My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?

“The arrival of haplogroup R1a-M417 in Eastern Europe, and the east-west diffusion of pottery through North Eurasia.” https://indo-european.eu/2018/02/the-arrival-of-haplogroup-r1a-m417-in-eastern-europe-and-the-east-west-diffusion-of-pottery-through-north-eurasia/

Ancient North Eurasian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_North_Eurasian

Ancient North Eurasian/Mal’ta–Buret’ culture haplogroup R* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%27ta%E2%80%93Buret%27_culture

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“The arrival of haplogroup R1a-M417 in Eastern Europe, and the east-west diffusion of pottery through North Eurasia.” ref 

R-M417 (R1a1a1)

“R1a1a1 (R-M417) is the most widely found subclade, in two variations which are found respectively in Europe (R1a1a1b1 (R-Z282) ([R1a1a1a*] (R-Z282) and Central and South Asia (R1a1a1b2 (R-Z93) ([R1a1a2*] (R-Z93).” ref

R-Z282 (R1a1a1b1a) (Eastern Europe)

“This large subclade appears to encompass most of the R1a1a found in Europe.

• R1a1a1b1a [R1a1a1a*] (R-Z282*) occurs in northern Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia at a frequency of c. 20%.
• R1a1a1b1a3 [R1a1a1a1] (R-Z284) occurs in Northwest Europe and peaks at c. 20% in Norway.
• R1a1a1c (M64.2, M87, M204) is apparently rare: it was found in 1 of 117 males typed in southern Iran.” ref

R1a1a1b2 (R-Z93) (Asia)

“This large subclade appears to encompass most of the R1a1a found in Asia, being related to Indo-European migrations (including Scythians, Indo-Aryan migrations, and so on).

• R-Z93* or R1a1a1b2* (R1a1a2* in Underhill (2014)) is most common (>30%) in the South Siberian Altai region of Russia, cropping up in Kyrgyzstan (6%) and in all Iranian populations (1-8%).
• R-Z2125 occurs at highest frequencies in Kyrgyzstan and in Afghan Pashtuns (>40%). At a frequency of >10%, it is also observed in other Afghan ethnic groups and in some populations in the Caucasus and Iran.
• R-M434 is a subclade of Z2125. It was detected in 14 people (out of 3667 people tested), all in a restricted geographical range from Pakistan to Oman. This likely reflects a recent mutation event in Pakistan.
• R-M560 is very rare and was only observed in four samples: two Burushaski speakers (north Pakistan), one Hazara (Afghanistan), and one Iranian Azerbaijani.
• R-M780 occurs at high frequency in South Asia: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Himalayas. The group also occurs at >3% in some Iranian populations and is present at >30% in Roma from Croatia and Hungary.” ref

R-M458 (R1a1a1b1a1)

“R-M458 is a mainly Slavic SNP, characterized by its own mutation, and was first called cluster N. Underhill et al. (2009) found it to be present in modern European populations roughly between the Rhine catchment and the Ural Mountains and traced it to “a founder effect that … falls into the early Holocene period, 7.9±2.6 KYA.” M458 was found in one skeleton from a 14th-century grave field in Usedom, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The paper by Underhill et al. (2009) also reports a surprisingly high frequency of M458 in some Northern Caucasian populations (for example 27.5% among Karachays and 23.5% among Balkars, 7.8% among Karanogays and 3.4% among Abazas).” ref

Who were the Groups migrating and merging with the previous Groups of Europe 9,000 to 7,000 years ago?

Pic ref 

Ancient Human Genomes…Present-Day Europeans – Johannes Krause (Video)

Ancient North Eurasian (ANE)

Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG)

Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG)

Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG)

Early European Farmers (EEF)

A quick look at the Genetic history of Europe

“The most significant recent dispersal of modern humans from Africa gave rise to an undifferentiated “non-African” lineage by some 70,000-50,000 years ago. By about 50–40 ka a basal West Eurasian lineage had emerged, as had a separate East Asian lineage. Both basal East and West Eurasians acquired Neanderthal admixture in Europe and Asia. European early modern humans (EEMH) lineages between 40,000-26,000 years ago (Aurignacian) were still part of a large Western Eurasian “meta-population”, related to Central and Western Asian populations. Divergence into genetically distinct sub-populations within Western Eurasia is a result of increased selection pressure and founder effects during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, Gravettian). By the end of the LGM, after 20,000 years ago, A Western European lineage, dubbed West European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) emerges from the Solutrean refugium during the European Mesolithic. These Mesolithic hunter-gatherer cultures are substantially replaced in the Neolithic Revolution by the arrival of Early European Farmers (EEF) lineages derived from Mesolithic populations of West Asia (Anatolia and the Caucasus). In the European Bronze Age, there were again substantial population replacements in parts of Europe by the intrusion of Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) lineages from the Pontic–Caspian steppes. These Bronze Age population replacements are associated with the Beaker culture archaeologically and with the Indo-European expansion linguistically.” ref 

“As a result of the population movements during the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, modern European populations are distinguished by differences in WHG, EEF, and ANE ancestry. Admixture rates varied geographically; in the late Neolithic, WHG ancestry in farmers in Hungary was at around 10%, in Germany around 25%, and in Iberia as high as 50%. The contribution of EEF is more significant in Mediterranean Europe, and declines towards northern and northeastern Europe, where WHG ancestry is stronger; the Sardinians are considered to be the closest European group to the population of the EEF. ANE ancestry is found throughout Europe, with a maximum of about 20% found in Baltic people and Finns. Ethnogenesis of the modern ethnic groups of Europe in the historical period is associated with numerous admixture events, primarily those associated with the Roman, Germanic, Norse, Slavic, Berber, Arab and Turkish expansions. Research into the genetic history of Europe became possible in the second half of the 20th century, but did not yield results with a high resolution before the 1990s. In the 1990s, preliminary results became possible, but they remained mostly limited to studies of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal lineages. Autosomal DNA became more easily accessible in the 2000s, and since the mid-2010s, results of previously unattainable resolution, many of them based on full-genome analysis of ancient DNA, have been published at an accelerated pace.” ref

“Asian varieties of millet made their way from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BCE or 7,000 years ago.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet

Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago

“A study combining linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago. The findings outlined on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000km).” ref

“Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle. There are 98 Transeurasian languages, including Korean, Japanese, and various Turkic languages in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia, and Siberia, various Mongolic languages, and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia. This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art 

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Samara culture (7,000-6,500 years ago) upper Volga River, Russia, and is related to contemporaneous or subsequent prehistoric cultures of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, such as the Khvalynsk, Repin, and Yamnaya cultures as well as a Proto-Indo-European homeland region. Migration 2?

Khvalynsk culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)

Afanasievo culture (5,300-4,500 years ago)

Yamna/Yamnaya Culture (5,300-4,500 years ago) related to the spread of Proto-Indo-European

Samara culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)

“The Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BCE at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, at the northern edge of the steppe zone. It was discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye (Съезжее) in Russia. Related sites are Varfolomievka on the Volga (5500 BCE), which was part of the North Caspian culture, and Mykol’ske, on the Dnieper. The later stages of the Samara culture are contemporaneous with its successor culture in the region, the early Khvalynsk culture (4700–3800 BCE), while the archaeological findings seem related to those of the Dniepr-Donets II culture (5200/5000–4400/4200 BCE).” ref 

“The valley of the Samara river contains sites from subsequent cultures as well, which are descriptively termed “Samara cultures” or “Samara valley cultures”. Some of these sites are currently under excavation. “The Samara culture” as a proper name, however, is reserved for the early eneolithic of the region.” ref 

Pottery and the Samara culture?

“Pottery consists mainly of egg-shaped beakers with pronounced rims. They were not able to stand on a flat surface, suggesting that some method of supporting or carrying must have been in use, perhaps basketry or slings, for which the rims would have been a useful point of support. The carrier slung the pots over the shoulder or onto an animal. Decoration consists of circumferential motifs: lines, bands, zig-zags or wavy lines, incised, stabbed, or impressed with a comb. These patterns are best understood when seen from the top. They appear then to be a solar motif, with the mouth of the pot as the sun. Later developments of this theme show that in fact the sun is being represented.” ref

Samara culture Sacrificial objects 

“The culture is characterized by the remains of animal sacrifice, which occur over most of the sites. There is no indisputable evidence of riding, but there were horse burials, the earliest in the Old World.[citation needed] Typically the head and hooves of cattle, sheep, and horses are placed in shallow bowls over the human grave, smothered with ochre. Some have seen the beginning of the horse sacrifice in these remains, but this interpretation has not been more definitely substantiated. We know that the Indo-Europeans sacrificed both animals and people, like many other cultures.” ref

Samara culture Graves

“The graves found are shallow pits for single individuals, but two or three individuals might be placed there. A male buried at Lebyazhinka, only archaeologically dated to 8000-7000 calBCE, and often referred to by scholars of archaeogenetics as the “Samara hunter-gatherer” (a.k.a. I0124; SVP44; M340431), appears to have carried the rare Y-DNA haplogroup R1b1* (R-L278*).” ref

“Some of the graves are covered with a stone cairn or a low earthen mound, the very first predecessor of the kurgan. The later, fully developed kurgan was a hill on which the deceased chief might ascend to the sky god, but whether these early mounds had that significance is doubtful.” ref

“Grave offerings included ornaments depicting horses. The graves also had an overburden of horse remains; it cannot yet be determined decisively if these horses were domesticated and ridden or not, but they were certainly used as a meat-animal. Most controversial are bone plaques of horses or double oxen heads, which were pierced.” ref

“The graves yield well-made daggers of flint and bone, placed at the arm or head of the deceased, one in the grave of a small boy. Weapons in the graves of children are common later. Other weapons are bone spearheads and flint arrowheads. Other carved bone figurines and pendants were found in the graves.” ref

Samara culture Genetics

Further information: Khvalynsk § Archaeogenetics

“Mathieson et al. (2015, 2018) found that a male hunter-gatherer from Lebyanzhinka, Samara Oblast who lived ca. 5650-5540 BCE belonged to Y-haplogroup R1b1a1a and U5a1d.” ref

