As you may know, I’ve been thinking about the Indo-European expansion a lot. I did a lot more archaeological reading than I’m wont to for my Substacks, Steppe 1.0, Going Nomad, Steppe 1.1a: A nowhere man’s world, and Steppe 1.1b: culture vultures descend. I also got the archaeologists’ view from David Anthony, Kristian Kristiansen, and J. P. Mallory. Obviously, there are emails and earlier conversations that don’t make it into a podcast.
A few years ago I also read First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies and other archaeological works. But unlike with genetics archaeology is foreign territory to me, and I didn’t totally integrate and internalize what I read. Nevertheless, lately, when it comes to the transition between the late Neolithic and the early Copper Age in Northern Europe, the switch from the Funnel Beaker people to the Corded Ware cultures, I’ve developed a new sense of what happened and how to describe it: the arrival of Indo-Europeans en masse in the centuries after 3000 BC was into a fallen world well past its peak.
Bryan Ward-Perkins in The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization convinced me that material remains, or lack thereof, tell us something about social complexity and civilization as such. Eric Cline in 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed brings home to us just how fragile early societies were. Four centuries after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece the people of archaic 8th-century Greece seem to have had only vague memories and recollections of this period, and were unclear as to the provenance of the ruined citadels strewn across their land (these were constructed by the Greeks themselves).
The Megalith societies of Western Europe and Cuceteni-Tripilliya were pretty impressive. The last Neolithic societies left more substantial material remains than their Indo-European successors. Because we don’t have written records we don’t describe it for what it was: a “Dark Age.”
This pattern is clearer in South Asia. The Indus Valley Civilization was connected, at least tenuously, to the West Asian oikumene. After its decline and collapse, the Indo-Aryans created and perpetuated a much simpler and barbaric society. Only in the 5th century BC did post-tribal polities come into being.
More generally, the ancient intuition that the Golden Age lay in the past might not be unfounded. Many of the people whose mythologies we have were heirs of great past civilizations which were barely a memory.
If the late Neolithic societies were Arnor, the Yamnaya and their cousins were the Rohirrim.
I have also heard people say the British farmers were in decline when Beaker folk invaded.
Or at least, the Beaker folk were clearly more advanced than them. They weren’t primitive invaders.
Agricultural production, population size went up in Britain in the Bronze age.
yes, mass shift to pastoralism after 3000 bc
how were they clearly more advanced? give me specific examples since you know some
Ok yeah, I am just going on general impressions from what other people have said. Lol.
The Beaker folk did introduce bronze and gold.
This guy said in this video that Britain in the Bronze age was the most heavily under the plough in its entire history. He’s an archaeologist.
This is ironic as we say they replaced “farmers.” High number of farms, equals high population size.
*adjusts nerd glasses on nose, shrill voice commences* UMMM, ACTUALLY… Rohan was never part of Arnor, it was part of Gondor. Gondor had claimed “Calenardhon” (the land that would later become Rohan) as part of its own kingdom until 2510 of the Third Age, when Eorl of Rohan came to the aid of Gondor’s forces in battle. As a reward for Rohan’s actions, Cirion, the Steward of Gondor, granted Calenardhon to the Rohirrim, and thence the land was known as Rohan.
When Aragorn reunited the lost realm of Arnor (sans Shire) and Gondor, Rohan remained an independent kingdom under the rule of Eomer.
I am not dis agreeing with your premise. It is an insightful observation as most of your posts are.
jesus magus you no longer have children and are now a virgin again
Objections? I’ve had a few (but then again too few to mention)…
– “the arrival of Indo-Europeans en masse…”
>>> I would like finally to see some approximate numbers of them who, allegedly, covered the whole Europe and enforced their nomadic language. Who organised scattered steppe nomads who only had a family organisation and just followed their herds between Ukraine and Mongolia? There are also theories which assert that there were not migrations and have some supporting evidence for this.
– “Four centuries after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece the people of archaic 8th-century Greece seem to have had only vague memories and recollections of this period…”
>>> we cannot talk about Greeks before 3rd or 2nd c.BC, nor about Greece before 1829 AC. But, there is something else interesting – how (future) Greeks remembered Iliad which was orally transferred for 6 centuries, including ‘dark ages’? Maybe because (future) Greeks have nothing to do with Trojan battle? Pisistratus ordered in 560 BC for Iliad to be translated (!) to the (future) Greek. From which language? Where were (future) Greeks during the Dark Ages? Not in today’s Greece. Maybe in Egypt/Middle East? Maybe this explains why they haven’t built anything for several hundreds of years? But, they entered the world history in a really great style – directly into Olympic games (although they haven’t seen Mt Olympus in another several hundreds of years). I also wander why ancient Macedonians did not have Dark Ages? They had uninterrupted dynasty for 500 years while (future) Greeks were dancing somewhere in the dark.
