the lower Kama fell under the influence of the Early Eneolithic Samara culture. Linguist Asko Parpola (2022) associates the Kama culture and the Elshanka culture with an expansion of PIE speakers into an area where an early Proto-Uralic language was spoken, which later expanded eastwards and westwards with the Seima-Turbino material culture. Uralic languages would later be transmitted through language shift by hunter-gatherer groups participating in the spread of the Seima-Turbino culture toward Siberia and back to Northeastern Europe. The pottery is thick-walled and egg-shaped, with both round and pointed bottoms. The stone and bone inventory of the pottery culture demonstrated a Mesolithic character. It is heavily ornamented with comb stamp designs, vertical and horizontal zigzags, sloping rows, braids, triangles, and banded comb meshes. Kama culture is noted for its metalwork and handicrafts. Work tools include scrapers, sharpeners, knives, leaf-shaped and semi-rhombic arrowheads, chisels and adzes, and weights.” ref, ref

“The Yasynuvatka (or Yasinovatka) cemetery (likely influenced by the northern Lake Baikal area) is a well-known prehistoric archaeological site in Ukraine belonging to the Dnieper–Donets culture, dated around 7,540–6,930 years ago. Archaeologists buried 68 individual remains in three distinct phases. Phase #1 features “Type-A” oval pits containing one to six stacked skeletons, while later phases 2 and 3 utilize large collective pits covered in red ochre.” ref, ref, ref, ref

AI Overview: Serteyan pottery refers to the earliest known ceramic tradition of the Serteyan culture, an Early Neolithic hunter-gatherer society centered in the Dnieper-Dvina basin of Northwestern Russia. Found at key archaeological sites like Serteya and Rudnya-Serteya, this pottery marks the initial technological transition to ceramic production in the upper Western Dvina River region, appearing around the 6th millennium BCE. Serteya most commonly refers to the Serteya River and its surrounding valley in western Russia, which is a major archaeological complex. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] 

“Dnieper-Donets pottery was initially pointed-based, but in later phases flat-based wares emerged. Their pottery is completely different from that made by the nearby Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The importance of pottery appears to have increased throughout the Dnieper–Donets culture, suggesting a more sedentary lifestyle. The early use of typical point-base pottery correlates with other Mesolithic cultures peripheral to the spread of Neolithic farming cultures. The distinctive shape of this pottery is linked to transport by logboat in wetland areas. Related sites include Swifterbant in the Netherlands; Ellerbek and Ertebølle in Northern Germany and Scandinavia; “Ceramic Mesolithic” pottery of Belgium and Northern France (including non-Linear pottery such as La Hoguette, Bliquy, Villeneuve-Saint-Germain); the Roucadour culture in Southwest France; and the river and lake areas of Northern Poland and Russia. Some DDCC samples held mtDNA haplogroups from two individuals in the Mykilske (Nikols’skoye in Russian) and Yasynuvatka (Yasinovatka) DDCC cemeteries: East Eurasian (C, C4a), with potential influence from the northern Lake Baikal area, and West Eurasian (H, U3, U5a1a). Mathieson et al. (2018) analyzed 32 individuals from three Eneolithic cemeteries at Deriivka, Vilnyanka and Vovnigi, which Anthony (2019a) ascribed to the Dnieper–Donets culture. These individuals belonged exclusively to the paternal haplogroups R and I (mostly R1b and I2), and almost exclusively to the maternal haplogroup U (mostly U5, U4 and U2). This suggests that the Dnieper-Donets people were a “distinct, locally derived population” of mostly Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) descent, with Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) admixture. The WHG admixture appears to have increased in the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Unlike the Yamnaya culture, whose genetic cluster is known as Western Steppe Herder (WSH), the Dnieper–Donets culture shows no Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) or Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry. At the same time, several Eneolithic individuals from the Deriivka I cemetery carried Anatolian Neolithic Farmer (ANF) – derived, as well as WSH ancestry. At the Vilnyanka cemetery, all the males belong to the paternal haplogroup I, which is common among WHGs. David W. Anthony suggests that this influx of WHG ancestry may result from EEFs pushing WHGs out of their territories to the east, where WHG males might have mated with EHG females. Dnieper-Donets males and Yamnaya males share the same paternal haplogroups (R1b and I2a), suggesting that CHG and EEF admixture in the Yamnaya came from EHG and WHG males mating with EEF and CHG females. According to Anthony, this suggests that EHGs initially spoke Indo-European languages in Eastern Europe.” ref

“Steppe theory, also known as Kurgan theory, is the most widely accepted proposal 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). Cultures that Gimbutas considered 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)
• Maykop–Deriivka (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.
• Usatove (late 4th millennium)” ref

“Chaff-Faced Ware (4500 – 3500 BCE) is a Late Chalcolithic (4300-3500BCE) pottery which has found from Cilicia to the South Caucasus. In the South Caucasus, its variant is known as Leyla-Tepe culture, while in northern Mesopotamia it is usually referred to as Amuq F pottery. Initially, scholars thought Chaff-Faced Ware was related to northern Mesopotamia, Syria, and the migration of Uruk people, but the recent discovery of many Chaff-Faced Ware sites in the South Caucasus has changed perceptions of its origins. Catherine Marro concluded that the ware emerged from the region between the Euphrates and the Kura basin. Tempering chaff in pottery was common at South Caucasian Neolithic sites. This type of ware is also known as a Beveled rim bowl.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Eastern hunter-gatherers (EHG)

Dnieper–Donets culture complex (DDCC)

Linear Pottery culture (LBK)

Haplogroup Q1a

“Upper Paleolithic individual from the Afontova Gora 2 site, dating to approximately 17,000 years ago and representing the Ancient North Eurasian ancestry, is the earliest known member of haplogroup Q1a1-F746. Haplogroup Q1a1-F746/NWT01 was highly prevalent among individuals from the Murzihinskiy II and Yuzhny Oleny archaeological sites in western Russia, dating back to c. 6,500 and 8,200 years ago, respectively. These individuals exhibited genetic similarity to Eastern Hunter-Gatherers, suggesting that this haplogroup was widespread among early hunter-gatherer populations in the region. Afontova Gora is a Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Siberian complex of archaeological sites located on the left bank of the Yenisey River near the city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Afontova Gora has cultural and genetic links to the people from Mal’ta–Buret’. Afontova Gora 2 belong to the male Y-DNA haplogroup Q1a1-F746 and female mtDNA analysis revealed that Afontova Gora 3 belonged to the mitochondrial Haplogroup R1b. Afontova Gora 3 carries the derived rs12821256 allele associated with, and likely causal for, blond hair color, making Afontova Gora 3 the earliest individual known to carry this derived allele. The allele was found in three later members of the largely ANE-derived Eastern Hunter-Gatherers populations from Samara, Motala and Ukraine c. 10,000 years ago, suggesting that it originated in the Ancient North Eurasian population before spreading to western Eurasia. The hundreds of millions of copies of this mutated alelle (a single-nucleotide polymorphism) are at the root of the classic European blond hair mutation, as massive population migrations from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry, entered continental Europe.” ref, ref

Zvejnieki burial ground site 9,500 years old

“Zvejnieki burial ground (7500 – 2700 BCE) is a cemetery with 330 recorded burials, with roughly equal numbers of males and females, and associated grave goods on the northern shore of Lake Burtnieks in northern Latvia. Y-DNA of 15 males: 8 R1b1a1a EHG ancestry (primarily found in Central Asia, Siberia, Caucasus, and to a lesser extent in the Middle East and South Asia), 6 I2a1 and various subclades of it (particularly I2a1a1), and 1 Q1a2. mt-DNA of every individual successfully analyzed (both male and female) carried subclades of haplogroup U (particularly subclades of U2, U4, and U5). A large number of individuals from the Zvejnieki burial ground, which mostly belonged to the Kunda culture and Narva culture in the eastern Baltic, were analyzed. These individuals were mostly of WHG descent (“Villabruna 1“, R1b1, R1b1a, and R1b1a2) in the earlier phases, but over time EHG ancestry became predominant. Many individuals buried at the Zvejnieki burial ground were affiliated with the Kunda culture (no pottery) and the succeeding Narva culture (with pottery originating back to Siberia).  Kunda culture showed “a very close affinity” with WHGs, though with “a significant contribution” from Ancient North Eurasians (ANE).  Their ANE ancestry was lower than that of Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers, indicating that ANE ancestry entered Scandinavia without traversing the Baltic.” ref, ref, ref, ref, 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 14,000 years ago and belonged to R1b1a.
• Several males from the Iron Gates Mesolithic in the Balkans, buried between 11,200 and 8,200 years ago, carried R1b1a and I2a. These individuals were largely of WHG ancestry, with slight Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) admixture.
• Several males from the Mesolithic Kunda culture and Neolithic Narva culture (more closely related genetically to Western Hunter-Gatherers than to Eastern Hunter-Gatherers) buried at the Zvejnieki burial ground in modern-day Latvia c. 9,500–6,000 years ago carried R1b1b. These individuals were largely of WHG ancestry, with slight EHG admixture.
• Several Mesolithic and Neolithic males buried at Deriivka and Vasil’evka in modern-day Ukraine c. 9500-7000 years ago carried R1b1a. These individuals were largely of EHG ancestry, with significant WHG admixture.
• A WHG male buried at Ostrovul Corbului, Romania 8,700 years ago carried R1b1c.
• A male buried at Lepenski Vir, Serbia 8,200-7,900 years ago carried R1b1a.
• An EHG buried near Samara, Russia 7,500 years ago carried R1b1a1a.” ref, ref, ref

Y-DNA J-L255

“Far-North Iraq, Nemrik 9 (9,800-8,270 BCE), Mesopotamia Pre-Pottery Neolithic J-L255 (9,500-8,000 BCE) with birds of prey, “mace/scepters?” (9,000 BCE) and Phallic “mace/scepters?” sculpture with engraved human face (7,800–6,500 BCE). Nemrik collection of ground and pecked stone (more than 3000 objects) is varied and includes mace heads.” ref, ref, ref, ref

“Eastern European hunter-gatherer (8,000-5,000 BCE): Haplogroup J1 was found among Eastern hunter-gatherers. J1 was found among several samples from Minino, Vologda Oblast, three samples from Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov, Republic of Karelia and two samples from Popovo, Arkhangelsk Oblast.” ref

“Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (6,000-5,000 BCE): Haplogroup J1 was found among samples from Anatolian farmers. Two samples from Çatalhöyük belonged to haplogroup J1.” ref