Yamnaya culture

“The Yamnaya culture (Russian: Ямная культура, romanized: Yamnaya kul’tura, Ukrainian: Ямна культура, romanized: Yamna kul’tura lit. ‘culture of pits’), also known as the Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (romanization: yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means ‘related to pits (yama)’, and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.” ref 

“The people of the Yamnaya culture were likely the result of a genetic admixture between the descendants of Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG), an ancestral component which is often named “Steppe ancestry”, with an additional admixture of up to 18% from Early European Farmers. Their material culture was very similar to the Afanasevo culture, and the populations of both cultures are genetically indistinguishable. They lived primarily as nomads, with a chiefdom system and wheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds.” ref

“They are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughout Europe and Central Asia, especially the Corded Ware people and the Bell Beaker culture, as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubnaya cultures. Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present. Genetic studies have also indicated that these populations derived large parts of their ancestry from the steppes.” ref

“The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the strongest candidate for the Urheimat (original homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.” ref

Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA)

“Haplogroup R* originated in North Asia just before the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500-19,000 years before present). This haplogroup has been identified in the 24,000 year-old remains of the so-called “Mal’ta boy” from the Altai region, in south-central Siberia (Raghavan et al. 2013). This individual belonged to a tribe of mammoth hunters that may have roamed across Siberia and parts of Europe during the Paleolithic. Autosomally this Paleolithic population appears to have passed on its genes mostly to the modern populations of Europea and South Asia, the two regions where haplogroup R also happens to be the most common nowadays (R1b in Western Europe, R1a in Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, and R2 in South Asia).” ref

“The series of mutations that made haplogroup R1* evolve into R1a probably took place during or soon after the Last Glacial Maxium. Little is known for certain about R1a’s place of origin. Some think it might have originated in the Balkans or around Pakistan and Northwest India, due to the greater genetic diversity found in these regions. The diversity can be explained by other factors though. The Balkans have been subject to 5000 years of migrations from the Eurasian Steppes, each bringing new varieties of R1a. South Asia has had a much bigger population than any other parts of the world (occasionally equaled by China) for at least 10,000 years, and larger populations bring about more genetic diversity. The most likely place of origin of R1a is Central Asia or southern Russia/Siberia.” ref

“From there, R1a could have migrated directly to eastern Europe (European Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), or first southward through Central Asia and Iran. In that latter scenario, R1a would have crossed the Caucasus during the Neolithic, alongside R1b, to colonize the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. In the absence of ancient Y-DNA from those regions the best evidence supporting a Late Paleolithic migration to Iran is the presence of very old subclades of R1a (like M420) in the region, notably in the Zagros mountains. However, these samples only make up a fraction of all R1a in the region and could just as well represent the descendants of Eastern European hunter-gatherers who branched off from other R1a tribes and crossed from the North Caucasus any time between 20,000 and 8,000 years ago. The logic behind this is that most known historical migrations in Eurasia took place from north to south, as people sought warmer climes. The only exception happened during the Holocene warming up of the climate, which corresponds to the Neolithic colonization of Europe from the Near East. A third possibility is that R1a tribes split in two around Kazakhstan during the Late Paleolithic, with one group moving to eastern Europe, while the other moved south to Iran.” ref

Bronze Age Proto-Indo-Europeans

“R1a is thought to have been the dominant haplogroup among the northern and eastern Proto-Indo-European tribes, who evolved into the Indo-Iranian, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic people. The Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in the Yamna culture (3300-2500 BCE). Their dramatic expansion was possible thanks to an early adoption of bronze weapons and the domestication of the horse in the Eurasian steppes (circa 4000-3500 BCE). Individuals from the southern part of the Steppe are believed to have carried predominantly lineages belonging to haplogroup R1b (L23 and subclades), while the people of northern forest-steppe to the north would have belonged essentially to haplogroup R1a. The first expansion of the forest-steppe people occurred with the Corded Ware Culture (see Germanic branch below). The forest-steppe origin of this culture is obvious from the usage of corded pottery and the abundant use of polished battle axes, the two most prominent features of the Corded Ware culture. This is also probably the time when the satemisation process of the Indo-European languages began, considering that the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian language groups belong to the same Satem isogloss and both appear to have evolved from the Catacomb and Srubna cultures. Ancient DNA testing has confirmed the presence of haplogroup R1a-M417 in samples from the Corded Ware culture in Germany (2600 BCE), from Tocharian mummies (2000 BCE) in Northwest China, from Kurgan burials (circa 1600 BCE) from the Andronovo culture in southern Russia and southern Siberia, as well as from a variety of Iron-age sites from Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, and Central Asia.” ref

Diversification of R1a1a1 (M417) and ancient migrations and Proto-Indo-Europeans

“Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup which is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to southern Siberia and South Asia. While R1a originated ca. 22,000 to 25,000 years ago, its subclade M417 (R1a1a1) diversified ca. 5,800 years ago. The place of origin of the subclade plays a role in the debate about the origins of Proto-Indo-Europeans.” ref

“The SNP mutation R-M420 was discovered after R-M17 (R1a1a), which resulted in a reorganization of the lineage in particular establishing a new paragroup (designated R-M420*) for the relatively rare lineages which are not in the R-SRY10831.2 (R1a1) branch leading to R-M17.” ref

“According to Underhill et al. (2014), the downstream R1a-M417 subclade diversified into Z282 and Z93 circa 5,800 years ago “in the vicinity of Iran and Eastern Turkey.” Even though R1a occurs as a Y-chromosome haplogroup among various languages such as Slavic and Indo-Iranian, the question of the origins of R1a1a is relevant to the ongoing debate concerning the urheimat of the Proto-Indo-European people, and may also be relevant to the origins of the Indus Valley Civilization.” ref

“R1a shows a strong correlation with Indo-European languages of Southern and Western Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and to some extent, Scandinavia being most prevalent in Eastern Europe, West Asia, and South Asia. In Europe, Z282 is prevalent, particularly while in Asia Z93 dominates. The connection between Y-DNA R-M17 and the spread of Indo-European languages was first noted by T. Zerjal and colleagues in 1999.” ref

“Semino et al. (2000) proposed Ukrainian origins, and a postglacial spread of the R1a1 gene during the Late Glacial Maximum, subsequently magnified by the expansion of the Kurgan culture into Europe and eastward. Spencer Wells proposes Central Asian origins, suggesting that the distribution and age of R1a1 points to an ancient migration corresponding to the spread by the Kurgan people in their expansion from the Eurasian steppe.” ref

“According to Pamjav et al. (2012), R1a1a diversified in the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region: Inner and Central Asia is an overlap zone for the R1a1-Z280 and R1a1-Z93 lineages [which] implies that an early differentiation zone of R1a1-M198 conceivably occurred somewhere within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region as they lie between South Asia and Central- and Eastern Europe.” ref

“Three genetic studies in 2015 gave support to the Kurgan theory of Gimbutas regarding the Indo-European Urheimat. According to those studies, haplogroups R1b and R1a, now the most common in Europe (R1a is also common in South Asia) would have expanded from the Pontic–Caspian steppes, along with the Indo-European languages; they also detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European languages.” ref

Source of R1a1a1 in Corded Ware culture

“David Anthony considers the Yamnaya culture to be the Indo-European Urheimat. According to Haak et al. (2015), a massive migration from the Yamnaya culture northwards took place ca. 2,500 BCE, accounting for 75% of the genetic ancestry of the Corded Ware culture, noting that R1a and R1b may have “spread into Europe from the East after 3,000 BCE” Yet, all their seven Yamnaya samples belonged to the R1b-M269 subclade, but no R1a1a has been found in their Yamnaya samples. This raises the question where the R1a1a in the Corded Ware culture came from, if it was not from the Yamnaya culture.” ref

Transcaucasia & West Asian origins and possible influence on Indus Valley Civilization

See also: Kura–Araxes culture, Uruk period, and Origins of the Indus Valley Civilisation

“Part of the South Asian genetic ancestry derives from west Eurasian populations, and some researchers have implied that Z93 may have come to India via Iran and expanded there during the Indus Valley Civilization.” ref

“Mascarenhas et al. (2015) proposed that the roots of Z93 lie in West Asia, and proposed that “Z93 and L342.2 expanded in a southeasterly direction from Transcaucasia into South Asia,” noting that such an expansion is compatible with “the archeological records of the eastward expansion of West Asian populations in the 4th millennium BCE culminating in the so-called Kura-Araxes migrations in the post-Uruk IV period.” Yet, Lazaridis noted that sample I1635 of Lazaridis et al. (2016), their Armenian Kura-Araxes sample, carried Y-haplogroup R1b1-M415(xM269) (also called R1b1a1b-CTS3187).” ref

“According to Underhill et al. (2014) the diversification of Z93 and the “early urbanization within the Indus Valley […] occurred at [5,600 years ago] and the geographic distribution of R1a-M780 may reflect this.” Poznik et al. (2016) note that ‘striking expansions’ occurred within R1a-Z93 at ~4,500–4,000 years ago, which “predates by a few centuries the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation.” However, according to Narasimhan et al. (2018), steppe pastoralists are a likely source for R1a in India.” ref

Proposed South Asian origins

“Kivisild et al. (2003) have proposed either South or West Asia, while Mirabal et al. (2009) see support for both South and Central Asia. Sharma et al.(2009) showcased the existence of R1a in India beyond 18,000 years to possibly 44,000 years in origin.” ref

“South Asian populations have the highest STR diversity within R1a1a, and subsequent older TMRCA datings, and R1a1a is present among both higher (Brahmin) castes and lower castes, although the presence is higher among Brahmin castes. From these findings some researchers have concluded that R1a1a originated in South Asia, excluding a substantial genetic influx from Indo-European migrants.” ref

“However, this diversity, and the subsequent older TMRCA-datings, can also be explained by the historically high population numbers, which increases the likelihood of diversification and microsatellite variation.” ref

“According to Sengupta et al. (2006), “[R1a1 and R2] could have actually arrived in southern India from a southwestern Asian source region multiple times.” Silva et al. (2017) noted that R1a in South Asia most “likely spread from a single Central Asian source pool, there do seem to be at least three and probably more R1a founder clades within the Subcontinent, consistent with multiple waves of arrival.” ref

“According to Martin P. Richards, co-author of Silva et al. (2017), “[the prevalence of R1a in India was] very powerful evidence for a substantial Bronze Age migration from central Asia that most likely brought Indo-European speakers to India.” ref