– “The Megalith societies..” >>> precisely, they were I2 people who built all megaliths.
– The last Neolithic societies left more substantial material remains than their Indo-European successors. Because we don’t have written records we don’t describe it for what it was: a “Dark Age.”
>>> Vinca (Danube) was a cradle of European civilisation and it is very well known and described but also boycotted in western literature. Very well-known is its arts, culture, metallurgy, trades, the oldest calendar and alphabet, architecture, linguistics, mythology, social organisation and anthropological connections with the present. It is far from to be a ‘Dark Age’. CW is a poor later derivative of Vinca consisting mainly of pottery which was carried mostly by abducted Vinca women.
I can’t understand why so many people have an apocalyptic view of European prehistory. At least in Iberia and France there is no archaeological record of massive invasions, conquests or genocides. The Iberian Chalcolithic civilizations such as Vilanova de San Pedro or Los Millares culture dominated vast territories, had walled cities, controlled rich agricultural fields, manufactured weapons and copper tools, traded with Africa and Asia (ivory, ostrich eggs) and northern Europe (amber), exported salt and knew the navigation routes of the western megalithic culture. These societies collapsed due to the exhaustion of natural resources (in fact, the province of Almeria, where Los Millares culture was located, is currently the most desert-like region in Europe). There were no conquests or massive migrations, and at least in Iberia absolutely all the objects of the so-called BB culture package were known before that culture appeared in the Tagus estuary. Our vision of the European Chalcolithic is absolutely different from the one the Harvardians try to impose, no doubt due to their ignorance of the Chalcolithic in Western Europe. The megalithic societies began to collapse at the beginning of the metal age, but many men (I2a, I2b, G2a, P312 even H2) and women joined the BB culture and adopted the new customs.
Hi Matt, it will be a pleasure to debate with Milan, with you and with everyone who participates in this blog
Beaker folks were not invaders, in some regions like Iberia they did not contribute anything technologically or materially speaking, but in Northern Europe (The Netherlands, Northern France, Scandinavia, British Isles) they can be considered as great innovators because those regions did not know metals. The BB culture brought copper weapons and tools to Britain and Hibernia, it is normal that they would end up imposing themselves on the neolithic societies.
I liked my country better when it was governed by jocks, not ruled by nerds. I used to be able to settle arguments in school by punching them in the face. Now kids are thrown out of school for drawing guns on notepads. I’m still teaching my kids to be able to kill, I mean neutralize, people quickly, efficiently, and quietly. 😉
1) First farmers is a brilliant book. The first book
that I’ve seen that successfully integrates archaeology
and genetics. We need more such!
2) “How fragile early societies were”
Indeed. I fear our civilization is also fragile.
Our leaders seem to think that societal collapse is
safely in the past.
@Gaska
“I can’t understand why so many people have an apocalyptic view of European prehistory. At least in Iberia and France there is no archaeological record of massive invasions, conquests or genocides.”
There is overwhelming genetic evidence of this in ancient DNA, and there is ample evidence of periods of intense fortifications built in warlike times in Iberia in the Bronze Age. See, e.g., http://portugueseenclosures.blogspot.com/ Genetic turnover was particular intense in the British Isles but was immense in all of Europe except extreme environments ill suited to Indo-European food productions methods like the far North, the Caucasus mountains, and some smaller islands.
“If the late Neolithic societies were Arnor, the Yamnaya and their cousins were the Rohirrim.”
Not to start a nerd war with Magus, but aren’t Yamnaya and the steppe peoples literally the Wainriders?
On the nomads running over more settled peoples before becoming settled themselves, isn’t that pretty much the arc of the last 10,000 years of human history, at least in most of Eurasia?
I think the Megalithic societies in the Middle Neolithic were themselves ethnically distinct from their Early Neolithic predecessors. The turnover in Y-DNA and resurgence of male hunter-gatherer ancestry suggests a hostile takeover to me at least. Whether that was one cultural expansion or just a systemic process playing out in parallel across Europe I don’t know.
Sorry to indulge the inner Tolkien nerd, but what is the deal with late 3rd age Eriador anyway? A thriving self-contained late medieval/ early modern society in the Shire, a satellite version in the Bree land, magical elven enclaves at Rivendell and Lindon and just a vast depopulated temperate landscape in between for a thousand years? With only a very small Roma-like population of Rangers, pastoralists who interact only with Bree land possibly trading horses and cattle for textiles and manufactured goods? Presumably they only remember their past through their encounters with Rivendell. Places like Rohan or Gondor make sense as medieval societies. But Eriador is very different. I think it must have been based on Tolkien’s memories of the trench warfare regions of France. A blighted land ruined by war, frozen in time for a thousand years.