AI Overview: DNA from the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük and related Central Anatolian populations directly matches the genetic signature of the Early European Farmers who drove the westward expansion of agriculture into Europe. [1, 2]

• Anatolian Roots: Ancient DNA studies show that the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük belonged to the primary source population that introduced farming, pottery, and permanent villages to Europe. [1, 2, 3]
• Demic Diffusion: The spread of the Neolithic “package” into Europe was driven by actual human migration rather than just the sharing of ideas, with Central Anatolian lineages spreading across the Aegean into Greece, the Balkans, and across Europe. [1, 2]
• Lineage & Kinship: Genetic analysis of Çatalhöyük burials reveals a distinct matrilocal and matrilineal social organization—where women stayed in family homes and men moved in—differing from some later patrilocal European farming groups while sharing the same core ancestral DNA stock. [1, 2, 3]

“Khvalynsk culture (5,206-4,935 BCE): An ancient sample of J1 was found among individuals from Khvalynsk culture.” ref

Yuzhny Oleny burial site 8,100 years old

“Yuzhny Oleny (“Southern Reindeer”) remains of Eastern Hunter-Gatherers dated to 8,100 years ago; 19 genomes were extracted, which had comparable or lower WHG ancestry compared to other EHG groups, and Ancient North Eurasian ancestry was the main component of the Yuzhny Oleny group, particularly high among them compared to the rest of the EHG. The genes of the Yuzhny Oleni were transmitted to the people of the Yamnaya Culture, and to Scandinavia through a western route. Nine samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroup Q1a1-F746/NWT01 (three samples), Q1b1-L53, R1a2-YP4141, R1a-M420, R1-M173, and J1-L255 (two samples). The fifteen samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroup U4 (three samples), U2e1 (three samples), U5a1 (two samples), and R1b (three samples), U4a2, U2e1e, U5a2, and U5a2d.” ref

AI Overview: Archaeological excavations (such as sites near the Dnipro river (such as Vasil’evka in Ukraine) and the East European plain) show evidence of interpersonal violence, with a notable percentage of male remains showing violent injuries. Skeletal and bioarchaeological studies indicate that Eastern European Mesolithic and Neolithic populations—including Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs) and neighboring transition groups—experienced intermittent interpersonal violence (such as close-range blunt-force cranial trauma or localized homicides), though systematic, large-scale organized warfare was generally less common among mobile forager bands than in later farming or pastoralist societies. The dynamic shifted significantly around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago as EHG ancestry blended with Near Eastern and Steppe lineages (such as the Yamnaya and Corded Ware cultures), giving rise to more militarized, pastoralist societies where large-scale inter-group violence and mass graves (like Koszyce in Poland) became more frequent. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]  

Major archaeological and archaeogenetic sites where Eastern Hunter-Gatherer ancient DNA has been studied include:

• Yuzhny Oleniy Ostrov (South Deer Island) – Located in Lake Onega (Republic of Karelia, Russia); one of the largest Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic burial grounds in northern Eurasia (8,100 years ago), providing multiple foundational EHG genomes. [1, 2] “Y-DNA Q1a1-F746/NWT01 (three), Q1b1-L53, R1a2-YP4141, R1a-M420, R1-M173, and J1-L255 (two). mtDNA U4 (three), U2e1 (three), U5a1 (two), and R1b (three), U4a2, U2e1e, U5a2, and U5a2d.” ref
• Popovo – Located in the Vologda / Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia, yielding key Mesolithic circumpolar EHG samples. [1, 2] (8,250 years ago) Y-DNA J1 and mt-DNA U4d
• Sidelkino – Located in the Samara region of Russia; one of the oldest directly characterized EHG sites (10,700 years ago) in the Volga-Ural basin). [1] mt-DNA U5a2
• Lebyazhinka (Lebyazhinka IV) – A multi-component site in the Samara region of the Volga river basin associated with early EHG foragers. [1] (7,600 years ago) Y-DNA R1b1a1a and mtDNA U5a1d
• Zvejnieki – Located in northern Latvia; a major Baltic multi-period burial ground where EHG and Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) genetic transition and interaction zones have been extensively sequenced. [1, 2]
• Vasil’evka (Vasylivka) – Located along the middle/lower Dnieper (Dnipro) river valley in Ukraine, representing Mesolithic/Early Neolithic riverine forager populations of the Pontic-Caspian steppe margin. [1, 2]
• Dereivka I – Located in Ukraine on the Dnieper River, providing early East European Plain forager/EHG genetic profiles. [1, 2]
• Koken – Located in the Upper Irtysh River region of eastern Kazakhstan, where Early Neolithic hunter-gatherers with EHG-related affinities have been identified. [1, 2]

Popovo Culture J1-L255

AI Overview: Popovo / Popovo Site (Northern Russia – Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers): The Popovo site in northwestern Russia (near the Kinema River) is an important archaeological find associated with ancient Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) communities dating back roughly 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. These forest-dwelling groups relied heavily on fishing, hunting wild game and birds, gathering plants, and utilizing local stone and organic resources long before the arrival of agriculture. [1, 2]

• Ancient Findings: Early branches of J1-L255 appear in ancient DNA samples, including Mesolithic finds such as the “Popovo Culture” in northern Russia (Archangelsk Oblast, dated around 5500–5000 BCE) and Neolithic/Pre-Pottery Neolithic samples like Nemrik 9 from Mesopotamia/Iraq. [1, 2, 3, 4]

“Males of the Khvalynsk culture carried the paternal haplogroup R1b primarily, although a few samples of R1a, I2a2, Q1a, and J have been detected. They belonged to the Western Steppe Herder (WSH) cluster, which is a mixture of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestry. This admixture appears to have happened on the eastern Pontic–Caspian steppe starting around 5000 BCE. Mathieson et al. (2015, 2018) found in three Eneolithic males buried near Khvalynsk between 5200 BCE and 4000 BCE the Y-haplogroups R1b1a and R1a1 with mt-haplogroups H2a1, U5a1i, and Q1a and a subclade of U4. A male from the contemporary Sredny Stog culture was found to have 80% WSH ancestry of a similar type to the Khvalynsk people, and 20% Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry. Among the later Yamnaya culture, males carried R1b and I2 exclusively. A similar pattern is observable among males of the earlier Dnieper-Donets culture, who carried only R and I and whose ancestry was exclusively EHG with Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) admixture. The presence of EEF and CHG mtDNA and exclusively EHG and WHG Y-DNA among the Yamnaya and related WSHs suggests that EEF and CHG admixture among them was the result of mixing between EHG and WHG males, and EEF and CHG females. This suggests that the leading clans among the Yamnaya were of EHG paternal origin. According to David W. Anthony, this implies that the Indo-European languages were the result of “a dominant language spoken by EHGs that absorbed Caucasus-like elements in phonology, morphology, and lexicon” (spoken by CHGs)^. Other studies have suggested that the Indo-European language family may have originated not in Eastern Europe, but among West Asian (CHG-like) populations south of the Caucasus.” ref

Khvalynsk-2 (26 individuals, 5249 – 4425 BCE)

“Y-DNA haplogroups found on site include R1b1a2, Q1a2b, R1a1~, Q1. With most Y-DNA 5108, 4887, 4870, 4844, 4838, 4832, 4825, 4798, 4766, 4707, 4675, & 4606 BCE M R1b1a2.” ref
“5078 BCE M Y-DNA Q1a2b and mt-DNA U2e2a1
5031 BCE M Y-DNA J1a2b and mt-DNA U4a
5021 BCE M Y-DNA Q1a2b and mt-DNA U5a1i
4975 BCE M Y-DNA Q1 and mt-DNA U4d+16240
4881 BCE M Y-DNA Q1a2b and mt-DNA U2e1b
4611 BCE M Y-DNA R1a1~ and mt-DNA U5a1i
4465 BCE M Y-DNA Q1a2b and mt-DNA U2e2a1” ref

Q1a2a1 (Q-L54): found in Mesolithic western Russia

“Siberian Y-DNA Q1a2 and mtDNA C4a and C5, in prehistoric Eastern Europe, have been found in Mesolithic Karelia (north-western Russia) and in the Neolithic Dnieper-Donets culture in Ukraine. The oldest evidence to date of haplogroup Q in Europe comes from Q1a2-L56 samples from Mesolithic Latvia, Mesolithic western Russia (Q-L54+), and the Khvalynsk culture (5,200-4,000 BCE), excavated in the middle Volga region. The Khvalynsk culture is ancestral to the Yamna culture, which represents the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age homeland of the Proto-Indo-European speakers. Q1a2 could have traveled to Scandinavia alongside haplogroup R1a-Z284 (via Poland) or R1b-U106 (via the Danube), or it could have been present there since the Mesolithic, as in Latvia. Both scenarios are possible, as modern Scandinavians belong to two distinct branches of Q-L56: Q-Y4827 and Q-L804. In either case, all modern carriers of each branch seem to descend from a single ancestor who lived only about 3,000 years ago, during the Nordic Bronze Age. The maternal equivalents of that Siberian Q1a2 in prehistoric Eastern Europe are probably mtDNA haplogroups C4a and C5, found in Mesolithic Karelia (northwestern Russia), the Neolithic Dnieper-Donets culture in Ukraine, and the Bronze Age Catacomb culture in the Pontic Steppe. Today, mtDNA C is mostly found among Siberians, Mongols, and Native Americans, who share Y-haplogroup Q1a2 on the paternal side. Analysis of prehistoric genomes from Eastern Europe confirmed the presence of a small percentage of Amerindian-related autosomal admixture. Oddly enough, the L804 branch, which descends from the same Northeast Siberian branch as the Native American Q-M3, is now found exclusively in Germanic countries, including Scandinavia, Germany, Britain and northern France. Like the other Scandinavian branch (Q-L527>Q-Y4827), its genetic diversity suggests this lineage expanded from a single ancestor living about 3,000 years ago, presumably in Scandinavia, during the Nordic Bronze Age. It remains unclear when and how Q1a2-L804 first reached Europe, but it may have arrived long ago, during the late glacial period or the Mesolithic. It may well have arrived at the same time as Q-Y4827. Alternatively, L804 might have arrived as a minor lineage accompanying haplogroup N1c1 from Mongolia, reaching Northeast Europe during the Neolithic period, about 7,000 years ago.” ref