Phylogeny

“The R1a family tree now has three major levels of branching, with the largest number of defined subclades within the dominant and best known branch, R1a1a (which will be found with various names such as “R1a1″ in relatively recent but not the latest literature).” ref

Topology

“The topology of R1a is as follows (codes [in brackets] non-isogg codes): Tatiana et al. (2014) “rapid diversification process of K-M526 likely occurred in Southeast Asia, with subsequent westward expansions of the ancestors of haplogroups R and Q.” ref

“In Mesolithic Europe, R1a is characteristic of Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHGs). A male EHG of the Veretye culture buried at Peschanitsa near Lake Lacha in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia ca. 10,700 BCE was found to be a carrier of the paternal haplogroup R1a5-YP1301 and the maternal haplogroup U4a.” ref

“A Mesolithic male from Karelia ca. 8,800 BCE to 7950 BCE has been found to be carrying haplogroup R1a. A Mesolithic male buried at Deriivka ca. 7000 BCE to 6700 BCE carried the paternal haplogroup R1a and the maternal U5a2a.” ref

“Another male from Karelia from ca. 5,500 to 5,000 BCE, who was considered an EHG, carried haplogroup R1a. A male from the Comb Ceramic culture in Kudruküla ca. 5,900 BCE to 3,800 BCE has been determined to be a carrier of R1a and the maternal U2e1.” ref

“Various subdivisions may be called Karelia. Finnish Karelia was a historical province of Finland, and is now divided between Finland and Russia, often called just Karjala in Finnish.” ref

“According to archaeologist David Anthony, the paternal R1a-Z93 was found at Alexandria, Ukraine ca. 4000 BCE, Sredny Stog culture, “the earliest known sample to show the genetic adaptation to lactase persistence (I3910-T).” R1a has been found in the Corded Ware culture, in which it is predominant. Examined males of the Bronze Age Fatyanovo culture belong entirely to R1a, specifically subclade R1a-Z93.” ref

“Haplogroup R1a has later been found in ancient fossils associated with the Urnfield culture; as well as the burial of the remains of the Sintashta, Andronovo, the Pazyryk, Tagar, Tashtyk, and Srubnaya cultures, the inhabitants of ancient Tanais, in the Tarim mummies, and the aristocracy Xiongnu.” ref

“The skeletal remains of a father and his two sons, from an archaeological site discovered in 2005 near Eulau (in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) and dated to about 2600 BCE, tested positive for the Y-SNP marker SRY10831.2. The Ysearch number for the Eulau remains is 2C46S. The ancestral clade was thus present in Europe at least 4600 years ago, in association with one site of the widespread Corded Ware culture.” ref

Europe

“In Europe, the R1a1 sub-clade is found at highest levels among peoples of Central and Eastern European descent, with results ranging from 35-65% among Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, western Ukrainians (particularly Rusyns), Belarusians, Moldovans, and Russians. In the Baltics, R1a1a frequencies decrease from Lithuania (45%) to Estonia (around 30%).” ref

“There is a significant presence in peoples of Scandinavian descent, with highest levels in Norway and Iceland, where between 20 and 30% of men are in R1a1a. Vikings and Normans may have also carried the R1a1a lineage further out; accounting for at least part of the small presence in the British Isles, the Canary Islands, and Sicily. In East Germany, where Haplogroup R1a1a reaches a peak frequency in Rostock at a percentage of 31.3%, it averages between 20 and 30%.” ref

“In Southern Europe, R1a1a is not common, but significant levels have been found in pockets, such as in the Pas Valley in Northern Spain, areas of Venice, and Calabria in Italy. The Balkans shows wide variation between areas with significant levels of R1a1a, for example 36–39% in Slovenia, 27%-34% in Croatia, and over 30% in Greek Macedonia, but less than 10% in Albania, Kosovo and parts of Greece south of Olympus gorge.” ref

“R1a is virtually composed only of the Z284 subclade in Scandinavia. In Slovenia, the main subclade is Z282 (Z280 and M458), although the Z284 subclade was found in one sample of a Slovenian. There is a negligible representation of Z93 in each region other than Turkey.” ref

“West Slavs and Hungarians are characterized by a high frequency of the subclade M458 and a low Z92, a subclade of Z280. Hundreds of Slovenian samples and Czechs lack the Z92 subclade of Z280, while Poles, Slovaks, Croats and Hungarians only show a very low frequency of Z92.” ref

“The Balts, East Slavs, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Romanians demonstrate a ratio Z280>M458 and a high, up to a prevailing share of Z92. Balts and East Slavs have the same subclades and similar frequencies in a more detailed phylogeny of the subclades.” ref

‘The Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky speculated that there is a predominance of the assimilated pre-Slavic substrate in the genetics of East and West Slavic populations, according to him the common genetic structure which contrasts East Slavs and Balts from other populations may suggest the explanation that the pre-Slavic substrate of the East Slavs consisted most significantly of Baltic-speakers, which at one point predated the Slavs in the cultures of the Eurasian steppe according to archaeological and toponymic references.” ref

Central Asia

Zerjal et al. (2002) found R1a1a in 64% of a sample of the Tajiks of Tajikistan and 63% of a sample of the Kyrgyz of Kyrgyzstan. Haber et al. (2012) found R1a1a-M17(xM458) in 26.0% (53/204) of a set of samples from Afghanistan, including 60% (3/5) of a sample of Nuristanis, 51.0% (25/49) of a sample of Pashtuns, 30.4% (17/56) of a sample of Tajiks, 17.6% (3/17) of a sample of Uzbeks, 6.7% (4/60) of a sample of Hazaras, and in the only sampled Turkmen individual.” ref

“Di Cristofaro et al. (2013) found R1a1a-M198/M17 in 56.3% (49/87) of a pair of samples of Pashtuns from Afghanistan (including 20/34 or 58.8% of a sample of Pashtuns from Baghlan and 29/53 or 54.7% of a sample of Pashtuns from Kunduz), 29.1% (37/127) of a pool of samples of Uzbeks from Afghanistan (including 28/94 or 29.8% of a sample of Uzbeks from Jawzjan, 8/28 or 28.6% of a sample of Uzbeks from Sar-e Pol, and 1/5 or 20% of a sample of Uzbeks from Balkh), 27.5% (39/142) of a pool of samples of Tajiks from Afghanistan (including 22/54 or 40.7% of a sample of Tajiks from Balkh, 9/35 or 25.7% of a sample of Tajiks from Takhar, 4/16 or 25.0% of a sample of Tajiks from Samangan, and 4/37 or 10.8% of a sample of Tajiks from Badakhshan), 16.2% (12/74) of a sample of Turkmens from Jawzjan, and 9.1% (7/77) of a pair of samples of Hazara from Afghanistan (including 7/69 or 10.1% of a sample of Hazara from Bamiyan and 0/8 or 0% of a sample of Hazara from Balkh).” ref

“Malyarchuk et al. (2013) found R1a1-SRY10831.2 in 30.0% (12/40) of a sample of Tajiks from Tajikistan. Ashirbekov et al. (2017) found R1a-M198 in 6.03% (78/1294) of a set of samples of Kazakhs from Kazakhstan. R1a-M198 was observed with greater than average frequency in the study’s samples of the following Kazakh tribes: 13/41 = 31.7% of a sample of Suan, 8/29 = 27.6% of a sample of Oshaqty, 6/30 = 20.0% of a sample of Qozha, 4/29 = 13.8% of a sample of Qypshaq, 1/8 = 12.5% of a sample of Tore, 9/86 = 10.5% of a sample of Jetyru, 4/50 = 8.0% of a sample of Argyn, 1/13 = 7.7% of a sample of Shanyshqyly, 8/122 = 6.6% of a sample of Alimuly, 3/46 = 6.5% of a sample of Alban. R1a-M198 also was observed in 5/42 = 11.9% of a sample of Kazakhs of unreported tribal affiliation.” ref

South Asia

“In South Asia, R1a1a has often been observed in a number of demographic groups. In India, high frequencies of this haplogroup is observed in West Bengal Brahmins (72%) to the east, Gujarat Lohanas (60%) to the west, Khatris (67%) in the north, and Iyengar Brahmins (31%) in the south.” ref

“It has also been found in several South Indian Dravidian-speaking Adivasis including the Chenchu (26%) and the Valmikis of Andhra Pradesh, Kota (22.58%), and the Kallar of Tamil Nadu suggesting that R1a1a is widespread in Tribal Southern Indians. Besides these, studies show high percentages in regionally diverse groups such as Manipuris (50%) to the extreme North East and among Punjabis (47%) to the extreme North West.” ref

“In Pakistan, it is found at 71% among the Mohanna tribe in Sindh province to the south and 46% among the Baltis of Gilgit-Baltistan to the north. Among the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, 23% were found to be R1a1a (R-SRY1532) positive. Hindus of Chitwan District in the Terai region Nepal show it at 69%.” ref

East Asia

“The frequency of R1a1a is comparatively low among some Turkic-speaking groups like Yakuts, yet levels are higher (19 to 28%) in certain Turkic or Mongolic-speaking groups of Northwestern China, such as the Bonan, Dongxiang, Salar, and Uyghurs.” ref

“A Chinese paper published in 2018 found R1a-Z94 in 38.5% (15 / 39) of a sample of Keriyalik Uyghurs from Darya Boyi / Darya Boye Village, Yutian County, Xinjiang, R1a-Z93 in 28.9% (22/76) of a sample of Dolan Uyghurs from Horiqol township, Awat County, Xinjiang, and R1a-Z93 in 6.3% (4/64) of a sample of Loplik Uyghurs from Karquga / Qarchugha Village, Yuli County, Xinjiang. R1a(xZ93) was observed only in one of 76 Dolan Uyghurs.” ref

“Note that Darya Boyi Village is located in a remote oasis formed by the Keriya River in the Taklamakan Desert. A 2011 Y-dna study found Y-dna R1a1 in 10% of a sample of southern Hui people from Yunnan, 1.6% of a sample of Tibetan people from Xizang (Tibet Autonomous Region), 1.6% of a sample of Xibe people from Xinjiang, 3.2% of a sample of northern Hui from Ningxia, 9.4% of a sample of Hazak (Kazakhs) from Xinjiang, and rates of 24.0%, 22.2%, 35.2%, 29.2% in 4 different samples of Uyghurs from Xinjiang, 9.1% in a sample of Mongols from Inner Mongolia, 10% of a sample of Northern Han Chinese from Gansu and 8.9% of a sample of Northern Han from western Henan. A different subclade of R1 was also found in 1.5% of a sample of northern Hui from Ningxia.” ref

