Not so mobile riders

Yamnaya invasion never happened??? 

Summary of the new paper just released: "...findings imply that Caucasian communities were not highly mobile and did not undertake large-scale migrations...during 4th and 3rd millennium BCE..."!!!

The research team analysed the isotopic composition of carbon and nitrogen in bone collagen from the skeletal remains of 150 people, taken from eight sites. The finds date back to a period from about 5000 to about 500 BCE...

In addition, the scientists compared this data with the isotope ratios in the bone collagen of 50 animals, as well as with the local vegetation of that time. The isotope ratios in bone collagen reflect the isotope ratios in the main foodstuffs that a person eats...

As it turns out, the diets of these groups were mainly based on the foodstuffs within the landscapes where their remains were found...

"The communities apparently remained within their respective ecological areas and did not switch between the steppes, forest steppes or higher regions," explains Sandra Pichler from the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel, co-author of the study...

So, this means, that there was no "fast, mass migration", otherwise known as "the invasion of mounted steppe warriors" of Europe by Yamnaya (R1b) people during early Bronze Age...

Here is the paper: "Diet and subsistence in Bronze Age pastoral communities from the southern Russian steppes and the North Caucasus"

Now this directly contradicts things like "...Corded Ware people carried mostly Western Steppe Herder (WSH) ancestry and were closely related to the people of the Yamnaya culture, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery, the Eurasian steppes..."

The above interpretation of the genetic links between Corded Ware and Yamnaya has already been questioned by archaeologists as being too simple, as it ignores the complex processes involved in archaeological explanations. Now the archaeologists have data to completely destroy the above interpretation. If there was an influx of Yamnaya into Corded ware culture, it was more of a slow diffusion through the steppe / forest boundary, rather than through massive fast migration...

I never really bought into this Yamnaya invasion theory. Because of some practical reasons. 

This is currently accepted map of the westward migration of R1b into Europe...From this great page about R1b on Eurpedia

 

This map seems logical. We are talking about horse riding, wagon pulling, herding warrior tribes from the steppe. It would indeed be the most logical for them to move over land, and if possible over grassland...

But moving into Europe that way on horse back and oxen pulled carts would have been very difficult if not impossible. Europe is predominantly mountainous country, so not suitable for large horse back - oxen cart migration...

If you are lagging your whole belonging on horse back - oxen cart, there are basically only two possible ways into Europe from the Yamna homeland:

But the northern route is blocked by giant forests which once covered most of what is today Poland, Northern Ukraine and East Germany.

This would have made the migration down the southern route the most likely. But if you follow that route you eventually get stuck in Hungarian, Slovakian planes, surrounded by high wooded mountains. Where you have to dismount if you want to go any further...

That I am not the first to notice this "one way street into Europe from the steppe" can be seen from this map from "The genetic and cultural barrier of the Pontic-Caspian steppe – forest-steppe ecotone":

The map description: Typical migration routes through European steppes and forest-steppes. Red line represents the persistent cultural and genetic barrier, with the latest evolution in steppe region represented by the shift from dashed line to the north. Arrows show the most common population movements. 

So again, right into the Danube catchment area of Central Europe. 

So the migration of the steppe R1b westward did happen. Just not as an invasion of the hordes of horse riding, Kurgan building warriors, which suddenly burst out of the steppe and wiped out the old Europe...The crossing of the steppe / forest barrier requires a change in lifestyle and adaptation to the new environment. Which takes time and is easiest to achieve through mixing with the local forest population, which already posses the necessary knowhow...

Anyway, this is a completely new study, just released, who knows...I am very curious to see what the archaeological community is going to say about it...

Larissa

This is apparently the only menhir ever discovered in Greece. Two metres tall, it depicts a female figure, and dates to the Early Bronze Age (3300-2200 BC). Discovered in Central Greece at Soufli Magoula, Prefecture of Larisa, currently in the Diachronic Museum of Larisa...

I always loved the name Larissa. I always loved the name Larissa. In mythology, the nymph Larissa was a daughter of the primordial man Pelasgus. The man who taught people how to eat acorns... 