“Zvejnieki burial ground in northern Latvia, 9,500 – 4,700 years ago, with Y-DNA from 15 males: 8 carrying haplogroup R1b1a1a, 6 carrying I2a1 and various subclades of it (particularly I2a1a1), and one carrying Q1a2. The burials at Zvejnieki include evidence for secondary burial: that people were intentionally using remains left by previous generations in their graves. The most typical way of burying their dead was in an oval-shaped pit with grey fill. There were instances of darker soil from previous graves, and burials cut into others. This may reflect a desire for the dead to remain connected to their ancestors in the afterlife. By being buried in a previous grave, they could remain with their loved ones forever. The darker soil from other graves could indicate that they were of higher status. It can also mean that this grave is not to be disturbed any further (Burial 316 and 317). People at Zvejnieki disturbed previous graves more often than not. This may be because they did not build permanent buildings. By incorporating their dead, or the past, into their burials, they were making it as permanent as it could be. In one male aged 25 to 30 years old, Burial 317 shows signs of being wrapped tightly when buried. His bones had limited movement, and are compressed.1 Around his cranium, they found a large presence of ochre, which they believe could be from a clay mask that was painted. This individual was lying on top of a stone that was 15 cm. It was situated under his pelvic bone.” ref

AI Overview: Red ochre (an iron-oxide earth pigment) is one of the most prominent and symbolic elements found in the Mesolithic and Stone Age burials at the Zvejnieki burial ground in northern Latvia. [1, 2]

Key Facts About Red Ochre at Zvejnieki

• Frequency: Red ochre stains appear in nearly half (around 173) of the recorded burials at the site. [1]
• Preparation & Use: The ochre was not merely dropped in its raw, natural state; it was processed into a specially prepared coloring material. It was often sprinkled directly over the body, mixed into the soil fill, or used in complex mortuary rituals. [1, 2, 3]

• Mortuary Rites & Hides: Recent trace and residue analyses indicate that ochre was also mixed with animal fats and rubbed onto animal hides or textiles used to tightly wrap or shroud the deceased (as seen in specific tool and burial studies). [1, 2]
• Symbolism: Rather than just a simple cosmetic decoration, the pigment represented a deep ritual language linking the living community, lineage, and the spirit world across the site’s long occupation (roughly 7500–2500 BCE). [1, 2]

The Southern Front: The Neolithic Farmer Advance

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“Ancient dog burials in the Lake Baikal region of Eastern Siberia. The region’s dog remains indicate that these animals were buried only during periods when human burials were common. Dog burials of any kind were most common during the Early Neolithic (∼7,000-8,000 years ago), and rare during all other time periods. Further, only foraging groups seem to have buried canids in this region, as pastoralist habitation sites and cemeteries generally lack dog interments, except for sacrificed animals. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data indicate that dogs were only buried where and when human diets were relatively rich in aquatic foods, which here most likely included river and lake fish and Baikal seal (Phoca sibirica). Overall, human and dog diets appear similar across the study subregions, which matters for interpreting their radiocarbon dates and comparing them with those from the region’s human remains, both of which likely carry a freshwater old-carbon bias. Researchers observed slight offsets in the isotope values of dogs and humans in our samples, particularly where both had diets rich in aquatic fauna. This may result from dietary differences between people and their dogs, perhaps because they consumed fish of different sizes or even different tissues from the same aquatic fauna.” ref

“In Holocene Eurasia, relationships between humans and dogs (and more rarely wolves) have been characterized as friendship and mutual respect, burials as evidence of the animals being considered persons or companions, and canids themselves as being spiritual or metaphors for various features of society. Some canids from the study area were buried as persons, while others were not treated as such. Two Cis-Baikal canid burials, one of a wolf and the other of a dog, both in large Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer cemeteries. The dog was perhaps used as a burden animal and had a diet like its human counterparts. But the wolf was involved with humans only at death and was buried with a human head. Both, over 7000 years old, demonstrate that as soon as formal cemeteries developed in Cis-Baikal, some canids too began to receive mortuary treatments that closely paralleled those of humans. Other less extensively documented dog burials in this region confirm that such practices were not limited to these two cemeteries. In addition, some human graves contain canid remains modified into body ornaments or implements, and habitation sites in the region also show that wolves and dogs were at times afforded no special treatment whatsoever.” ref

• Mesolithic and Neolithic mortuary complexes in the Baikal Region
• Baikal Archaeology Project (about 9000 to 3000 years ago): hunter-gatherers of the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, Russia.
• Y-chromosomal DNA analyzed for four prehistoric cemeteries from Cis-Baikal, Siberia
• Resource processing, early pottery and the emergence of Kitoi culture in Cis-Baikal: Insights from lipid residue analysis of an Early Neolithic ceramic assemblage from the Gorelyi Les habitation site, Eastern Siberia 

Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?

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“The oldest detected R* sample linked to both R1 and R2 is the 22000 BCE Mal’ta Boy (MA1), who lived near Lake Baikal; in archaeogenetics, he represents the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) population. The earliest Y-DNA R2a sample known to modern archaeogenetics comes from a man at Ganj Dareh, Iran. This ancient site is in the Neolithic Fertile Crescent, which also includes sites such as Göbekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, Chogha Golan, Chogha Bonut, Chogha Mish, Abu Hureyra, and Jericho. The only Central Asian samples that shifted most toward ANE were those from Bronze Age Aigyrzhal, Kyrgyzstan (circa 2100 BCE), and they resembled those from Early Bronze Age Dzungaria. The downward shift of Geoksyur and Namazga from Yamna Samara (referring to the Samara regional group of the Yamnaya culture, an ancient Late Copper Age to Early Bronze Age nomadic pastoralist civilization, 3,339 to 2,500 BCE) was mostly due to its high genetic input from the Iranian Neolithic and Anatolian Neolithic, as evidenced by the earliest 8211 BC Ganj Dareh sample and the presence of many Y‑DNA J1a and J2a in Southern Central Asia. That is why pre-Steppe Y‑DNA R2a carried in Central Asia can be modeled in aDNA as 10% ANE, 20% Anatolian Neolithic, and 70% Iranian Neolithic (i.e., 90% Fertile Crescent or Zagrosian[7] DNA)[10]. The Elamites might be genetically closest to people from the Neolithic Central Asia, but this requires some further examination.” ref 

“Haplogroup R2a is a Y-chromosome haplogroup mainly found in South Asia as well as in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and North Africa.” ref

R2a in Ancient Samples

1. “8241 BCE – Ganj Dareh, Iran – Y‑DNA R2a (R‑Y3399), mtDNA unknown (sample I1949)
2. 8000 BCE – Ganj Dareh, Iran – Y‑DNA R2a (R‑Y3399), mtDNA J1c10 (sample I1945)
3. 3500 BCE – Geoksyur, Turkmenistan – Y‑DNA R2a (R‑Y8766), mtDNA J1d6 (sample I8526)
4. 2196 BCE – Gonur, Turkmenistan – Y‑DNA R2a (R‑Y3399), mtDNA R2 (sample I4087)
5. 1971 BCE – Sappali Tepe, Surxondaryo, Uzbekistan – Y‑DNA R2a-Y3370, mtDNA K1a (sample I7492)
6. 1613 BCE – Bustan (Boʻston), Uzbekistan – Y‑DNA R2a3a2, mtDNA HV2a2 (sample I11520)
7. 1600 BCE – Sumbar, Turkmenistan – Y‑DNA R2a-FGC13203 (from R2a‑Y3370), mtDNA W3b (sample I6675)
8. 1207 BCE – Katelai (Swat), Pakistan – Y‑DNA R2a3a2b2c, mtDNA U7b (sample I12147)
9. 400 BCE – Saidu Sharif (Swat), Pakistan – Y‑DNA R2a3a2b, mtDNA U2b2 (sample I7722)
10. 356 BCE – Aligrama (Swat), Pakistan – Y‑DNA R2a3a2b2b1, mtDNA HV6 (sample I8245)
11. 166 BCE – Ksirov (Danghara Plain), Tajikistan – Y‑DNA R2a (R‑Y3399), mtDNA U2e1e (sample I12292; Kushan)
12. 670 CE – Roopkund, Uttarakhand, Northern India – Y‑DNA R2a3a2b2c, mtDNA HV14 (sample I3352)” ref 

“

R2a from Siberia spreading to Iran, influenced the creation of Proto-Indo-European languages, transferring to R1b, emerging south of the Caucasus, and then spreading north into Russia/Europe

“Ganj Dareh, a Neolithic settlement in western Iran dating to c. 8200 BCE, has yielded the earliest evidence of goat domestication in the world. So far, the only evidence of domesticated crops at the site is two-row barley. Ganj Dareh is important for Neolithic ceramics in Luristan and Kurdistan. This period began in the late 8th millennium and continued to the mid-6th millennium BCE. At Ganj Dareh, two early ceramic traditions are evident. One is based on clay figurines and small geometric pieces like cones and disks. These are dated to ca. 7300-6900 BCE. The other ceramic tradition originated in the use of clay for mud-walled buildings (ca. 7300 BCE). These traditions are also shared by Tepe Guran and Tepe Sarab.” ref 

“Most Neolithic Iranian specimens from Ganj Dareh belonged to the paternal Y-DNA haplogroup R2a. The oldest sample to date of haplogroup R2a was observed in the remains of a Neolithic human from Ganj Dareh in western Iran (c. 10,162 years old). A late Neolithic sample (I1671) was assigned to Haplogroup G2a. According to one model, the Mesolithic/Neolithic Iranian lineage is inferred to derive significant amounts of its ancestry from Basal Eurasian (c. 38–48%), with the remainder of its ancestry being closer to Ancient North Eurasians or Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (ANE/EHG; c. 52–62%).” ref  

“Researchers sequenced the genome from the petrous bone of a c. 40-year-old woman from Ganj Dareh, GD13a. mtDNA analysis shows she belonged to Haplogroup X. She is phenotypically similar to early Anatolian farmers and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers. Her DNA revealed black hair, brown eyes, and lactose intolerance. The derived SLC45A2 variant associated with light skin was not observed in GD13a, but the derived SLC24A5 variant, also associated with the same trait, was. GD13a is genetically closest to the ancient Caucasus hunter-gatherers identified from human remains from Georgia (Satsurblia Cave and Kotias Klde). She belonged to a population (Neolithic Iranians) genetically distinct from Neolithic Anatolian farmers. Among modern populations, she shows the highest genetic affinity with the Baloch people, Makran Baloch, and Brahui people. Also genetically close to GD13a were ancient samples from Steppe populations (Yamanya & Afanasievo) that were part of one or more Bronze Age migrations into Europe, as well as early Bronze Age cultures in that continent (Corded Ware), in line with previous relationships observed for the Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers.” ref 