“In the same study, there were no cases of R1a detected at all in 6 samples of Han Chinese in Yunnan, 1 sample of Han in Guangxi, 5 samples of Han in Guizhou, 2 samples of Han in Guangdong, 2 samples of Han in Fujian, 2 samples of Han in Zhejiang, 1 sample of Han in Shanghai, 1 samples of Han in Jiangxi, 2 samples of Han in Hunan, 1 sample of Han in Hubei, 2 samples of Han in Sichuan, 1 sample of Han in Chongqing, 3 samples of Han in Shandong, 5 samples of Han in Gansu, 3 samples of Han in Jilin and 2 samples of Han in Heilongjiang. T-M70, R-M207 (a subclade of R1a), Q-M242, L-M20, J-P209, I-M170, H-M69, G-M201, C5-M356 and E-SRY4064 collectively make up only 6.79% of the total male population of East Asia (from samples in North Korea and China).” ref

“The vast majority of East Asia is N-M231, C-M130 except C5-M356, D-M174, and O-M175 which is 92.87% of the population and are all East Eurasian male haplogroups. R-M207 (a subclade of R1a) came into East Asia via the north from the Central South Asia region (CSA) during paleolithic times in the post glacial period, especially R1a1a.” ref

R1a1a in East Asia is an extremely ancient subclade from the Central Asia-South Asia region and is older than the Western Eurasian (European_ and Central Asian-South Asian (CSA) R1a1*-M17, rivaling the R1a1*-M17 of IWest India in age from testing on variations in STR. The Europe and West Asian R1a1*-M17 split into 7 subbranches only after R1a1 came to North East Asia, indicating R1a1 in East Asia is an extremely ancient one dating back 15,370 years ago judging from variation in STR (predating the more recent Aryan and Indo-European expansions).” ref

“18%-32% of Muslim Salars, Dongxiang, Bonan, and Hui ethnic minorities in northwest China have R1a1 subclades many of which show a huge allele variation indicating their R1a is extremely old. This R1a in northwest China among those ethnic minorities is extremely ancient and is older than the newer R1a subclades from the more recent “Aryan”, Indo-European expansion, having nothing to do with it.” ref

“A date of 6,900 years before present is given for the common ancestors of the R1a1 carried by the Bonan, Salar, Yugur, Uyghur, Tatar, Xibe and Tu (Monguor) ethnic minorities in northwest China. In a 2014 paper, R1a1a has been detected in 1.8% (2/110) of Chinese samples. These two samples (R-M17, R-M198, R-M434, R-M458 for both) belonged to Han individuals from Fujian and Shanxi provinces.” ref

“40% of Salars, 45.2% of Tajiks of Xinjiang, 54.3% of Dongxiang, 60.6% of Tatars, and 68.9% of Kyrgyz in Xinjiang in northwestern China tested in one sample had R1a1-M17. Bao’an (Bonan) had the most haplogroup diversity of 0.8946±0.0305 while the other ethnic minorities in northwestern China had a high haplogroup diversity like Central Asians, of 0.7602±0.0546. In Eastern Siberia, R1a1a is found among certain indigenous ethnic groups including Kamchatkans and Chukotkans, and peaking in Itel’man at 22%.” ref

West Asia

“R1a1a has been found in various forms, in most parts of Western Asia, in widely varying concentrations, from almost no presence in areas such as Jordan, to much higher levels in parts of Kuwait and Iran. The Shimar (Shammar) Bedouin tribe in Kuwait show the highest frequency in the Middle East at 43%.” ref

“Wells 2001, noted that in the western part of the country, Iranians show low R1a1a levels, while males of eastern parts of Iran carried up to 35% R1a1a. Nasidze et al. 2004 found R1a1a in approximately 20% of Iranian males from the cities of Tehran and Isfahan. Regueiro 2006 in a study of Iran, noted much higher frequencies in the south than the north.” ref

“A newer study has found 20.3% R-M17* among Kurdish samples which were taken in the Kurdistan Province in western Iran, 19% among Azerbaijanis in West Azerbaijan, 9.7% among Mazandaranis in North Iran in the province of Mazandaran, 9.4% among Gilaks in province of Gilan, 12.8% among Persian and 17.6% among Zoroastrians in Yazd, 18.2% among Persians in Isfahan, 20.3% among Persians in Khorasan, 16.7% Afro-Iranians, 18.4% Qeshmi “Gheshmi”, 21.4% among Persian Speaking Bandari people in Hormozgan and 25% among the Baloch people in Sistan and Baluchestan Province.” ref

“Di Cristofaro et al. (2013) found haplogroup R1a in 9.68% (18/186) of a set of samples from Iran, though with a large variance ranging from 0% (0/18) in a sample of Iranians from Tehran to 25% (5/20) in a sample of Iranians from Khorasan and 27% (3/11) in a sample of Iranians of unknown provenance. All Iranian R1a individuals carried the M198 and M17 mutations except one individual in a sample of Iranians from Gilan (n=27), who was reported to belong to R1a-SRY1532.2(xM198, M17).” ref

“Malyarchuk et al. (2013) found R1a1-SRY10831.2 in 20.8% (16/77) of a sample of Persians collected in the provinces of Khorasan and Kerman in eastern Iran, but they did not find any member of this haplogroup in a sample of 25 Kurds collected in the province of Kermanshah in western Iran.” ref

“Further to the north of these Middle Eastern regions on the other hand, R1a1a levels start to increase in the Caucasus, once again in an uneven way. Several populations studied have shown no sign of R1a1a, while highest levels so far discovered in the region appears to belong to speakers of the Karachay-Balkar language among whom about one quarter of men tested so far are in haplogroup R1a1a.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

THE DNIEPER-DONETS II CULTURE

“Dimitri Telegin defined the Dnieper-Donets II culture based on a series of excavated cemeteries and settlement sites in the Dnieper valley, in the steppes north of the Sea of Azov, and in the Donets valley. Dnieper-Donets II societies created large, elaborate cemeteries, made no female figurines, had open fires rather than kilns or ovens in their homes, lived in bark-covered huts rather than in large houses with fired clay floors, had no towns, cultivated little or no grain, and their pottery was very different in appearance and technology from Tripolye ceramics. The trajectory of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture led back to the Neolithic societies of Old Europe, and that of Dnieper-Donets II led to the local Mesolithic foragers. They were fundamentally different people and almost certainly spoke different languages. But around 5200 BCE, the foragers living around the Dnieper Rapids began to keep cattle and sheep.” ref

“The bands of fishers and hunters whose cemeteries had overlooked the Rapids since the Early Mesolithic might have been feeling the pinch of growing populations. Living by the rich resources of the Rapids they might have become relatively sedentary, and women, when they live a settled life, generally have more children. They controlled a well-known, strategic area in a productive territory. Their decision to adopt cattle and sheep herding could have opened the way for many others in the Pontic-Caspian steppes. In the following two or three centuries domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats were walked and traded from the Dnieper valley eastward to the Volga-Ural steppes, where they had arrived by about 4700–4600 BCE. The evidence for any cereal cultivation east of the Dnieper before about 4200 BCE is thin to absent, so the initial innovation seems to have involved animals and animal herding.” ref

Dating the Shift to Herding

“The traditional Neolithic/Eneolithic chronology of the Dnieper valley is based on several sites near the Dnieper Rapids; the important ones are Igren 8, Pokhili, and Vovchok, where a repeated stratigraphic sequence was found. At the bottom were Surskii-type Neolithic pots and microlithic flint tools associated with the bones of hunted wild animals, principally red deer, wild pigs, and fish. These assemblages defined the Early Neolithic (dated about 6200–5700 BCE). Above them were Dnieper-Donets phase I occupations with comb-impressed and vegetal-tempered pottery, still associated with wild fauna; they defined the Middle Neolithic (probably about 5700–5400 BCE, contemporary with the Bug-Dniester culture). Stratified above these deposits were layers with Dnieper-Donets II pottery, sand-tempered with “pricked” or comb-stamped designs, and large flint blade tools, associated with the bones of domesticated cattle and sheep. These DDII assemblages represented the beginning of the Early Eneolithic and the beginning of herding economies east of the Dnieper River.” ref

“Unlike the dates from DDI and Surskii, most DDII radiocarbon dates were measured on human bone from cemeteries. The average level of 15N in DDII human bones from the Dnieper valley is 11.8%, suggesting a meat diet of about 50% fish. Correcting the radiocarbon dates for this level of 15N, I obtained an age range of 5200–5000 BCE for the oldest DDII graves at the Yasinovatka and Dereivka cemeteries near the Dnieper Rapids. This is probably about when the DDII culture began. Imported pots of the late Tripolye A2 Borisovka type have been found in DDII settlements at Grini, Piliava, and Stril’cha Skelia in the Dnieper valley, and sherds from three Tripolye A pots were found at the DDII Nikol’skoe cemetery. Tripolye A2 is dated about 4500–4200 BCE by good dates (not on human bone) in the Tripolye heartland, and late DDII radiocarbon dates (when corrected for 15N) agree with this range. The DDII period began about 5200–5000 BCE and lasted until about 4400–4200 BCE. Contact with Tripolye A people seems to have intensified after about 4500 BCE.” ref

The Evidence for Stockbreeding and Grain Cultivation

“Four Dnieper-Donets II settlement sites in the Dnieper valley have been studied by zoologists—Surskii, Sredni Stog 1, and Sobachki in the steppe zone near the Rapids; and Buz’ki in the moister forest-steppe to the north (table 9.2). Domesticated cattle, sheep/goat, and pig accounted for 30–75% of the animal bones in these settlements. Sheep/goat contributed more than 50% of the bones at Sredni Stog 1 and 26% at Sobachki. Sheep finally were accepted into the meat diet in the steppes. Perhaps they were already being plucked for felt making; the vocabulary for wool might have first appeared among Pre-Proto-Indo-European speakers at about this time.” ref 