 

Peleus, the hero beloved by the gods, father of Achilles lived in Larissa...Homer says in the Iliad that: 'Hippothous led the tribes of Pelasgian spearsmen, who dwelt in fertile Larissa"...

Officially: "The name Larissa (Λάρισα Lárīsa) is in origin a Pelasgian word for 'fortress'. There were many ancient Greek cities with this name"...

The Larissa of Peleus and Achilles, where the above Bronze Age menhir was found, lies in the plain of Larissa in Thessaly. A fertile flat pan like plain surrounded by high mountains. Pic: Mount Olympus from Larissa, Thessaly, Greece, 1850–85 by Edward Lear

This plain was the centre of the ancient Thessaly, one of the traditional regions of Ancient Greece. During the Mycenaean period, Thessaly was known as Aeolia... 

The fertile plains of Thessaly were continuously inhabited at least since the 8th millennium BC, when we find the first traces of the Neolithic farmers of the so called Sesklo culture...

But around the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC something very important happens. Yamna descendants start moving into the Balkans...Now guess who was making the first anthropomorphic stelae in the world? Yamna people...Here is one from Odessa... 

Now these Yamna guys were metalworking warriors...And were associated with the introduction of the warrior cult into Europe and the R1b haplogroup...Which language did they speak? It is accepted that it was an Indoeuropean language. I would further suggest that it was Gaelic...

What? I can hear you say. Based on what? Well based on the Irish oral histories, which were first written down in the early medieval time...And they say that the forefather of the Irish, Partholon, came to Ireland from Scythia, via Anatolia, Greece, Sicily and Spain...

Interestingly, according to the Irish Annals, Partholon's migration happened during the 3rd millennium BC, at the same time Yamna descendants moved west out of the Pontic steppe... 

Like for instance, that Partholon brought metalwork to Ireland, which were confirmed by the arc archaeological evidence which showed that around 2500 BC a completely new genetic population, R1b metalworkers, arrived to Ireland from oversees...I wrote about this in my post "Or, Ireland's gold"...

Or that during the first 300 years after Partholon arrived, lakes kept erupting... There is dendrochronological evidence  that right around the time when the Irish Annals say the Partholon arrived to Ireland, climate suddenly changed, resulting in years of rain and catastrophic flooding...I wrote about it in my post "Partholon and the great flood"...

These R1b people, the first metalworkers to reach Ireland were probably the first Irish, Gaelic speakers to reach reach Ireland...So it is possible that Irish was spoken in the Balkans before it was spoken in Ireland...

And it seems that these first Gaelic speaking (???) Irish came from the Balkans skipping the rest of continental Europe. At least based on archaeological evidence in both Balkans and Ireland. 

I wrote about this in the series of posts about the "Montenegrian Tumuluses"...

Did they arrive via Sicily and Spain, like the Irish Annals say? Well, most likely as there was a maritime trading network connecting Balkans, Sicily, Spain since Neolithic. I wrote about this in my post "Neolithic seafarers"...

Now, finally here is the interesting bit 😁 What is the root of the name Larissa? Apparently this is Pelasgian word. "Pelasgian language" just means pre Greek, not of any specific Pelasgian language...Pre Greek could be anything from any age. Could it be Gaelic? From Bronze Age?

Did you know that in Gaelic, the word "lár" (pronounced lor but also laer) means "earth, ground, flat surface, floor, plain, centre, middle"... 

This is plain of Thessaly...Flat plain surrounded by mountains...The centre of Thessaly... 

The name certainly matches the landscape...And there was enough time and enough further mixing of people in Thessaly to end up with Larissa from "lár" by the time the name was first recorded...Who knows...I am curious what those other Larissa's look like landscape wise???

But maybe this is just a complete coincidence...As I said, I always liked the name...

Breath

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

These two words have their direct cognates in all Slavic languages, as well as Ancient Greek, Old Armenian, Baltic languages and Indo-Iranian languages:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live.