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“Elk-head staffs are found across a wide geographical area, extending from the Baltic region in the west to the Middle Trans-Urals in the east, and from the Barents Sea in the north to the forest-steppe zone of the Orenburg region in the south. However, possible equivalents to elk-head staffs are also known outside this area. In Siberia’s Cis-Baikal region, a number of elk-shaped antler items, including elk-headed rods and detached elk-head figures, possibly once mounted on rods, have been unearthed as grave goods in burials of the Early Neolithic Kitoi Culture (7,500–7,000 years ago). In northern hunter-gatherer rock art, depictions of what appear to be representations of elk-head staffs are, in turn, found in large rock art sites in Norway, Sweden and northwestern Russia. In addition to their wide spatial distribution, the elk-head artifacts also show considerable continuity over time: their use seems to have lasted more than four millennia, from the Late Mesolithic period to the Early Metal Period. Altogether, researchers have found around 30 elk-head staffs made of antler from north-eastern Europe and north-western Russia. However, the exact number is difficult to determine, as most known staffs are more or less fragmented, which also prevents detailed comparison of these items. In some cases, the staffs seem to depict reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) rather than elk (Alces alces), especially the small staffs from the Oleneostrovskiy burial ground on the Kola Peninsula.” ref

1. “Lehtojärvi site near Rovaniemi in northern Finland with a wood Raindeer/Elk/Moose Head (Rovaniemen hirvenpää) dating to around 7,970 years ago.” ref, ref
2. “Huittinen site in southern Finland with a stone Raindeer/Elk/Moose Head dating to around 8,500 years ago. The Head has a hole for mounting a rod, so it was most likely used as a scepter in a ritual context.” ref
3. “Twedt-Buschau site in northern Germany with a perforated antler shaft baton or scepter thought to have a possible zoomorphic animal-like head (abstract or symbolic reference of an Elk? Maybe?) dated to 10,350 years ago.” ref
4. “Verchen site in northeastern Germany with a perforated antler shaft baton or scepter thought to have a possible zoomorphic animal-like head (abstract or symbolic reference of an Elk? Maybe?)  dated to 9,970 years ago.” ref
5. “Krzyz site in northwestern Poland with a perforated antler shaft baton or scepter thought to have a possible zoomorphic animal-like head (abstract or symbolic reference of an Elk? Maybe?) dated to 10,150 years ago.” ref

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Perforated antler shaft baton or scepter thought to have a possible zoomorphic, animal-like head (abstract or symbolic reference to an Elk? Maybe?) 

Some Paleolithic Batons from 23,000 to 12,000 years ago are/maybe Shaman Drumsticks like Those Used with Sami Shaman Drums?

Sami Shamanism: Religio-Sociocultural Identity, Phenomenon, and System 

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RITUAL SCEPTRES: “STAFFS WITH ELK HEADS” OF THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF THE EASTERN URALS, NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE

“STAFFS WITH ELK HEADS were sacred objects, and mature and elderly men used them in rituals. Semantically, these objects likely carried multiple meanings. They could link fertility to the idea that maturity and old age correlate with the fall-winter season. Petroglyphs depict “Staffs with elk (reindeer or deer) heads” as magic objects embodying the Universe’s symbolism. Objects with tops shaped like elk** or deer heads and their representations in rock art are of considerable interest for reconstructing the ideology of ancient Northern Eurasian tribes and the social structure of Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic societies of this region. The impressive duration of the period when staffs with elk heads were used (6th – late 2nd millennia BCE) and were represented in petroglyphic art (6th–3rd millennia BCE), as well as their wide geographical range (from the Eastern Urals to Northern Europe) demonstrate that people associated with a number of archaeological cultures of the Eurasian forest zone shared certain ideological features.” ref

“Objects with tops in the form of elk heads were primarily made of horn (sometimes of bone) from this animal. Most portable art objects from the Oleneostrovsky burial ground on the Barents Sea represent reindeer and were made of reindeer horn. The staff with an elk head from the settlement Mayak II was also made of reindeer horn. Individual wooden and stone elk-head objects are also known. The stone objects (4 specimens) have a hole for being installed on the rod. They are found only in southern Finland and Karelia, indicating the tradition’s local character. Only one top part is distinguished by detailed elaboration of elk features; other tops are highly stylized. Several studies suggest these objects belonged to people with special powers, “shamans” or “chiefs”. In our opinion, the quantity of found objects, as well as materials from the Oleneostrovsky burial ground, suggests a different explanation: staffs with elk heads could potentially have been linked with every man in the community who reached maturity (?) and who was able to perform certain ritual functions.” ref

“If these objects, which were made mostly of organic materials, belonged exclusively to people with the special status of “chiefs” or “shamans,” only a few objects at best would have come down to us. The absence of antlers on the representations might have a symbolic meaning. All anthropomorphic Ýgures with elk-headed staffs on the petroglyphs are apparently male, as are those in burials. Such Figures sometimes have sharp or otherwise unusual head shapes, unlike anthropomorphic Figures in hunting scenes, and an exaggerated phallus. These features are likely to emphasize not only the mythical nature of staffs with elk heads, but also the special status of their owners among other mythical characters on petroglyphs. The placement of staffs with elk heads relative to anthropomorphic figures raises an undeniable interest in determining their symbolic meaning. Ancient people understood a human, or a man, as the embodiment of the Universe. Supposedly, from the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age onward, man was, to some degree, equated with the World Tree, pole, stick, etc. We assessed the position of staffs with elk heads and of certain tools shown in the petroglyphs of Fennoscandia relative to their owners’ Ýgures.” ref

“There was no distinct pattern in the position of the spear – there are variants of inclined, vertical, and horizontal positions at the level of the hands, head, or above it. Bows are depicted parallel to the anthropomorphic Ýgure at the chest level. Ski poles are also oriented parallel to the figures, and their thickened lower ends are located approximately at the level of the feet. All these variants reflect the real ways ancient people used material equivalents of the tools depicted on petroglyphs. The position of the staffs with elk heads differs somewhat and does not align with the idea shared by several researchers that the “staffs” functioned as actual staffs, that is, objects resting on the ground. Their position relative to the anthropomorphic figures has two variants. The first position is horizontally above the head; the second position is vertical. If the elk-head part is above or at head level, the object’s lower end is usually at waist level or above. It is as if anthropomorphic characters are waving the “staff” or keeping it raised above or at head level. This position of the “staffs” seems to point to their high semiotic status. As parallels, we can later see objects of art in which a scepter or gonfalon is depicted in a similar position relative to its bearer. The location of staffs with elk heads in graves above the waist of the deceased is also likely related to the status of this object.” ref

Ritual Mound Migrations: Kurgans, Dolmens, and later Pyramids likely all trace back to Siberia, helping show how Yeniseian languages, may have influenced Proto-Indo-European languages

AI Overview: Amnya and Western Siberia Evidence of Violence: Stratigraphic layers at Amnya show that sites were repeatedly burned down, and the presence of weapon artifacts (such as arrowheads) alongside massive defensive architecture points to intergroup competition and violent conflict. [1, 2, 3]

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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With my art

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Proto-Uralic speaker population genetics

“Some scholars have attempted to use genetic evidence to locate the original Proto-Uralic speaker population, a source of contention. Vladimir Napolskikh, who studied the origins of the “earth-diver” creation myths, has concluded that a certain variety of those myths, which is found in the folklore of Uralic-speaking peoples and other N1, C3, and Q (Y-DNA) carrying populations, originated in Siberia. Genetic data suggests that early Uralic-speakers may be associated with hunter-gatherers in Western and Southern Siberia. These specific Uralic-speaking hunter-gatherers are argued to have formed from an admixture event between Western and Eastern Eurasian sources, with the calculated date of admixture is inferred to be ~7,000–9,000 years ago. The Western source can be attributed to local Ancient North Eurasians, while the Eastern sources can be linked to “Neo-Siberians” (Eastern Siberian hunter-gatherers). A number of population genomic studies in 2018 and 2019 note that the spread of Uralic languages may be associated with observed “Siberian” gene flow (represented by Nganasans) into the Eastern Baltic region. The proto-Uralic languages may be associated with early “Neo-Siberian” expansions outgoing from Northeast Asia westwards (~6,000-11,000 years ago), which largely replaced previous “Paleosiberian groups“, but predated the expansion of Turkic languages.” ref

“Rasmus G. Bjørn (2022) argues for a link between the Proto-Uralic-speakers and the pre-Indo-European Okunevo culture, as well as to the Tarim EMBA cluster. He argues that following the expansion of Indo-Europeans eastwards and Northeast Asian (putative Turkic) groups westwards meeting in the Altai region, the early Uralic-speaking groups dispersed along the Seima-Turbino route. He also notes a correspondence between this expansion route and the frequency of haplogroup N. Peltola et al. 2023 reproduced the findings that modern Uralic-speaking populations display varying degrees of ancestry from a “Siberian” source maximized in modern day Nganasan people. Nganasans and a historical specimen from Bronze Age Southern Siberia (Krasnoyarsk_Krai_BA; kra001) were found to display the lowest f4 estimate for the eastern ancestry among Uralic-speaking populations, and represent a plausible source. In contrast, affinity for Ancient North Eurasian-rich ancestry (represented by Eastern Hunter-Gatherers) was not significant and only observed among Western Finno-Ugric speakers.” ref

“According to a 2025 study, ancestry from the Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age is associated with the migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers, coinciding with the collapse of pre-Bronze Age population structure. This ancestry formed through a 50:50 mixture of the Syalakh-Belkachi population of the Lena Valley, which had Ancient Paleo-Siberian affinities, and the Transbaikal Kitoi population, which had Inland East Asian affinities. Contemporary males associated with this ancestry also carried subclades of haplogroup N, which is predominant for present Uralic-speaking groups. However, the study does not claim that Proto-Uralic itself was spoken in Yakutia (officially known as the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Far East/North Siberia), even though some ancestors of later Uralic speakers arrived from there.” ref