“Wild horses were the most important game (?) animal at Sredni Stog 1 and Sobachki, whereas red deer, roe deer, wild pig, and beaver were hunted in the more forested parts of the river at Buz’ki and Surskii 2–4. Fishing net weights and hooks suggest that fish remained important. This is confirmed by levels of 15N in the bones of people who lived on the Dnieper Rapids, which indicate a meat diet containing more than 50% fish. Domesticated cattle, pig, and sheep bones occurred in all DDII settlements and in several cemeteries, and constituted more than half the bones at two settlement sites (Sredni Stog I and Sobachki) in the steppe zone. Domesticated animals seem indeed to have been an important addition to the diet around the Dnieper Rapids.” ref

“Flint blades with sickle gloss attest to the harvesting of cereals at DDII settlements. But they could have been wild seed plants like Chenopodium or Amaranthus. If cultivated cereals were harvested there was very little evidence found. Two impressions of barley(Hordeum vulgare) were recovered on a potsherd from a DDII settlement site at Vita Litovskaya, near Kiev, west of the Dnieper. In the forests northwest of Kiev, near the Pripet marshes, there were sites with pottery that somewhat resembled DDII pottery but there were no elaborate cemeteries or other traits of the DDII culture.” ref 

“Some of these settlements (Krushniki, Novosilki, Obolon’) had pottery with a few seed impressions of wheat (T. monococcum and T. dicoccum) and millet (Panicum sativum). These sites probably should be dated before 4500 BCE, since Lengyel-related cultures replaced them in Volhynia and the Polish borderlands after about that date. Some forest-zone farming seems to have been practiced in the southern Pripet forests west of the Dnieper. But in steppe-zone DDII cemeteries east of the Dnieper, Malcolm Lillie recorded almost no dental caries, suggesting that the DDII people ate a low-carbohydrate diet similar to that of the Mesolithic. No cultivated cereal imprints have been found east of the Dnieper River in pots dated before about 4000 BCE.” ref

Pottery and Settlement Types

“Pottery was more abundant in DDII living sites than it had been in DDI, and appeared for the first time in cemeteries (figure 9.5). The growing importance of pottery perhaps implies a more sedentary lifestyle, but shelters were still lightly built and settlements left only faint footprints. A typical DDII settlement on the Dnieper River was Buz’ki. It consisted of five hearths and two large heaps of discarded shellfish and animal bones. No structures were detected, although some kind of shelter probably did exist.19 Pots here and in other DDII sites were made in larger sizes (30–40 cm in diameter) with flat bottoms (pots seen in DDI sites had mainly pointed or rounded bottoms) and an applied collar around the rim.” ref 

“Decoration usually covered the entire outside of the vessel, made by pricking the surface with a stick, stamping designs with a small comb-stamp, or incising thin lines in horizontal-linear and zig-zag motifs—quite different from the spirals and swirls of Tripolye A potters. The application of a “collar” to thicken the rim was a popular innovation, widely adopted across the Pontic-Caspian steppes about 4800 BCE. Polished (not chipped) stone axes now became common tools, perhaps for felling forests, and long unifacial flint blades (5–15 cm long) also became increasingly common, perhaps as a standardized part of a trade or gift package, since they appeared in graves and in small hoards in settlements.” ref

Dnieper-Donets II Funeral Rituals

“DDII funerals were quite different from those of the Mesolithic or Neolithic. The dead usually were exposed, their bones were collected, and they were finally buried in layers in communal pits. Some individuals were buried in the flesh, without exposure. This communal pit type of cemetery, with several treatments of the body in one pit, spread to other steppe regions. The thirty known DDII communal cemeteries were concentrated around the Dnieper Rapids but occurred also in other parts of the Dnieper valley and in the steppes north of the Sea of Azov.” ref 

“The largest cemeteries were three times larger than those of any earlier era, with 173 bodies at Dereivka, 137 at Nikol’skoe, 130 at Vovigny II, 124 at Mariupol, 68 at Yasinovatka, 50 at Vilnyanka, and so on. Pits contained up to four layers of burials, some whole and in an extended supine position, others consisting of only skulls. Cemeteries contained up to nine communal burial pits. Traces of burned structures, perhaps charnel houses built to expose dead bodies, were detected near the pits at Mariupol and Nikol’skoe. At some cemeteries, including Nikol’skoe (figure 9.5), loose human bones were widely scattered around the burial pits.” ref

“At Nikol’skoe and Dereivka some layers in the pits contained only skulls, without mandibles, indicating that some bodies were cleaned to the bone long before final burial. Other individuals were buried in the flesh, but the pose suggests that they were tightly wrapped in some kind of shroud. The first and last graves in the Nikol’skoe pits were whole skeletons. The standard burial posture for a body buried in the flesh was extended and supine, with the hands by the sides. Red ochre was densely strewn over the entire ritual area, inside and outside the grave pits, and pots and animal bones were broken and discarded near the graves.” ref

“The funerals at DDII cemeteries were complex events that had several phases. Some bodies were exposed, and sometimes just their skulls were buried. In other cases whole bodies were buried. Both variants were placed together in the same multilayered pits, strewn with powdered red ochre. The remains of graveside feasts—cattle and horse bones—were thrown in the red-stained soil at Nikol’skoe, and cattle bones were found in grave 38, pit A, at Vilnyanka.21 At Nikol’skoe almost three thousand sherds of pottery, including three Tripolye A cups, were found among the animal bones and red ochre deposited over the graves.” ref

Power and Politics

“The people of the DDII culture looked different than people of earlier periods in two significant respects: the profusion of new decorations for the human body and the clear inequality in their distribution. The old fisher-gatherers of the Dnieper Rapids were buried wearing, at most, a few beads of deer or fish teeth. But in DDII cemeteries a few individuals were buried with thousands of shell beads, copper and gold ornaments, imported crystal and porphyry ornaments, polished stone maces, bird-bone tubes, and ornamental plaques made of boar’s tusk (figure 9.6). Boar’s-tusk plaques were restricted to very few individuals. The tusks were cut into rectangular flat pieces (not an easy thing to do), polished smooth, and pierced or incised for attachment to clothing. They may have been meant to emulate Tripolye A copper and Spondylus-shell plaques, but DDII chiefs found their own symbols of power in the tusks of wild boars.” ref

“At the Mariupol cemetery, 310 (70%) of the 429 boar’s-tusk plaques accompanied just 10 (8%) of the 124 individuals. The richest individual (gr. 8) was buried wearing forty boars-tusk plaques sewn to his thighs and shirt, and numerous belts made of hundreds of shell and mother-of-pearl beads. He also had a polished porphyry four-knobbed macehead (figure 9.6), a bull figurine carved from bone, and seven bird-bone tubes. At Yasinovatka, only one of sixty-eight graves had boars-tusk plaques: an adult male wore nine plaques in grave 45. At Nikol’skoe, a pair of adults (gr. 25 and 26) was laid atop a grave pit (B) equipped with a single boar’s-tusk plaque, a polished serpentine mace head, four copper beads, a copper wire ring, a gold ring, polished slate, and jet beads, several flint tools, and an imported Tripolye A pot.” ref 

“The copper contained trace elements that identify it as Balkan in origin. Surprisingly few children were buried at Mariupol (11 of 124 individuals), suggesting that a selection was made—not all children who died were buried here. But one was among the richest of all the graves: he or she (sex is indeterminate in immature skeletons) wore forty-one boar’s-tusk plaques, as well as a cap armored with eleven whole boar’s tusks, and was profusely ornamented with strings of shell and bone beads. The selection of only a few children, including some who were very richly ornamented, implies the inheritance of status and wealth. Power was becoming institutionalized in families that publicly advertised their elevated status at funerals.” ref

“The valuables that signaled status were copper, shell, and imported stone beads and ornaments; boars-tusk plaques; polished stone mace-heads; and bird-bone tubes (function unknown). Status also might have been expressed through the treatment of the body after death (exposed, burial of the skull/not exposed, burial of the whole body); and by the public sacrifice of domesticated animals, particularly cattle. Similar markers of status were adopted across the Pontic-Caspian steppes, from the Dnieper to the Volga.” ref 

“Boars-tusk plaques with exactly the same flower-like projection on the upper edge (figure 9.6, top plaque from Yasinovatka) were found at Yasinovatka in the Dnieper valley and in a grave at S’yezzhe in the Samara valley, 400 km to the east. Ornaments made of Balkan copper were traded across the Dnieper and appeared on the Volga. Polished stone mace-heads had different forms in the Dnieper valley (Nikol’skoe), the middle Volga (Khvalynsk), and the North Caspian region (Varfolomievka), but a mace is a weapon, and its wide adoption as a symbol of status suggests a change in the politics of power.” ref

THE KHVALYNSK CULTURE ON THE VOLGA

“The initial spread of stockbreeding in the Pontic-Caspian steppes was notable for the various responses it provoked. The DDII culture, where the shift began, incorporated domesticated animals not just as a ritual currency but also as an important part of the daily diet. Other people reacted in quite different ways, but they were all clearly interacting, perhaps even competing, with one another. A key regional variant was the Khvalynsk culture.” ref

“A prehistoric cemetery was discovered at Khvalynsk in 1977 on the west bank of the middle Volga. Threatened by the water impounded behind a Volga dam, it was excavated by teams led by Igor Vasiliev of Samara (figure 9.7). Its location has since been completely destroyed by bank erosion. Sites of the Khvalynsk type are now known from the Samara region southward along the banks of the Volga into the Caspian Depression and the Ryn Peski desert in the south. The characteristic pottery included open bowls and bag-like, round-bottomed pots, thick-walled and shell-tempered, with very distinctive sharply everted thick “collars” around the rims.” ref 

“They were densely embellished with bands of pricked and comb-stamped decoration that often covered the entire exterior surface. Early Khvalynsk, well documented at the Khvalynsk cemetery, began around 4700–4600 BCE in the middle Volga region (after adjusting the dates downward for the 15N content of the humnan bones on which the dates were measured). Late Khvalynsk on the lower Volga is dated 3900–3800 BCE at the site of Kara-Khuduk but probably survived even longer than this on the lower Volga.” ref

