Asturrulumbo
Elite member
Was R1b-U106 in Scandinavia&Frisia caused by Tumulus Culture proto-Celtic migrations?
It has been proposed that R1b-U106 was diffused during the Iron Age Hallstatt Culture. I think it may have been earlier, in the Bronze Age, more specifically with the expansion of the Tumulus Culture.
Here's what the Celtic Encyclopedia has to say about the Tumulus Culture:
There is also linguistic evidence: The placing of the Germanic branch within Indo-European has been something of a headache among linguists, as says the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture:
What do you think?
It has been proposed that R1b-U106 was diffused during the Iron Age Hallstatt Culture. I think it may have been earlier, in the Bronze Age, more specifically with the expansion of the Tumulus Culture.
Here's what the Celtic Encyclopedia has to say about the Tumulus Culture:
Alright, so, ¿why have the Tumulus culture as a canditate for the northern spread of U106? There are many reasons. First of all, there are archaeological reasons: R1b1a, a haplogroup sometimes assumed to have gotten to W. Europe more from the southwest than the northwest, probably thus entered Northern Europe from the south. The northern expansion of the Tumulus culture could be seen as just that (it could have had a Founder Effect in those areas), as the earlier Unetice Culture was more localized around Bohemia. The Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures also saw expansions to the north, but what I believe is a telling point against these cultures is that if theirs was the expansion, it would also have brought R-S28 to the mix, and that haplogroup is meagre in Scandinavia and almost absent in Frisia:The Tumulus Culture was recognized for its use of the single grave with a covering mound. The warriors of the Tumulus Culture were highland horse-riding cattle-herders and lived in fortified villages. Like their predecessors the Unetice, the Tumulus Culture was well-situated to receive stimuli from other regions via the established overland trade routes.
Between BC 1800 to BC 1200, Unetice-Tumulus, highland warriors began to appear in the west of Europe. They were well-armed and they spread the use of the tumulus from Bohemia to the Rhine north of the Main, then into Switzerland, Belgium, Britain and Ireland. The tumulus was in vogue for most of Europe during the Middle Bronze Age.
The tumuli of the Tumulus Culture were very similar to those of the Goidel, Unetice, Wessex and Aremorican in form but in content and number they were quite different. Grave evidence has shown that the four groups were different cultures practising a similar Burial style.
The Bavarian group was recognized for its long swords with solid hilts. Excavation of the tumuli of Hungary exposed battle axes, while the Danube groups were noted for sickle-shaped dress pins and baked clay altars with decorations of horn, boats and triangles. the tumuli of eastern France revealed bodies lying in their back in an east-west direction with the head toward the rising sun. Grave goods included pottery with designs reminiscent of the older wooden cups. Boars were an important part of the grave goods in France. In the north, objects of sun worship have been found.
The early tumulus graves contained inhumed bodies but later graves contained cremated bodies as the transition to the Urnfield Culture began. The gods were shown as symbols rather than abstracted images. The sun god was represented by the sun wheel or the left-facing swastika of the Kurgan culture, which was used by the Celts and others from India to Ireland. The fire goddess was represented by the triangle or the right-facing swastika.
The people of the Tumulus Culture developed a profitable bronze industry in weapons, jewelry and tools. During BC 15th-12th centuries, Tumulus-Urnfield warriors raided east through Thrace and Illyria, crossed the Strait of Bosporus to Anatolia, then wreaked havoc in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.
The Egyptians referred to this group as the Sea Peoples and many of them worked as mercenaries for the Phoenicians who were developing their commercial trade route throughout the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. They were described as ferocious warriors who wore their hair in a very stiff style.
There is also linguistic evidence: The placing of the Germanic branch within Indo-European has been something of a headache among linguists, as says the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture:
Seeing the Tumulus Culture as proto-Italo-Celtic, or as proto-Celtic that only very recently broke with Italic, would solve this problem.The position of Germanic is difficult to determine. Any
tree with Germanic included has many characters that do
not fit. Excluding Germanic allows trees (...) where the overwhelming majority of characters do fit.
It is also noteworthy that the lexical data from Germanic points
in a different direction, as it were, than the morphological
data. They attribute this "dual allegiance" as evidence that
pre-Germanic began to develop with the "Satem Core" (more particularly
paired with Balto-Slavic) but moved away from
that group early on (before many of the special innovations
defining that core group had developed) and into contact
with the western groups of ltalic and Celtic from which it
borrowed a number of distinctive vocabulary items sufficiently
early that these borrowings cannot be distinguished from true
cognates. (They recognize that these "undetectable borrowings"
are worrisome for their model, and of course any other
that relies on lexical equations.)
What do you think?