“(Yakuts are primarily from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and speak Yakut, which belongs to the Siberian branch of the Turkic languages). Many researchers have concluded that Yakut ethnogenesis resulted from an admixture of Turks migrating from Lake Baikal and native Yukaghir and Tungusic peoples living around the Lena River. The primary Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup for the Yakut is N-M231. While it occurs in about 89% of the general population, it is closer to 82% in northern Yakutia. Various other Eastern Siberian populations share N-M231. And according to Adamov, haplogroup N1c1 makes up 94% of the Sakha population. Likewise, Y-DNA Haplogroup N1c (also designated as N-Tat or N1a1a) is a paternal genetic marker strongly linked to the expansion of Uralic-speaking peoples across northeastern Europe, Fennoscandia, and Siberia. The remaining haplogroups are approximately: 4% C-M217 (including subclades C-M48 and C-M407), 3.5% R1a-M17 (including subclade R1a-M458), and 2.1% N-P43, with sporadic instances of I-M253, R1b-M269, J2, and Q.” ref, ref, ref

“In the 21st century, linguistic arguments have placed the Proto-Uralic homeland possibly around the Kama River or, more generally, close to the Great Volga Bend and the Ural Mountains, although Petri Kallio, while agreeing with the placement of the homeland in Central Russia, prefers the Volga-Oka region further to the west. The expansion of Proto-Uralic has been dated to about 2000 BCE (4000 years ago), and its earlier stages go back at least one or two millennia earlier. Either way, this is considerably later than the earlier views of the continuity theories, which would place Proto-Uralic deep into Europe. Asko Parpola associates the early Proto-Uralic language with the Neolithic Elshanka and Kama cultures, placing the ultimate homeland of Uralic languages to the Kama River valley. Proto-Uralic would later expand with the Seima-Turbino material culture. According to him, Uralic languages were transmitted by language shift from groups of hunters and fishers participating in the spread of the Seima-Turbino culture towards Siberia.” ref

“An alternative view has been presented by Juha Janhunen (2009), who argues for a homeland in southern or central Siberia, somewhere between the Ob and Yenisei river or near the Sayan mountains in the Russian–Mongolian border region. This view has been corroborated by a number of scholars, including by a team around Grünthal et al. 2022. They presented evidence that the Proto-Uralic homeland was located east of the Urals, likely somewhere in Siberia, and was spoken by local hunter-gatherer communities. The Finno-Ugric branch spread along rivers north- and westwards into the Volga region, while the Samoyedic branch headed north- and eastwards. The spread of Uralic languages may be in part due to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, although no direct link between them can be made yet.” ref

“The material culture technology of proto-Uralic-speakers can be described as “Neolithic”, as it included pottery but no vocabulary for food production. They further concluded that Proto-Uralic must have stood out of contact with Proto-Indo-European and did not share any genealogical ancestry with Indo-European, arguing that “whether based on cognacy or loans the argument from lexical resemblances is flawed”, invalidating previous arguments for a homeland in the Volga region. Last, they noted that a number of traits of Uralic are “distinctive in western Eurasia. A number of typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim”, and are rare or absent in Europe, and that the Uralic languages “must have expanded via language shift”, while “the shifting population had minimal impact on Proto-Uralic grammar and vocabulary.” ref

“Rasmus G. Bjørn (2022), citing the previous findings, such as Grünthal et al. 2022, argues that the Proto-Uralic speakers likely resided in Southern Siberia, and may have been part of the local Okunev culture in the Altai region, following the proposals of Janhunen and Peyrot. He notes that contact between Uralic and the Indo-European branches of Tocharian and Indo-Iranian on the one hand, and between Uralic and Turkic on the other hand, supports a homeland near the Altai Mountains. An association with the Seima-Turbino phenomenon and the dispersal of Uralic languages “fits the string-like distribution of the western Uralic languages as well as close contacts with the Andronovo (and preceding Sintashta) culture associated with speakers of Indo-Iranian. Proto-Samoyedic was then either left in or migrated to the area around the Minusinsk Basin“. Bjørn attributes the “eastern lexical elements” to contact with Turkic, which radiated out from the Amur region and can be associated with Northeast Asian linguistic area.” ref

“Jaakko Häkkinen (2023) argues that the location of Early Proto-Uralic and more distant stages are temporally irrelevant for the location of the Late Proto-Uralic homeland. He further elaborates that the “very distant Pre-Proto-Uralic” may have been spoken far from the region where Late Proto-Uralic was spoken. Häkkinen argues that Late Proto-Uralic and the successive stages of disintegration happened in the Central Ural Region, based on certain tree names and Indo-Iranian loanword layers. According to him, the disintegration of the proto-language began soon after 2500 BCE, but the speech community remained in a narrow region for a long time, until the second millennium BCE, after which the actual Uralic expansion began. On this basis the early phase of the Seima-Turbino Network in Southwestern Siberia could not yet be associated to the Uralic languages, but perhaps the later stages in Europe could. In any case, according to him, the arrival of the Uralic language in the Central Ural Region would precede even the early stage of the Seima-Turbino network.” ref

“(2025) The North Eurasian forest and forest-steppe zones have sustained millennia of sociocultural connections among northern peoples, but much of their history is poorly understood. In particular, the genomic formation of populations that speak Uralic and Yeniseian languages today is unknown. By generating genome-wide data for 180 ancient individuals spanning this region, we show the Early to Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harbored a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal. Contemporaneous groups in Northeast Siberia were off-gradient, and descended from a population that was the primary source for Native Americans, which then mixed with populations of Inland East Asia and the Amur River Basin to produce two populations whose expansion coincided with the collapse of pre-Bronze Age population structure. Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers. We show that Yakutia_LNBA first dispersed westward from the Lena River Basin around 4000 years ago into the Altai-Sayan region and into West Siberian communities associated with Seima-Turbino metallurgy—a suite of advanced bronze-casting techniques that expanded explosively from the Altai.¹ The 16 Seima-Turbino-period individuals were diverse in their ancestry, also harboring DNA from Indo-Iranian-associated pastoralists and from a range of hunter-gatherer groups. Thus, both cultural transmission and migration were key to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, which was involved in the initial spread of early Uralic-speaking communities.” ref

AI Overview: The relationship between the Yakut (Saha) people and Uralic peoples is primarily rooted in a shared geographical and paternal genetic origin in Siberia, even though they speak completely different language families and have distinct cultural histories. [1, 2, 3]

Recent ancient DNA and anthropological studies (such as research published via the Harvard Gazette) have clarified how their histories intersect: [1, 2, 3]

Paternal Genetic Link (Y-Haplogroup N)

• The Connection: Both Uralic speakers (like Finns, Sami, Mansi, and Khanty) and the Yakut share a high frequency of paternal Y-chromosome Haplogroup N (specifically sub-lineages associated with northern Eurasia). [1, 2, 3]
• The Homeland: Ancient DNA shows that the ancestral components of Uralic-speaking populations trace back roughly 4,500 years to the Lena River basin in Yakutia (northeastern Siberia), associated with the ancient Ymyyakhtakh culture (Yakutia_LNBA ancestry). [1, 2, 3]
• The Divergence: From Yakutia, early Proto-Uralic groups migrated westward around 4,000 years ago via the Bronze Age Seima-Turbino network into West Siberia and Northern Europe, carrying Haplogroup N. [1, 2, 3]
• While modern Uralic speakers carry varying degrees of East Asian/Yakutia-related autosomal DNA (ranging from high levels in groups like the Nganasan to lower levels in Finns and Estonians), modern Yakuts are genetically distinct from Neolithic Yakutia.
• Modern Yakuts show a closer autosomal genetic affinity to Southern Siberia and ancient Mongolia due to later medieval and post-medieval Turkic and Mongolic expansions into the Lena River basin. [1, 2, 3, 4]

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

“Lee et al. (2012) detected R1b in 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. Two studies published in 2015 (Haak et al. 2015, Mathieson et al. 2015) found that Bell Beaker individuals from Germany and the Czech Republic had high proportions of Steppe-related ancestry, showing that they derived from mixtures of populations from the Steppe (such as Corded Ware and Yamnaya) and the preceding Neolithic farmers of Europe. The Y-chromosome composition of Beaker-associated males was dominated by R1b-M269, a lineage associated with the arrival of Steppe migrants in central Europe after 3000 BCE. Bell Beaker individuals from Germany analyzed by Haak et al. (2015) were found to have less Steppe ancestry than the earlier Corded Ware culture.” ref

“In a comprehensive study including samples from across Europe, Yediay et al. (2024, preprint) conclusively showed that steppe ancestry in Bell Beaker populations derived from the Corded Ware culture rather than the Yamnaya culture. Allentoft et al. (2015) found that Bell Beaker people were closely genetically related to the Corded Ware culture, the Únětice culture, and the Nordic Bronze Age. Furtwängler et al. (2020) analyzed 96 ancient genomes from Switzerland, southern Germany, and Alsace, France, covering the Middle/Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. They confirmed that R1b arrived in the region during the transitory Bell Beaker period (2800-1800 BCE), along with Steppe-related ancestry. Most Bell Beaker R1b samples belonged to the U152 > L2 clade (11 of 14; the others were P312 or L51). Allentoft et al. (2024) found that individuals from Denmark dating from the ‘Dagger Period‘ (c. 2300–1700 BCE) clustered with central and western European Late Neolithic-Bronze Age individuals dominated by males with lineages of R1b-M269/L51, matching the appearance of Bell Beaker material culture in Denmark at this time.” ref

“Papac et al. (2021) found that the earliest Bell Beaker individuals from Bohemia in the Czech Republic had a similar genetic composition to Corded Ware individuals. A closer phylogenetic relationship was observed between the Y-chromosome lineages found in early Corded Ware and Bell Beaker than in either late Corded Ware or Yamnaya and Bell Beaker. R1b-L151 was the most common Y-lineage among early Corded Ware males in Bohemia, and was ancestral to R1b-P312, the dominant Y-lineage found in Bell Beaker males. Engovatova et al. (2024) found a particularly close genetic similarity between a male from the Abashevo culture in the Middle Volga region of Russia and Bell Beaker populations from Germany and the Czech Republic, reflecting the presence of Bell Beaker elements (as well as Únětice-like elements) in the material culture of Abashevo. The authors attribute this to a long-distance migration of groups from central Europe to the Middle Volga region.” ref