Tocharian B: śāw-, śāy - to live

The more to the front you pronounce "ž", the more it changes from "ž" to "š" then to "z" and then to "s".  

Baltic languages

Latvian: dzivs - alive, living
Lithuanian: gyvas - alive
Old Prussian: giwato - alive, living

Also if you add "d" to it you get "dž".

Indo-Iranian

Sanskrit:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life

Avestan: ǰva - alive, living
Old Persian: 𐎪𐎺 (jiva) - alive, living

Persian: زیست (zist) - life, existence, زیستن (zistan) - to live

Old Armenian: կեամ (keam) to live

The more to the back you pronounce "ž", the more it changes to "đ" (dj) then to "k" and then to "g"...

Also consonants b,v,p,m also belong to the same group and can easily morph into each other depending on how your speech apparatus works. 

So it is easy how the above words are cognates. Now here is the problem (at least for me):

Official etymology says that all these words come from these two PIE roots: "gʷeyh₃-" meaning "to live" and "gʷih₃wós" meaning "alive".

To me this doesn't make any sense. Why would all these "ži", "dji" words have a root that starts with "gw"? Well because of the Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz, from which English word quick was derived. The word "quick", which today means "speedy" once meant "mobile, alive". This word has direct cognates in all other Germanic languages. The root "gw" was coined so that Germanic words can somehow be linked with Indo-Iranian words. The thing is the Germanic "qw"ic can not be the root because it can be derived from "qiv"ik which can be derived from "djiv"ik...

Now have a look at this:

Ancient Greek: ζάω (záō) - I live. 

This word is actually derived from Linear B "za" symbol which is in the shape of the Egyptian ANKH which means "life".

This symbol is traditionally transliterated as "za", but some people suggest that the sign should be transliterated as "ka".

This is very interesting as it shows the antiquity of the "z" root for the word for life. 

But I believe that we have even more proof that the "ži", "dji" root is indeed the original root for the above cluster of words meaning life, living. 

Let me ask you this question: What does it mean to be alive?

Some would say that to be alive means to have a soul still inhabiting your body. Interestingly, Hittite word "zi" meant "soul, spirit, seat of life, person"...

But at the most basic level, you are alive if you are breathing. I remember once when my kid was very sick, I used to come to his bedroom and stand over him while he was lying asleep, motionless, looking for signs that he was breathing in order to reashure myself that he was still alive.

So we could say that "breathing", or "breath" is at the root of life. And so does Genesis 2:7:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

And here is a very interesting thing.

In traditional Chinese culture, "qi" or "chi", pronounced as something between these two transliterations very close to dj, and represented by logograph 氣, is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living thing. This Chinese word literally translates as "air" and figuratively as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow".

The logograph 氣 also has a rare archaic reading "xì" which means "to present food".

The primary logograph 气, the earliest written character for "qì", consisted of three wavy horizontal lines seen in Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) oracle bone script, Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) bronzeware script and large seal script, and Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) small seal script.

You can see how this logograph ended up looking like air going through mouth and throat...

The secondary logograph,  mǐ 米 "rice" was added during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Official explanation is that this is supposed to indicate "steam (rising from rice as it cooks.)"??? I believe that the rice was added to breath to indicate that both of these substances are "life energy givers".

We also have Chinese symbol (zǐ 子) meaning son, child, seed, egg...Basically life...

At the same time in Sumerian language we find this word:

"zi" (ži?) - breathing, breath (of life), life, throat, soul...
"zi(d)" "še" - flour, meal
 zíz - emmer (wheat)
"še" - barley, grain

Now this is very very interesting. Here we have two "unrelated" distant languages containing the word for "breath of life" which has the same root as the above Indoeuropean words for "life, living". And when are we alive? When we have the breath, energy of life within us. In Slavic languages the word for alive "živ" could be derived from "ži" + v = breath, energy of life + in, within. Or the above words for "breath of life" could be derived by not pronouncing the two main Indoeuropean words for living:

Slavic "živ" --> "žiw" --> "žiu" --> "ži"

Indo-Iranian "jiv" --> "jiw" --> "jiu" --> "ji"

What is also very interesting is the link between the word for the breath, the energy of life and core food of the early farmers: grain, rice. We find this link in both Chinese and in Sumerian language.