“The first excavation at the Khvalynsk cemetery, in 1977–79 (excavation I), uncovered 158 graves; the second excavation in 1980–85 (excavation II) recovered, I have been told, 43 additional graves.23 Only Khvalynsk I has been published, so all statistics here are based on the first 158 graves (figure 9.7). Khvalynsk was by far the largest excavated Khvalynsk-type cemetery; most others had fewer than 10 graves. At Khvalynsk most of the deceased were layered in group pits, somewhat like DDII graves, but the groups were much smaller, containing only two to six individuals (perhaps families) buried on top of one another. One-third of the graves were single graves, a move away from the communal DDII custom.” ref 

“Only mature males, aged thirty to fifty, were exposed and disarticulated prior to burial, probably an expression of enhanced male status, associated with the introduction of herding economies elsewhere in the world.24 Few children were buried in the cemetery (13 of 158), but those who were included some of the most profusely ornamented individuals, again possibly indicating that status was inherited. The standard burial posture was on the back with the knees raised, a distinctive pose. Most had their heads to the north and east, a consistent orientation that was absent in DDII cemeteries. Both the peculiar posture and the standard orientation later became widespread in steppe funeral customs.” ref

“Khvalynsk had many more animal sacrifices than any DDII cemetery: 52 (or 70) sheep/goat, 23 cattle, and 11 horses, to accompany the burials of 158 humans. (The published reports are inconsistent on the number of sheep/goat.) The head-and-hoof form of sacrifice appeared for the first time: at least 17 sheep/goat and 9 cattle were slaughtered and only the skull and lower leg bones were buried, probably still attached to the animal’s hide. In later steppe funerals the custom of hanging a hide containing the head and hooves over the grave or burying it in the grave was very common. The head and hide symbolized a gift to the gods, and the flesh was doled out to guests at the funeral feast.” ref 

“Parts of domesticated animals were offered in all phases of the funerals at Khvalynsk: on the grave floor, in the grave fill, at the edge of the grave, and in twelve special sacrificial deposits stained with red ochre, found above the graves (figure 9.7). The distribution of animal sacrifices was unequal: 22 graves of 158 (14 percent) had animal sacrifices in the grave or above it, and enough animals were sacrificed to supply about half of the graves were they distributed equally. Only 4 graves (100, 127, 139, and 55–57) contained multiple species (cattle and sheep, sheep and horse, etc.), and all four of those also were covered by ochre-stained ritual deposits above the grave, with additional sacrifices. About one in five people had sacrificed domestic animals, and one in forty had multiple domestic animals.” ref

“The role of the horse in the Khvalynsk sacrifices is intriguing. The only animals sacrificed at Khvalysnk I were domesticated sheep/goat, domesticated cattle, and horses. Horse leg parts occurred by themselves, without other animal bones, in eight graves. They were included with a sheep/goat head-and-hoof offering in grave 127, and were included with sheep/goat and cattle remains in sacrificial deposit 4 (figure 9.7). It is not possible to measure the bones—they were discarded long ago—but horses certainly were treated symbolically like domesticated animals at Khvalynsk: they were grouped with cattle and sheep/goat in human funeral rituals that excluded obviously wild animals. Carved images of horses were found at other cemeteries dated to this same period (see below). Horses certainly had a new ritual and symbolic importance at Khvalynsk. If they were domesticated, they would represent the oldest domesticated horses.” ref

“There is much more copper at Khvalynsk than is known from the entire DDII culture, and the copper objects there are truly remarkable (figure 9.7). Unfortunately, most of it, an astonishing 286 objects, came from the 43 (?) graves of the Khvalynsk II excavation, still unpublished though analyses of some of the objects have been published by Natalya Ryndina. The Khvalynsk I excavation yielded 34 copper objects found in 11 of the 158 published graves. The copper from excavations I and II showed the same trace elements and technology, the former characteristic of Balkan copper. Ryndina’s study of 30 objects revealed three technological groups: 14 objects made at 300–500°C, 11 made at 600–800°C, and 5 made at 900–1,000°C.” ref 

“The quality of welding and forging was uniformly low in the first two groups, indicating local manufacture, but was strongly influenced by the methods of the Tripolye A culture. The third group, which included two thin rings and three massive spiral rings, was technically identical to Old European status objects from the cemeteries of Varna and Durankulak in Bulgaria. These objects were made in Old Europe and were traded in finished form to the Volga. In the 158 graves of Khvalynsk I, adult males had the most copper objects, but the number of graves with some copper was about equal between the sexes, five adult male graves and four adult female graves. An adolescent (gr. 90 in figure 9.7) and a child were also buried with copper rings and beads.” ref

“Polished stone mace-heads and polished serpentine and steatite stone bracelets appeared with copper as status symbols. Two polished stone maces occurred in one adult male grave (gr. 108) and one in another (gr. 57) at Khvalynsk. Grave 108 also contained a polished steatite bracelet. Similar bracelets and mace-heads were found in other Khvalynsk-culture cemeteries on the Volga, for example, at Krivoluchie (Samara oblast) and Khlopkovskii (Saratov oblast). Some mace heads were given “ears” that made them seem vaguely zoomorphic, and some observers have seen horse heads in them. A clearly zoomorphic polished stone mace head appeared at Varfolomievka, part of a different culture group on the lower Volga. Maces, copper, and elaborate decoration of the body appeared with domesticated animals, not before.” ref

“Khvalynsk settlements have been found at Gundurovka and Lebyazhinka I on the Sok River, north of the Samara. But the Khvalynsk artifacts and pottery are mixed with artifacts of other cultures and ages, making it difficult to isolate features or animal bones that can be ascribed to the Khvalynsk period alone. We do know from the bones of the Khvalynsk people themselves that they ate a lot of fish; with an average 15N measurement of 14.8%, fish probably represented 70% of their meat diet. Pure Khvalynsk camps have been found on the lower Volga in the Ryn Peski desert, but these were specialized hunters’ camps where onagers and saiga antelope were the quarry, comprising 80–90 percent of the animal bones. Even here, at Kara Khuduk I, we find a few sheep/goat and cattle bones (6–9 %), perhaps provisions carried by Khvalynsk hunters.” ref

“In garbage dumps found at sites of other steppe cultures of the same period east of the Don (see below), horse bones usually made up more than half the bones found, and the percentage of cattle and sheep was usually under 40%. In the east, cattle and sheep were more important in ritual sacrifices than in the diet, as if they were initially regarded as a kind of ritual currency used for occasional (seasonal?) sanctified meals and funeral feasts. They certainly were associated with new rituals at funerals, and probably with other new religious beliefs and myths as well. The set of cults that spread with the first domesticated animals was at the root of the Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe as described at the beginning of chapter 8.” ref

NALCHIK AND NORTH CAUCASIAN CULTURES

“Many archaeologists have wondered if domesticated cattle and sheep might have entered the steppes through the Eneolithic farmers of the Caucasus as well as from Old Europe.28 Farming cultures had spread from the Near East into the southern Caucasus Mountains (Shulaveri, Arukhlo, and Shengavit) by 5800–5600 BCE. But these earliest farming communities in the Caucasus were not widespread; they remained concentrated in a few riverbottom locations in the upper Kura and Araxes River valleys. No bridging sites linked them to the distant European steppes, more than 500 km to the north and west. The permanently glaciated North Caucasus Mountains, the highest and most impassable mountain range in Europe, stood between them and the steppes.” ref 

“The bread wheats (Triticum aestivum) preferred in the Caucasus were less tolerant of drought conditions than the hulled wheats (emmer, einkorn) preferred by Criş, Linear Pottery, and Bug-Dniester cultivators. The botanist Zoya Yanushevich observed that the cultivated cereals that appeared in Bug-Dniester sites and later in the Pontic-Caspian steppe river valleys were a Balkan/Danubian crop suite, not a Caucasian crop suite. Nor is there an obvious stylistic connection between the pottery or artifacts of the earliest Caucasian farmers at Shulaveri and those of the earliest herders in the steppes off to the north. If I had to guess at the linguistic identity of the first Eneolithic farmers at Shulaveri, I would link them with the ancestors of the Kartvelian language family.” ref

“The Northwest Caucasian languages, however, are quite unlike Kartvelian. Northwest Caucasian seems to be an isolate, a survival of some unique language stock native to the northern slopes of the North Caucasus Mountains. In the western part of the North Caucasian piedmont, overlooking the steppes, the few documented Eneolithic communities had stone tools and pottery somewhat like those of their northern steppe neighbors; these communities were southern participants in the steppe world, not northern extensions of Shulaveri-type Caucasian farmers. I would guess they spoke languages ancestral to Northwest Caucasian, but only a few early sites are published. The most important is the cemetery at Nalchik.” ref

“Near Nalchik, in the center of the North Caucasus piedmont, was a cemetery containing 147 graves with contracted skeletons lying on their sides in red ochre—stained pits in groups of two or three under stone cairns. Females lay in a contracted pose on the left side and males on their right.30 A few copper ornaments, beads made of deer and cattle teeth, and polished stone bracelets (like those found in grave 108 at Khvalynsk and at Krivoluchie) accompanied them. One grave yielded a date on human bone of 5000–4800 BCE (possibly too old by a hundred to five hundred years, if the dated sample was contaminated by old carbon in fish).” ref 

“Five graves in the same region at Staronizhesteblievsk were provided with boars-tusk plaques of the DDII Mariupol type, animal-tooth beads, and flint blades that seem at home in the Early Eneolithic.31 An undated cave occupation in the Kuban valley at Kamennomost Cave, level 2, which could be of the same date, has yielded sheep/goat and cattle bones stratified beneath a later level with Maikop-culture materials. Carved stone bracelets and ornamental stones from the Caucasus—black jet, rock crystal, and porphyry—were traded into Khvalynsk and Dnieper-Donets II sites, perhaps from people like those at Nal’chik and Kamennomost Cave 2. The Nalchik-era sites clearly represent a community that had at least a few domesticated cattle and sheep/goats, and was in contact with Khvalynsk. They probably got their domesticated animals from the Dnieper, as the Khvalynsk people did.” ref