“Olalde et al. (2018) analyzed three Bell Beaker-associated individuals (one male and two females) from northern Italy (Parma), dating from 2200 to 1930 BCE. Two individuals showed around 25% Early Bronze Age Steppe-related ancestry, while one showed none. The male belonged to Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a2a1a2 (R1b-M269/P312). Saupe et al. (2021) found that Bronze Age populations in Northern and Central Italy showed a mix of earlier Chalcolithic and Steppe-related ancestry. The study found an autosomal affinity between North and Central Italian Bronze Age groups and Late Neolithic Germany, suggesting that Steppe-related ancestry could have arrived through Central European Bell Beaker groups, such as ‘Germany Bell Beaker’. Three out of the four Italian Bronze Age males for which the paternal haplogroup could be determined belonged to haplogroup R1, and two of those were of the R1b-L11 lineage, which was absent in earlier Chalcolithic samples but is common in modern Western Europe and in ancient male Bell-Beaker burials.” ref

“Posth et al. (2021) found that Iron Age Etruscans from central Italy could be modeled as deriving around 50% of their ancestry from Central European Bell Beakers (represented by Germany Bell Beaker), with around 25-30% steppe ancestry. We modeled two Etruscan samples as having 80% Germany Bell Beaker ancestry. Overall, the Etruscan samples showed ~75% frequency of the Y-haplogroup R1b, mostly represented by R1b-P312 and its derived R1b-L2 lineage, “that diffused across Europe alongside steppe-related ancestry in association with the Bell Beaker complex.” According to the authors, the Etruscans carried “a local genetic profile shared with other neighboring populations such as the Latins from Rome and its environs despite the cultural and linguistic differences between the two neighboring groups. Antonio et al. (2019) similarly found that 5 out of 6 male Iron Age Latins samples belonged to the R1b-M269 Y-haplogroup, consistent with “the arrival of Steppe ancestry, via migration of Steppe pastoralists or intermediary populations in the preceding Bronze Age.”, and did not find significant genetic differentiation between the Latins and the Etruscans.” ref

“The Iron Age Latin population showed a clear ancestry shift from the earlier Copper Age, modeled as an introduction of ~30 to 40% steppe ancestry, which was indicative of “large-scale immigration before the Iron Age.” Yediay et al. (2024, Preprint) found that “Bell Beaker populations of Western Europe” mediated the arrival of steppe ancestry in Italy, likely contributing to the emergence of the Italic and Celtic languages and consistent with the Italo-Celtic linguistic hypothesis. This Bell Beaker-related steppe ancestry, in turn, derived from the earlier Corded Ware culture rather than the Yamnaya culture. According to Chintalapatia et al. (2022), most Bronze Age samples from Sardinia lacked steppe-related ancestry, though a few individuals showed evidence of it. This ancestry is estimated to have arrived in Sardinia ~2600 BCE.” ref

France

“Bell Beaker samples from France display a wide range of steppe-ancestry proportions, with a very high level of steppe ancestry in a male individual from northern France (with Y-DNA R1b-M269), to ~28% steppe ancestry in a male from southwestern France. As in Iberia, a drastic Y-chromosome turnover occurred during the Bronze Age, with R1b replacing the preexisting diversity of Neolithic lineages. Seguin-Orlando et al. (2023) dated the arrival of steppe ancestry in southern France to ~2,650 BCE.” ref

Iberia

The earliest Bell Beaker samples in Iberia lacked Steppe ancestry, but between ~2500 and 2000 BCE Steppe ancestry replaced 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes. Y-chromosome lineages common in Copper Age Iberia (I2, G2, H) were nearly completely replaced by one lineage, R1b-M269. The most plausible source population for this genetic influx was ‘Germany Bell Beaker’. The earliest samples with Steppe ancestry were located in northern Spain and were modeled as deriving 60.2% of their ancestry from Germany Bell Beaker and 39.8% from the Iberian Copper Age, whilst Iberian Bronze Age samples from c. 2000 BCE were modeled as 39.6% Germany Bell Beaker and 60.4% Iberian Copper Age. Some Iberian samples had up to 100% Central European Bell Beaker ancestry.” ref

“Men contributed a higher percentage of the genetic influx than women. These results confirm earlier findings by Patterson et al. (2012), who detected “a signal of gene flow from populations related to present-day northern Europeans into Spain around 2000 BC”, hypothesized to be a “genetic signal of the Bell Beaker culture”. According to Olalde (2023), Iberian Bell Beaker samples with Steppe ancestry dating from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE were approximately third cousins of Bell Beaker individuals from Central Europe, Britain and Scandinavia. The Y-chromosome (patrilineal) lineages of these Iberian samples were derived almost exclusively from Central European ancestors. Villalba-Mouco et al. (2021) analyzed genome-wide data from 136 southern Iberian individuals dating from the Late Neolithic (3300 cal BCE) to the Late Bronze Age (1200/1000 cal BCE).” ref

“They found that Bronze Age populations, including those from the El Argar culture were “shifted toward populations with steppe-related ancestry from central Europe” compared to preceding Copper Age groups. After 2100 cal BCE, all individuals at all sites carried steppe-related ancestry, consistent with R1b-P312 [R1b-M269] becoming the predominant Y-chromosomal lineage. The major additional ancestry source resembled central European Bell Beaker groups, which first contributed ancestry to northern Iberia, followed by a southward spread. According to the authors, “R1b-Z195, the most common Y lineage in BA Iberia, ultimately derives from a common ancestor R1b-P312 in central Europe.” The authors propose that the El Argar culture “likely formed from a mixture of new groups arriving from north-central Iberia, which already carried central European steppe-related ancestry (and the predominant Y-chromosome lineage) and local southeastern Iberian CA groups that differed from other regions in Iberia in that they carried excess Iran_Neolithic-like ancestry similar to eastern and/or central Mediterranean groups.” ref

British Isles

“A study by Olalde et al. (2018) confirmed a massive population turnover in western Europe associated with the Bell Beaker culture. In Britain, the spread of the Bell Beaker culture introduced high levels of Steppe-related ancestry and replaced ~90% of the gene pool within a few hundred years. British Beaker-associated individuals showed strong similarities to central European Beaker-associated individuals in their genetic profile. Both men and women with Steppe ancestry contributed to the turnover in Neolithic Britain, as shown by the rise of the paternal haplogroup R1b-M269 and the maternal haplogroups I, R1a, and U4. The paternal haplogroup R1b was absent in Neolithic individuals but represented more than 90% of Y-chromosomes in Copper and Bronze Age Britain. The study also found that Bell Beaker arrivals in Neolithic Britain had significantly higher frequencies of genetic variants associated with light skin and eye pigmentation than the local population, but lower frequencies of the SNP associated with lactase persistence in modern Europeans. Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of the Amesbury Archer, dating from c. 2300 BCE (the richest burial in Britain in this period), found that he spent his childhood in Central Europe, probably in the region of the Alps.” ref

Mythology of Four Squared: Pyramid/Mound-“Square” Mountain at the Center of the World and Square Earth

• Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, Assyria): Polytheistic traditions featuring an influential hierarchy of gods.
• Key Deities: Anu (sky), Enlil (storm/air), Enki/Ea (water and wisdom), Inana/Ishtar (love and war), Shamash (sun), and Marduk or Ashur as national supreme gods.
• Worldview: Centered on city-states where ziggurats served as divine homes and temples, with humans created to serve the gods. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Ancient Egypt: Complex polytheism closely tied to divine kingship (the Pharaoh) and elaborate beliefs about death, preservation, and the afterlife.
• Key Deities: Amun, Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, and the brief monolatristic/monotheistic shift toward Atenism under Pharaoh Akhenaten. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Levant (Canaan, Ugarit, Phoenicia, Israel): Semitic pantheons focused on weather, fertility, and storm deities, transitioning into distinct regional identities.
• Key Deities: El (head of the pantheon), Baal (storm and fertility), and Asherah.
• Transition: Evolving from early West Semitic polytheism into unique traditions like Yahwism and ancient Israelite religion. [1, 2, 3]
• Anatolia and Ancient Iran: Distinct mythological and dualistic or multi-tiered belief systems.
• Hittites/Hurrians: Weather gods (Tessub) and a heavy blend of native Hattic and Mesopotamian-influenced myths.
• Ancient Iran: Early Iranian polytheism leading to the reform and establishment of Zoroastrianism under the prophet Zoroaster. [1, 2]

Core Characteristics

• Anthropomorphism: Gods were generally conceived with human-like forms, emotions, social structures, and needs, though they possessed immortal power. [1, 2, 3]
• Cosmology: The universe was commonly visualized as a three-tier structure consisting of the sky (heavens/gods), the earth (living mortals), and the netherworld (the dead). [1]

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Ancient Near Eastern cosmology

“The cosmology of the ancient Near East denotes the beliefs concerning the universe’s origin, evolution, and structure that prevailed in the ancient Near East, an area equivalent to the modern Middle East and encompassing Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, the Levant, Anatolia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Premodern cosmology in this region featured a flat earth, a solid firmament above the sky, a cosmic ocean above that, a divine realm above the ocean, and a netherworld at the bottom. Creation myths explained where the universe came from, including which gods created it (and how), as well as how humanity was created.” ref

“These beliefs are attested as early as the fourth millennium BC and dominated until the modern era, with the only major competing system being the Hellenistic cosmology that developed in Ancient Greece in the mid-1st millennium BCE. Geographically, these views are known from the Mesopotamian cosmologies from Babylonia, Sumer, and Akkad; the Levantine or West Semitic cosmologies from Ugarit and ancient Israel and Judah (the biblical cosmology); the Egyptian cosmology from Ancient Egypt; and the Anatolian cosmologies from the Hittites. This system of cosmology went on to have a profound influence on views in early Greek cosmology, later Jewish cosmology, patristic cosmology, and Islamic cosmology (including Quranic cosmology).” ref

“Cosmography (structure of the cosmos): Many ancient Near Eastern civilizations shared similar views about the structure of the cosmos, a pattern that held for thousands of years. Widely held beliefs about cosmography included:

Cosmogony (creation of the cosmos)

“The Mesopotamian cosmos can be understood as multiple planes of existence, layered above one another. The highest plane of existence was heaven, which was the home of the sky god Anu. Below heaven was the atmosphere, which ranged from the bottom of heaven (or the lowermost firmament) to the ground that humans walk on. Enlil, the king of the gods in Sumerian mythology, inhabited this region between heaven and earth. Below the ground was the cosmic ocean, and this was believed to be the place of residence of the sibling deities Enki and Ninhursag. The lowest plane of existence was the underworld. Other deities inhabited these planes of existence even if they did not reign over them, such as the sun and moon gods. In later Babylonian accounts, the god Marduk alone ascends to the top rank of the pantheon and rules over all domains of the cosmos. The three-tiered cosmos (sky-earth-underworld) is found in Egyptian artwork on coffin lids and burial chambers. The broader category of “Beginnings” encompasses three separate though interrelated categories: the beginning of the cosmos (cosmogony), the beginning of the gods (theogony), and the beginning of humankind (anthropogeny). Evidence suggests Mesopotamian creation myths reached as far as Pre-Islamic Arabia. Many widely held beliefs permeated the creation myths of ancient Near Eastern cosmogony:

• Creatio ex materia from a primordial state of chaos; that is, the organization of the world from pre-existing, unordered and unformed (hence chaotic) elements, represented by a primordial body of water
• the presence of a divine creator
• the Chaoskampf motif: a cosmic battle between the protagonist and a primordial sea monster
• the separation of undifferentiated elements (to create heaven and earth)
• the creation of mankind.” ref

Separation of Heaven and Earth

“The cosmic union, or marriage, of heaven and earth is spoken of in ancient Near Eastern texts stretching back to the 3rd millennium BCE. The first source that mentions their separation is from the late 3rd millennium BCE, known as the Song of the hoe. During the 2nd millennium BCE, these texts shift in their focus from the union to the separation of heaven and earth, as shown by Sumerian, Akkadian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies. The cause of the separation involves either the agency of Enlil or takes place as a spontaneous act. One recovered Hittite text states that there was a time when they “severed the heaven from the earth with a cleaver”, and an Egyptian text refers to “when the sky was separated from the earth” (Pyramid Text 1208c). OIP 99 113 ii and 136 iii says Enlil separated Earth from Sky and separated Sky from Earth. Enkig and Ninmah 1–2 also says Sky and Earth were separated in the beginning. The introduction of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld says that heaven is carried off from the earth by the sky god Anu to become the possession of the wind god Enlil. Several other sources also present this idea. In the Akkadian Enuma Elish, written in the early 1st millennium BC, the god Marduk divides the corpse of the slain primordial goddess Tiamat into two parts, one stretched out to create heaven, the other to create the earth. Several accounts describe the nature of the original mass. In older, Sumerian texts from the 3rd to early 2nd millennia BCE, the original mass was a solid. In the younger Akkadian tradition, such as the Enuma Elish, the original mass was water. In the Sumerian sources, heaven and earth are separated over the course of “long days and nights” (similar to the six-day timeline in the Genesis creation narrative), by two gods: Anu, the King of Heaven, and Enlil, the King of Earth.” ref

AI Overview: Ancient Mesopotamian religion and traditional Siberian shamanic/animistic beliefs developed in vastly different geographic and cultural contexts—urban-agricultural civilization versus nomadic or forest-tundra hunting/herding cultures. However, comparative anthropology reveals several notable structural and symbolic similarities:

1. Tripartite or Layered Cosmologies

• Ancient Mesopotamia: The universe was organized vertically and horizontally, featuring the overarching heaven (ruled by Anu), the earth/atmosphere (ruled by Enlil), and a dark, dusty subterranean underworld (Arallû or Kur) where all souls went. [1, 2]
• Ancient/Traditional Siberia: Indigenous Siberian cosmologies commonly feature a tripartite universe divided into an Upper World (sky/deities), Middle World (earth/mortals), and Lower World (underworld/spirits), often connected by a central cosmic pillar, axis, or world tree. [1, 2]

2. Nature Animism and “Spirit Owners”

• Ancient Mesopotamia: Gods and spirits were viewed as indwelling presences within natural phenomena, rivers, stars, mountains, and animals, requiring active appeasement. [1, 2]
• Siberian Religion: Animism forms the core foundation, where physical elements—such as forests, rivers, fire, and mountains—possess their own local “spirit owners” (such as icci or aazi) that must be respected through taboos, prayers, and offerings to maintain ecological and spiritual balance. [1, 2]

3. Creation from Clay and the Divine-Human Relationship

• Ancient Mesopotamia: Humans were notoriously created by gods (like Ea/Enki or the mother goddess) out of clay infused with divine essence or blood to perform manual labor and serve the immortal masters. [1, 2]
• Siberian/Northern Eurasian Traditions: Various northern mythologies share motifs of earth-diver creation or molding the physical vessel of humanity/animals from mud, clay, or local elements under the direction of high creator spirits.

4. Mediators Between Humanity and the Spirit Realm

• Ancient Mesopotamia: Specialized priests, diviners (barû), and exorcists (āšipu) acted as structured intermediaries, reading omens, maintaining temple statues, and bridging the gap between volatile, unpredictable gods and the urban populace. [1, 2]
• Siberian Religion: Shamans (qam, böö, or saman) act as ecstatic intermediaries who enter trance states, journey to upper or lower realms using sacred drums, and negotiate with spirits for healing, weather, or soul retrieval. [1, 2, 3]

Key Differences to Keep in Mind

• Scale & Organization: Mesopotamian religion was urban, state-sponsored, and cuneiform-literate, built around massive mud-brick ziggurats and a centralized temple-palace hierarchy. Siberian religion was oral, clan-based, and non-urban, centered on mobile pastoralism, hunting taboos, and individual or lineage-based shamanic rituals. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

AI Overview: Ancient Mesopotamian religion and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion developed largely independently, yet they share striking thematic and structural parallels. These similarities stem primarily from cultural diffusion, long-term contact via intermediaries (such as Anatolian and Semitic cultures like the Hittites), and shared human responses to agrarian and pastoral environments. In contact zones like ancient Anatolia (Hittites, Hurrians, and Luwians), Mesopotamian urban-temple traditions and Indo-European steppe pantheons blended and syncretized heavily. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Fundamental Differences: Mesopotamian religion was anchored in urban, monumental, state-run ziggurat theocracies, whereas PIE religion was pastoral, mobile, centered on cattle-raiding ethics, sacrificial fires, and comparative linguistic-mythic reconstructions rather than fixed architectural temples. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Pantheon Structure: PIE religion heavily centers on a tripartite or functional layout (priests, warriors, commoners/producers, as described by Georges Dumézil) with a clear Daylight-Sky Father (Dyews Phater), whereas Mesopotamian religion is deeply astral and city-state-centric, where major deities (like Enki/Ea, Enlil, and Anu) govern specific cities, elements, or cosmic spheres with heavy emphasis on temple priesthoods and civic-religious bureaucracy. [1, 2, 3, 4]

 Key Similarities

The Storm God vs. Serpent/Dragon Battle

• Indo-European: A signature PIE motif features a weather/thunder god (such as Vedic Indra vs. Vritra, Norse Thor vs. Jörmungandr, Slavic Perun vs. Veles, or Greek Zeus vs. Typhon) slaying a chaos serpent or dragon.
• Mesopotamian/Near Eastern: Similar dragon-slaying or chaos-combating epics appear, such as Marduk slaying the primordial salt-sea dragon Tiamat in the Enûma Eliš, or Near Eastern storm gods (like Baal/Hadad) battling sea serpents like Lotan. Anatolian Hittites (who bridged Indo-European and Mesopotamian worlds) also feature the storm god Tarhunt battling the serpent Illuyanka. [1, 2]

Cosmic Order and Divine Decrees

• Indo-European: The Vedic concept of ṛta represents the cosmic and moral order that keeps the universe functioning and regular.
• Mesopotamian: The Sumerian concept of me (and Babylonian divine ordinances) refers to the sacred, fundamental rules, decrees, and cosmic powers assigned by the gods to maintain civilization and the universe. [1]

Cosmology from Primordial Waters

• Both traditions frequently conceptualize creation as emerging out of a formless, watery chaos. Mesopotamian myth begins with a watery mingling of Apsu (freshwater) and Tiamat (saltwater), while various Indo-European and ancient Near Eastern branches share echoes of a primeval state before the organization of earth and sky. [1, 2]

Sacrifice and Maintenance of the Cosmos

• Both systems viewed ritual sacrifice (whether animal or symbolic) as an essential mechanism to feed, honor, or appease the divine and keep the cosmic order from collapsing into chaos. [1, 2, 3]

Underworld Afterlife Regardless of Earthly Status 

• Both Proto-Indo-European and Ancient Mesopotamian mythologies initially conceptualized the afterlife as a bleak, undifferentiated underworld where everyone met the same dreary fate regardless of their moral conduct or earthly status. However, starting around 3,000 years ago (c. 1000 BCE), later Indo-European cultures underwent a massive paradigm shift, linking the soul’s destination to personal morality, ritual status, or the manner of death.

Here is a breakdown of how this transition occurred across both traditions:

1. The Early Horizon (6,000 to 3,000 Years Ago)

During this period, both cultural groups envisioned a grim, egalitarian “shadowy underworld.”

• Ancient Mesopotamian Beliefs: In Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, the dead descended to Kur (or Irkalla). This was a dark, cavernous realm beneath the earth. In this underworld, spirits (known as gidim) ate dust, drank clay, and lived a gray, diminished version of life. Whether you were a king or a beggar, the afterlife was equally miserable.
• Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Beliefs: Reconstructed PIE mythology points to a similar concept. The dead crossed a river (often guarded by a multi-eyed hound) to enter a gray, subterranean realm ruled by a death deity (derived from *Yemo, the twin). While there was a slight distinction for rulers or warriors who received proper funerary rites, the early Indo-European afterlife was generally not a place of moral reward or punishment. It was a bleak, passive house of shadows (similar to the early Greek Hades or Norse Hel).

2. The Indo-European Shift (After 3,000 Years Ago)

Around the 1st millennium BCE, Indo-European daughter cultures began redefining the afterlife around two main criteria: earthly status/actions and moral rectitude.

• Zoroastrianism (Persian): This was the most radical moral shift. Led by Zoroaster, Persian religion introduced a strict ethical dualism. The soul faced the Chinvat Bridge; the righteous crossed into a paradise of light, while the wicked fell into a hell of torment.
• Greek Mythology: The Homeric view of Hades (grim and shadowy) evolved. By the time of the Orphic mysteries, Plato, and Virgil, the underworld bifurcated into Tartarus (for the wicked) and the Elysian Fields (for the heroic, initiated, or virtuous).
• Norse Mythology: The Germanic/Norse branches developed a destination based on status and the manner of death. Warriors who died bravely in battle were chosen for Valhalla or Fólkvangr, while those who died of old age or sickness (“straw deaths”) went to the cold underworld of Helheim.
• Vedic/Hindu Tradition: In India, early Vedic concepts of a joyful ancestral realm ruled by Yama evolved into the complex systems of Samsara (reincarnation) and Karma, where one’s moral actions strictly dictated their next life or realm of existence.