We also find the same links in Ancient Greek:


ζάω (záō) - I live. 

σῖτος (sitos) - grain encompassing wheat and barley, the cereal grains used by the ancient Greeks, bread as opposed to meat, food as opposed to drink

Lin. A, B: se (ear of corn)

Also in Sanskrit we find:

जीव (jīva pronounced djiva) - alive, living
जीवन  (jīva pronounced djivana) - life, food, grain, milk, water, marrow, wind (breath)

And we see the same link in Slavic languages

In Serbian the word for "life" is "život". This word comes from the root "živ" which means "alive".

živ - alive

život - life, stomach
zev - yawn (possibly related as yawning is breathing so it could be a remnant of the old meaning zi - breath)

žir - acorn (the original first starch food which predates grain. You can read more about human consumption of acorns through history in these posts). In the Balkans the word žir in the past actually meant all plant food. In Eastern Slavic languages, the word for acorn is "želud" which is interesting because in Serbian the word for stomach is "želudac". This word also has the same root as žir.
žito - grain

I think that this is amazing. But how could there possibly be a linguistic and cultural link between such far flung cultures? The answer is this: Eurasian steppe:

The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches from Romania and Moldova through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, and Mongolia to Manchuria, with one major exclave, the Pannonian steppe or Puszta, located mostly in Hungary.

Since the Paleolithic age, the Steppe route has connected Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China, South Asia, and the Middle East economically, politically, and culturally through overland trade routes. 

And from the early copper age until the early medieval time, this vast area was solely controlled by metal weapons wielding, horse riding, chariot building Indoeuropean cultures.

The most important of them been Yamna culture.

The Yamna culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language.

The people of the Yamnaya culture were the likely result of admixture between eastern European hunter-gatherers (via whom they also descend from the Mal'ta-Buret' culture or other, closely related people) and a Near Eastern people, with some research identifying the latter as hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus or a similar people also related to Chalcolithic people from what is now Iran. Their material culture is very similar to the Afanasevo culture, their contemporaries in the Altai Mountains; furthermore, genetic tests have confirmed that the two groups are genetically indistinguishable.

And most importantly, the males in both of these cultures genetically belonged to R1a and R1b haplogroups, which have been the main carriers of the Indoeuropean culture and language. It is funny how this link between the genes and the language is now becoming something completely normal. But when I wrote this blog post suggesting the genetic background of the language groups I was almost crucified...

Yamna culture is also closely connected to later, Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures which spread throughout Europe and Asia, especially the Corded Ware culture, but also the Bell Beaker culture as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubna cultures. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamna culture (e.g., horse-riding, burial styles, and to some extent the pastoralist economy) are present. Genetic studies have shown that all these cultures derive from Yamna culture.

As I already said, Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) in the Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas. It is the strongest candidate for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language, along with the preceding Sredny Stog culture. Significantly, animal grave offerings were made (cattle, sheep, goats and horse), a feature associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans. The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hillforts. Characteristic for the culture are the inhumations in pit graves under kurgans (tumuli). The dead bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre. Multiple graves have been found in these kurgans, often as later insertions. While the earliest evidence of horse domestication was found in Sredny Stog culture sites, the earliest remains of a wheeled cart were found in the "Storozhova mohyla" kurgan (Dnipro, Ukraine, excavated by Trenozhkin A.I.) associated with the Yamna culture.

It is the domestication of horses and the invention of wheeled carts that enabled the Indoeuropean people to quickly spread throughout a huge area or Eurasian steppe and the land around the steppe.

It was the metal weapons which enabled the Indoeuropeans to become the absolute rulers of the steppe and to exert a huge political and cultural influence on all the lands lying to the south of the steppe: Mesopotamia, India, China.

And so this is how we can find these common words for "living", "life", "breath of life" and "core food, grain, rice, acorn" distributed across such a huge area and embedded into such diverse languages.

What do you think of this?