THE LOWER DON AND NORTH CASPIAN STEPPES

“In the steppes between Nalchik and Khvalynsk many more sites, of different kinds, are dated to this period. Rakushechni Yar on the lower Don, near the Sea of Azov, is a deeply stratified settlement site with a cluster of six graves at the edge of the settlement area. The lowest cultural levels, with shell-tempered pottery lightly decorated with incised linear motifs and impressions made with a triangular-ended stick, probably dated about 5200–4800 BCE, contained the bones of sheep/goat and cattle. But in the interior steppes, away from the major river valleys, equid hunting was still the focus of the economy. In the North Caspian Depression the forager camp of Dzhangar, also dated 5200 BCE (on animal bone) and with pottery similar to Rakushechni Yar, yielded only the bones of wild horses and onagers.” ref

“On the eastern side of the lower Volga, sites such as Varfolomievka were interspersed with Khvalynsk hunters’ camps such as Kara Khuduk I.33 The settlement at Varfolomievka is stratified and well dated by radiocarbon, and clearly shows the transition from foraging to herding in the North Caspian Depression. Varfolomievka was first occupied around 5800–5600 BCE by pottery-making foragers who hunted onagers and horses (level 3). The site was reoccupied twice more (levels 2B and 2A). In level 2B, dated about 5200–4800 BCE, people constructed three pit-houses. They used copper (one copper awl and some amorphous lumps of copper were found) and kept domesticated sheep/goats, though “almost half” the animal bones at Varfolomievka were of horses.” ref 

“Bone plaques were carved in the shape of horses, and horse metacarpals were incised with geometric decorations. Three polished stone mace-head fragments were found here. One was carved into an animal head at one end, perhaps a horse (figure 9.6). Four graves were dug rather casually into abandoned house depressions at Varfolomievka, like the similar group of graves at the edge of Rakushechni Yar. Hundreds of beads made of drilled and polished horse teeth were deposited in ochre-stained sacrificial deposits near the human graves. There were also a few deer teeth, several kinds of shell beads, and whole boars’ tusk ornaments.” ref

“These sites in the southern steppes, from the lower Don to the lower Volga, are dated 5200–4600 BCE and exhibit the bones of sheep/goat and occasionally cattle, small objects of copper, and casual disposal of the dead. Small settlements provide most of the data, unlike the cemetery-based archaeological record for Khvalynsk. Pots were shell-tempered and decorated with designs incised or pricked with a triangular-ended stick. Motifs included diamond-like lozenges and, rarely, incised meanders filled with pricked ornament. Most rims were simple but some were thickened on the inside. A. Yudin has grouped these sites together under the name of the Orlovka culture, after the settlement of Orlovka, excavated in 1974, on the Volga. Nalchik seems to have existed at the southern fringe of this network.” ref

THE FOREST FRONTIER: THE SAMARA CULTURE

“One other culture interacted with northern Khvalynsk in the middle Volga region, along the forest-steppe boundary (see figure 9.1). The Samara Neolithic culture, distinguished by its own variety of “collared” pots covered with pricked, incised, and rocker-stamped motifs, developed at the northern edge of the steppe zone along the Samara River. The pottery, tempered with sand and crushed plants, was similar to that made on the middle Don River. Dwellings at Gundurovka near Samara had dug-out floors, 20 m by 8 m, with multiple hearths and storage pits in the floors (this settlement also contained Khvalynsk pottery). Domesticated sheep/goat (13% of 3,602 bones) and cattle (21%) were identified at Ivanovskaya on the upper Samara River, although 66% of the bones were of horses. The settlement of Vilovatoe on the Samara River yielded 552 identifiable bones, of which 28.3% were horse, 19.4% were sheep/goat, and 6.3% were cattle, in addition to beaver (31.8%) and red deer (12.9%). The Samara culture showed some forest-culture traits: it had large polished stone adzes like those of forest foragers to the north.” ref

“Samara people created formal cemeteries (figure 9.8). The cemetery at S’yezzhe (see-YOZH-yay) contained nine burials in an extended position on their backs, different from the Khvalynsk position and more like that of DDII. Above the graves at the level of the original ground surface was a ritual deposit of red ochre, broken pottery, shell beads, a bone harpoon, and the skulls and lower leg bones (astragali and phalanges) of two horses—funeral-feast deposits like the above-grave deposits at Khvalynsk. S’yezzhe had the oldest horse head-and-hoof deposit in the steppes. Near the horse head-and-hoof deposit, but outside the area of ochre-stained soil, were two figurines of horses carved on flat pieces of bone, similar to others found at Varfolomievka, and one bone figurine of a bull. The S’yezzhe people wore boar’s-tusk plaques like those of the Dnieper-Donets II culture, one of which was shaped exactly like one found at the DDII cemetery of Yasinovatka in the Dnieper valley.” ref

COWS, SOCIAL POWER, AND THE EMERGENCE OF TRIBES

“It is impossible to say how much the people buried at Khvalynsk really knew of the societies of Old Europe, but they certainly were connected by a trade network of impressive reach. Cemeteries across the Pontic-Caspian steppes (DDII, Khvalynsk, S’yezzhe, Nalchik) became larger or appeared for the first time, suggesting the growth of larger, more stable communities. Cattle and sheep were important in the diet at some DDII settlements on the Dnieper River, but farther east they seem initially to have been more important in funeral rituals than in the daily diet, which was still dominated by horse meat. In the east, domesticated cattle and sheep seem to have served as a kind of currency in a new set of rituals and religious beliefs.” ref

“Participation in long-distance trade, gift exchange, and a new set of cults requiring public sacrifices and feasting became the foundation for a new kind of social power. Stockbreeding is by nature a volatile economy. Herders who lose animals always borrow from those who still have them. The social obligations associated with these loans are institutionalized among the world’s pastoralists as the basis for a fluid system of status distinctions. Those who loaned animals acquired power over those who borrowed them, and those who sponsored feasts obligated their guests. Early Proto-Indo-European included a vocabulary about verbal contracts bound by oaths (*h1óitos-), used in later religious rituals to specify the obligations between the weak (humans) and the strong (gods).” ref 

“Reflexes of this root were preserved in Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Tocharian. The model of political relations it references probably began in the Eneolithic. Only a few Eneolithic steppe people wore the elaborate costumes of tusks, plaques, beads, and rings or carried the stone maces that symbolized power, but children were included in this exceptional group, suggesting that the rich animal loaners at least tried to see that their children inherited their status. Status competition between regional leaders, *weik-potisor *reg– in later Proto-Indo-European, resulted in a surprisingly widespread set of shared status symbols. As leaders acquired followers, political networks emerged around them—and this was the basis for tribes.” ref

“Societies that did not accept the new herding economy became increasingly different from those that did. The people of the northern forest zone remained foragers, as did those who lived in the steppes east of the Ural Mountains. These frontiers probably were linguistic as well as economic, given their persistence and clarity. The Pre-Proto-Indo-European language family probably expanded with the new economy during the Early Eneolithic in the western steppes. Its sister-to-sister linguistic links may well have facilitated the spread of stockbreeding and the beliefs that went with it.” ref

“One notable aspect of the Pontic-Caspian Early Eneolithic is the importance of horses, in both diet and funeral symbolism. Horse meat was a major part of the meat diet. Images of horses were carved on bone plaques at Varfolomievka and S’yezzhe. At Khvalynsk, horses were included with cattle and sheep in funeral rituals that excluded obviously wild animals. But, zoologically, we cannot say whether they looked very different from wild horses—the bones no longer exist. The domestication of the horse, an enormously important event in human history, is not at all well understood. Recently, however, a new kind of evidence has been obtained straight from the horse’s mouth.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago

My speculations on a likely “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis”

To me, what I call “Paganism” starts around 12,000 years ago in Turkey/Anatolia in West Aisa. The odd thing is most of the world’s religious myths/fables start or commonly relate to “Siberia” like “Lake Baikal/Golden Mountains of Altai” region and “North China” like “Chertovy Vorota Cave (Devil’s Gate Cave)” area at 8,000/7,000 years ago and they were transferred to the Middle East as well as East Europe/Balkans/Ukraine/Russia. 

Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis (by Damien Marie AtHope)

To me, Proto-Indo-European starts in the steppe after leaving North Asia, then one-part heads to #1 Turkey/Anatolia with “Anatolian language” and the other part to #2 Ukraine/Russia and the rest of Proto-Indo-European. Mythology starts 7,000-8,000 years ago in North Aisa. I surmise that Proto-Indo-European emerges or is connected with the distribution of the 98 “Transeurasian” languages also called the Altaic language family traced to Neolithic millet farmers who inhabited a region in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago. ref

“Altaic (also called Transeurasian) is a sprachbund (i.e. a linguistic area) and controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35 °N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from Turkey to Japan. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia. The research on their supposedly common linguistics origin has inspired various comparative studies on the folklore and mythology among the Turks, Proto-Mongols and Tungus people.” ref

“Although Neolithic Northeast Asia was characterized by widespread plant cultivation, cereal farming expanded from several centers of domestication, the most important of which for Transeurasian was the West Liao basin, where cultivation of broomcorn millet started by 9000 years ago. In contrast to previously proposed homelands, which range from the Altai to the Yellow River to the Greater Khingan Mountains to the Amur basin, we find support for a Transeurasian origin in the West Liao River region in the Early Neolithic. After a primary break-up of the family in the Neolithic, further dispersals took place in the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age. Common ancestral languages that separated in the Neolithic, such as Proto-Transeurasian, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Mongolo-Tungusic, and Proto-Japano-Koreanic, reflect a small core of inherited words that relate to cultivation (‘field’, ‘sow’, ‘plant’, ‘grow’, ‘cultivate’, ‘spade’); millets but not rice or other crops (‘millet seed’, ‘millet gruel’, ‘barnyard millet’); food production and preservation (‘ferment’, ‘grind’, ‘crush to pulp’, ‘brew’); textile production (‘sew’, ‘weave cloth’, ‘weave with a loom’, ‘spin’, ‘cut cloth’, ‘ramie’, ‘hemp’); and pigs as well as dogs as the only common domesticated animals.” ref

“Some of the earliest evidence of millet cultivation in China was found at Cishan (north), where proso millet husk phytoliths and biomolecular components have been identified around 10,300–8,700 years ago in storage pits along with remains of pit-houses, pottery, and stone tools related to millet cultivation. And as Asian varieties of millet made their way from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BCE or 7,000 years ago around the time proposed for the earliest Proto-Indo-European language in the same general area.” ref

“PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 to 2500 BCE or 6,522-4,522 years ago just north of the Black Sea region of Europe during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe.” ref

It thus seems not unlikely and highly probable that there may be a common connection of “Transeurasian” languages spreading with Millet from China and a new language family Proto-Indo-European emerges, right around the area Millet shows up, and at a similar time as well.