Why Did This Shift Happen?

Historians and sociologists note that this shift, after 3,000 years, coincided with the Axial Age. As societies grew into larger, state-level empires, universal legal codes emerged. To maintain social cohesion and encourage cooperation among strangers, religions evolved from local ritual maintenance to universal moral frameworks, weaponizing the afterlife as the ultimate system of cosmic justice.

AI Overview: Proto-Indo-European (PIE) religion and ancient Siberian religious traditions (such as Tengrism and Siberian shamanism) share broad structural similarities due to early cultural contact across the Eurasian steppe and universal pastoral-nomadic motifs, though they belong to distinct linguistic and cultural families. [1, 2]

Key Similarities

• Veneration of a Sky Father:
• PIE religion centers on a daylight-sky god, Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr (reflected in Zeus, Jupiter, and Dyaus Pita).
• Siberian and Central Asian traditions (like Tengrism) feature a paramount, overarching Sky God (such as Tengri), representing the dome of the heavens as a divine, order-maintaining force. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• Animism and Nature Spirits:
• Both traditions populate the natural world with spirits tied to rivers, mountains, trees, and weather. PIE religion includes localized forces like storm gods (Perkʷunos), while Siberian shamanism deeply integrates local eezen (spirits/masters) of the landscape. [1, 2, 3]
• Sacrificial Economy:
• Early pastoral life on the Pontic-Caspian and Eurasian steppes placed heavy ritual importance on livestock (especially cattle and horses) as offerings to the divine to maintain cosmic and social order. [1, 2]
• Axis Mundi / Cosmic Tree Concept:
• Both systems conceptualize the universe through vertical layering (heaven, earth, underworld) often mediated by a central world tree, pillar, or ritual specialist who bridges human and divine realms.

Key Differences

• Shamanic vs. Hierarchical-Priestly Focus:
• Ancient Siberian religion relies heavily on shamanic ecstasy, direct spirit flight, and trance-mediated healing by a shaman (Siberian Turkic/Tungusic term).
• PIE society was more rigidly stratified with a hereditary, specialized priestly class (flamines, Brahmins) who preserved oral-formulaic praise poetry and formal blood/libation sacrifices rather than ecstatic trance journeys. [1, 2]
• Cosmological Origins:
• PIE mythos heavily features a primordial twin sacrifice (such as Manu and Yemo) where the dismemberment of a primordial being or twin builds the geographical and social structure of the world, a motif less central to indigenous Siberian cosmologies. [1, 2]

AI Overview: Comparative studies indicate that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Uralic (PU) religions are not genetically related or structurally identical systems, though they share general traits due to deep geographic proximity, ancient trade, and shared hunter-gatherer/pastoral interactions across the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe. [1, 2, 3]

Linguists and historians note several distinctions alongside overlapping motifs:

Shared General / Typological Traits

• Sky-Father Veneration: Both traditions featured a prominent celestial or weather/sky deity concept linked to roots for the sky or weather (such as PIE Dyḗus Ph₂tḗr / Daylight-Sky Father and Uralic sky-god reflexes like Inmar, Jumo, or Ilmarinen). [1, 2]
• Animism and Nature Spirits: Both worldviews perceived the natural landscape (forests, waters, fire, and animals) as animated by spirits, guardians, or invisible powers (väki in later Uralic traditions, or specific fire/water genii in PIE). [1, 2, 3]
• Cosmological Parallels: Both conceptualized a multi-tiered universe (earth, upper sky realm, and a netherworld/underworld) with mythic rivers or boundaries separating the living from the dead. [1, 2]

Key Differences in Belief Structure

• Social and Trifunctional Hierarchy (PIE) vs. Shamanistic/Animistic Focus (PU):
• PIE religion was heavily centered on a rigid, patriarchal, tripartite social order (priests, warriors, and herder-farmers) reflected in a pantheon of specialized gods (law, war, abundance) and heroic cattle-raiding or dragon-slaying myths (e.g., Trito).
• PU religion was more fundamentally rooted in animism, soul dualism (distinguishing a breath-soul wajŋi from a shadow-soul eśi capable of leaving the body during dreams or trances), and shamanistic mediation (noajta figures entering spirit journeys) rather than a rigid warrior-priest class structure. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Creation Myths:
• PIE creation centered on a primordial sacrifice of a cosmic twin (Manis/Yimmo) or dismemberment drama.
• Uralic creation traditions often favored the Earth-diver motif, where a waterbird (such as a loon or goose) dives into the primeval sea to bring up mud to form the earth. [1, 2]
• Genealogical Relationship: Modern linguistic and genetic consensus rejects a common “Indo-Uralic” mother religion or language family, viewing observed similarities as the result of long-term areal contact and borrowing (particularly during early interactions between Uralic speakers and Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic groups) rather than a shared parent tradition. [1, 2]

AI Overview: Siberian shamanism and ancient Uralic religion share deep historical and structural overlaps, particularly because many Uralic peoples (such as the Samoyedic and Ugric groups) inhabit or originated near Siberia. [1, 2]

Key Similarities

• Soul Dualism: Both traditions split the human soul into distinct parts—typically a breath-soul that sustains the physical body and a shadow-soul (eśi) that wanders during dreams or travels with the shaman into the spirit realms. [1, 2]
• The Earth-Diver Creation Myth: Both traditions feature a foundational myth where a waterbird (such as a loon or goose) dives into a primeval ocean to bring up mud or sand to create dry land. [1, 2] 
• The Loom/Waterbird as a Sacred Helper: The loon and other waterbirds hold sacred status across both Siberian and Uralic-Siberian (Samoyedic) groups as psychopomps and magical guides between worlds. [1]
• Shamanic Costumes and Bone Symbolism: Shamanic gear (headdresses, robes, and boots) in both regions frequently feature metal or bone effigies representing human skeletons, internal organs, or facial features—symbolizing death, dismemberment, and ritual rebirth. [1, 2]
• Cosmological Three-World Structure: Both envision the universe as a vertical axis (Upper World, Middle World, and Under World), navigated by shamans using drums, trance, animal mimesis, and spirit journeys. [1, 2]
• Sky Gods and Weather Deities: Both share linguistic and conceptual roots for high sky gods linked to weather or the open vault of heaven (such as Num among Samoyeds or related Finno-Ugric sky/weather terms like Inmar and Jumo). [1, 2]

AI Overview: Ancient Slavic and Uralic religions share deep structural and thematic similarities, largely shaped by centuries of close cultural contact, shared northern Eurasian forest-zone environments, and parallel animistic worldviews.

Key Similarities

• Animism and Nature Spirits: Both traditions view the natural world as living and populated by spirits.
  • Slavic: Features tutelary and localized spirits like the domovoy (house spirit), leshy (forest spirit), and vodyanoy (water spirit).
  • Uralic: Features similar deep veneration of forest, water, and earth spirits (such as in Finnish, Mari, or Udmurt folk traditions) where specific groves, trees, and springs are treated as sacred and sentient. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The World Tree Axis: Both mythologies center the cosmos around a cosmic World Tree that connects the upper heavens, the middle earth, and the lower/underworld roots. [1]
• Earth-Diver Cosmogony: Both traditions share creation motifs where a divine or cooperative entity (such as a supreme being or water bird/agent) dives into the primordial sea to bring up a grain of sand or mud, which then expands to form the dry earth. [1]
• Soul Dualism: Ancient Uralic beliefs prominently feature soul dualism (distinguishing a physical/breath-soul from a free-roaming shadow- or dream-soul that travels during sleep or trance), a concept deeply embedded in broader northern forest folklore that also heavily colored Slavic popular demonology and beliefs about dreaming and transition. [1]
• Veneration of Mother Earth and Fertility Cycles: Both cultures place heavy ritual importance on the Earth Mother archetype (e.g., Mat Zemlya in Slavic religion and parallel earth/mother goddesses in Uralic pantheons like the Mordvin Ange Patyai) tied to seasonal transitions, agrarian planting, and spring renewal rituals (such as burning or drowning effigies representing winter/death). [1, 2] 
• Sacred Groves over Monolithic Temples: Early Slavs (outside of some Baltic-Slavic coastal outliers) and traditional Uralic peoples predominantly worshipped outdoors in natural sanctuaries—such as sacred groves, forest clearings, or near specific springs and stones—rather than building massive stone temples. [1]

AI Overview: Ancient Germanic and Uralic (such as Finnic and Sami) religions developed side-by-side in Northern and Eastern Europe for millennia, leading to shared cultural practices, environmental adaptations, and deep structural or symbolic overlaps despite belonging to separate language families (Indo-European vs. Uralic). [1, 2, 3]

Key Similarities

• Animism and Nature Veneration: Both traditions placed high spiritual value on the natural world, conducting core rituals outdoors in sacred groves, near specific standing trees (such as the Germanic Irminsul or sacred oaks), by forest springs, or at cairns rather than exclusively inside formal temples.
• The Bear Cult (Arctolatry): Both Germanic and Uralic-Finnic cultures shared a profound reverence for the bear as a lord of the forest, an ancestor figure, or a sacred animal. This manifested in linguistic taboos—avoiding the direct name of the bear out of respect or fear—and ritual disposal or honoring of bear bones to ensure the animal’s spirit could return to the wild or sky (such as the Finnish Karhunpeijaiset).
• Sky and Thunder Deities: Both pantheons featured a prominent, thunder-wielding sky god who protected order and humanity—such as the Germanic Þunraz (Thor/Donar) and Finnic counterparts like Ilmarinen or Ukko (who shares functional and structural traits as a weather/sky power).
• Sacrificial Deposits: Both traditions practiced ritual offerings by depositing valuable items, animals, or human remains into bogs, lakes, and springs, viewing wetlands as liminal thresholds to the spirit or underworld.
• Magic, Ecstasy, and Divination: Both cultures heavily integrated ritual magic into their worldviews. Germanic seiðr (associated with Odin and volvas) and Uralic/Sami shamanic practices (noaidi traditions involving trance, drum use, and spirit-flight) shared underlying circumpolar and northern Eurasian ecstatic magic techniques.
• Linguistic and Cultural Loanwords: Prolonged contact in the Baltic Sea region and Fennoscandia led to mutual cultural exchange, where Uralic languages adopted early Germanic terms for governance, agriculture, and metallurgy, while sharing mythological motifs concerning smithcraft and sky-forging. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]