To me, along with this migration of peoples also carried with them a Paganistic-Shamanism with heavy totemism.

To me, paganism starts around 12,00 years ago in Turkey/Anatolia in Western Asia. The odd thing is most of the world’s religious myths/fables start or commonly relate to “Siberia” like “Lake Baikal/Golden Mountains of Altai” region and “North China like Chertovy Vorota Cave (Devil’s Gate Cave) area at about 8,000/7,000 years ago and they were transferred to the middle east and East Europe/Balkans/Ukraine/Russia.”

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Cows, Copper, and Chiefs

“The Proto-Indo-European vocabulary contained a compound word (*weik-potis) that referred to a village chief, an individual who held power within a residential group; another root (*reg-) referred to another kind of powerful officer. This second root was later used for king in Italic (rēx), Celtic (rīx), and Old Indic (raj-), but it might originally have referred to an official more like a priest, literally a “regulator” (from the same root) or “one who makes things right” (again the same root), possibly connected withdrawing “correct” (same root) boundaries. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European had institutionalized offices of power and social ranks, and presumably showed deference to the people who held them, and these powerful people, in return, sponsored feasts at which food and gifts were distributed.” ref

When did a hierarchy of social power first appear in the Pontic-Caspian region?

How was it expressed? And who were these powerful people?

“Chiefs first appeared in the archaeological record of the Pontic-Caspian steppes when domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats first became widespread, after about 5200–5000 BCE. An interesting aspect of the spread of animal keeping in the steppes was the concurrent rapid rise of chiefs who wore multiple belts and strings of polished shell beads, bone beads, beaver-tooth and horse-tooth beads, boars tusk pendants, boars-tusk caps, boars-tusk plates sewed to their clothing, pendants of crystal and porphyry, polished stone bracelets, and gleaming copper rings.” ref 

“Their ornaments must have clacked and rustled when they walked. Older chiefs carried maces with polished stone mace-heads. Their funerals were accompanied by the sacrifice of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses, with most of the meat and bones distributed to the celebrants so only a few symbolic lower leg pieces and an occasional skull, perhaps attached to a hide, remained in the grave.” ref 

“No such ostentatious leaders had existed in the old hunting and gathering bands of the Neolithic. What made their sudden rise even more intriguing is that the nitrogen levels in their bones suggest that more than 50% of their meat diet continued to come from fish. In the Volga region the bones of horses, the preferred wild prey of the earlier hunters, still outnumbered cattle and sheep in kitchen trash. The domesticated cattle and sheep that played such a large ritual role were eaten only infrequently, particularly in the east.” ref

“What seems at first to be the spread of a new food economy on second look appears to be deeply interwined in new rituals, new values associated with them, and new institutions of social power. People who did not accept the new animal currency, who remained foragers, did not even use formal cemeteries, much less sponsor such aggrandizing public funeral feasts. Their dead still were buried simply, in plain clothing, in their old camping places. The cultural gap widened between those who tended domesticated animals, including foreign sheep and goats, and those who hunted native wild animals.” ref

“The northern frontier of the new economy coincided with the ecological divide between the forests in the north and the steppes in the south. The northern hunters and fishers refused to be shackled to domesticated animals for another two thousand years. Even in the intervening zone of forest-steppe the percentage of domesticated animal bones declined and the importance of hunted game increased.” ref 

“In contrast, the eastern frontier of the new economy did not coincide with an ecotone but instead ran along the Ural River, which drained the southern flanks of the Ural Mountains and flowed south through the Caspian Depression into the Caspian Sea. East of the Ural River, in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan, steppe foragers of the Atbasar type continued to live by hunting wild horses, deer, and aurochs.” ref 

“They lived in camps sheltered by grassy bluffs on low river terraces or on the marshy margins of lakes in the steppes. Their rejection of the new western economy possibly was rooted in ethnic and linguistic differences that had sharpened during the millennia between 14,000 and 9,000 BCE, when the Khvalynian Sea had divided the societies of the Kazakh and the Russian steppes. Regardless of its cause, the Ural valley became a persistent frontier dividing western steppe societies that accepted domesticated animals from eastern steppe societies that rejected them.” ref

“Copper ornaments were among the gifts and baubles traded eastward across the steppes from the Danube valley to the Volga-Ural region with the first domesticated animals. The regular, widespread appearance of copper in the Pontic-Caspian steppes signals the beginning of the Eneolithic. The copper was Balkan in origin and probably was obtained with the animals through the same trade networks. From this time forward Pontic-Caspian steppe cultures were drawn into increasingly complicated social, political, and economic relations with the cultures of the Balkans and the lower Danube valley.” ref 

‘The gulf between them, however, only intensified. By 4400–4200 BCE, when the Old European cultures were at their peak of economic productivity, population size, and stability, their frontier with the Pontic-Caspian herding cultures was the most pronounced cultural divide in prehistoric Europe, an even starker contrast than that between the northern forest hunters and the steppe herders.” ref 

“The Neolithic and Eneolithic cultures of the Balkans, Carpathians, and middle and lower Danube valley had more productive farming economies in an age when that really mattered, their towns and houses were much more substantial, and their craft techniques, decorative aesthetics, and metallurgy were more sophisticated than those of the steppes. The Early Eneolithic herding cultures of the steppes certainly were aware of the richly ornamented and colorfully decorated people of Old Europe, but steppe societies developed in a different direction.” ref

THE EARLY COPPER AGE IN OLD EUROPE

“There is an overall rhythm to the Eneolithic over most of southeastern Europe: a rise to a new level of social and technological complexity, its flourishing, and its subsequent disintegration into smaller-scale, more mobile, and technologically simpler communities at the opening of the Bronze Age. But it began, developed, and ended differently in different places. Its beginning is set at about 5200–5000 BCE in Bulgaria, which was in many ways the heart and center of Old Europe. Pontic-Caspian steppe societies were pulled into the Old European copper-trade network at least as early as 4600 BCE, more than six hundred years before copper was regularly used in Germany, Austria, or Poland.” ref

“The scattered farming hamlets of Bulgaria and southern Romania, about 5200–5000 BCE, blossomed into increasingly large and solidly built agricultural villages of large multiroomed timber and mud-plaster houses, often two-storied, set in cleared and cultivated landscapes surrounded by herds of cattle, pigs, and sheep. Cattle pulled ards, primitive scratch-plows, across the fields. In the Balkans and the fertile plains of the lower Danube valley, villages were rebuilt on the same spot generation after generation, creating stratified tells that grew to heights of 30–50 feet, lifting the village above its surrounding fields.” ref 

“Marija Gimbutas has made Old Europe famous for the ubiquity and variety of its goddesses. Household cults symbolized by broad-hipped female figurines were practiced everywhere. Marks incised on figurines and pots suggest the appearance of a notation system.6 Fragments of colored plaster suggest that house walls were painted with the same swirling, curvilinear designs that appeared on decorated pottery. Potters invented kilns that reached temperatures of 800–1100°C. They used a low-oxygen reducing atmosphere to create a black ceramic surface that was painted with graphite to make silver designs; or a bellows-aided high-oxygen atmosphere to create a red or orange surface, intricately painted in white ribbons bordered with black and red.” ref

‘Pottery kilns led to metallurgy. Copper was extracted from stone by mixing powdered green-blue azurite or malachite minerals (possibly used for pigments) with powdered charcoal and baking the mixture in a bellows-aided kiln, perhaps accidentally at first. At 800°C the copper separated from the powdered ore in tiny shining beads. It could then be tapped out, reheated, forged, welded, annealed, and hammered into a wide variety of tools (hooks, awls, blades) and ornaments (beads, rings, and other pendants). Ornaments of gold (probably mined in Transylvania and coastal Thrace) began to circulate in the same trade networks. The early phase of copper working began before 5000 BCE.” ref

“Balkan smiths, about 4800–4600 BCE, learned to fashion molds that withstood the heat of molten copper, and began to make cast copper tools and weapons, a complicated process requiring a temperature of 1,083°C to liquefy copper metal. Molten copper must be stirred, skimmed, and poured correctly or it cools into a brittle object full of imperfections. Wellmade cast copper tools were used and exchanged across southeastern Europe by about 4600–4500 BCE in eastern Hungary with the Tiszapolgar culture; in Serbia with the Vinča D culture; in Bulgaria at Varna and in the Karanovo VI tell settlements; in Romania with the Gumelnitsa culture; and in Moldova and eastern Romania with the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture.” ref 

“Metallurgy was a new and different kind of craft. It was obvious to anyone that pots were made of clay, but even after being told that a shiny copper ring was made from a green-stained rock, it was difficult to see how. The magical aspect of copperworking set metalworkers apart, and the demand for copper objects increased trade. Prospecting, mining, and long-distance trade for ore and finished products introduced a new era in inter-regional politics and interdependence that quickly reached deep into the steppes as far as the Volga.” ref

“Kilns and smelters for pottery and copper consumed the forests, as did two-storied timber houses and the bristling palisade walls that protected many Old European settlements, particularly in northeastern Bulgaria. At Durankulak and Sabla Ezerec in northeastern Bulgaria and at Tîrpeşti in Romania, pollen cores taken near settlements show significant reductions in local forest cover.8 The earth’s climate reached its post-glacial thermal maximum, the Atlantic period, about 6000–4000 BCE, and was at its warmest during the late Atlantic (paleoclimatic zone A3), beginning about 5200 BCE. Riverine forests in the steppe river valleys contracted because of increased warmth and dryness, and grasslands expanded. In the forest-steppe uplands majestic forests of elm, oak, and lime trees spread from the Carpathians to the Urals by 5000 BCE. Wild honeybees, which preferred lime and oak trees for nests, spread with them.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

• Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
• Domovoy (Slavic)
• Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
• Húsvættir (Norse)” ref

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

• Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
• Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
• Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
• Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
• Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
• Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
• Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

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

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

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

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

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

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

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

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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