Kristiansen paper on Corded Ware

This one is open access, thank goodness:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour.../E35E6057F48118AFAC191BDFBB1EB30E/core-reader


"[FONT=&quot]Recent genetic, isotopic and linguistic research has dramatically changed our understanding of how the Corded Ware Culture in Europe was formed. Here the authors explain it in terms of local adaptations and interactions between migrant Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and indigenous North European Neolithic cultures. The original herding economy of the Yamnaya migrants gradually gave way to new practices of crop cultivation, which led to the adoption of new words for those crops. The result of this hybridisation process was the formation of a new material culture, the Corded Ware Culture, and of a new dialect, Proto-Germanic. Despite a degree of hostility between expanding Corded Ware groups and indigenous Neolithic groups, stable isotope data suggest that exogamy provided a mechanism facilitating their integration. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Heyd ([/FONT]2017[FONT=&quot], in this issue)."

[/FONT]That seems a little odd: isn't even Proto-Germanic supposed to be too young for this?

[FONT=&quot]Well, happy reading.


[/FONT]

Angela said:

This one is open access, thank goodness:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour.../E35E6057F48118AFAC191BDFBB1EB30E/core-reader


"Recent genetic, isotopic and linguistic research has dramatically changed our understanding of how the Corded Ware Culture in Europe was formed. Here the authors explain it in terms of local adaptations and interactions between migrant Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and indigenous North European Neolithic cultures. The original herding economy of the Yamnaya migrants gradually gave way to new practices of crop cultivation, which led to the adoption of new words for those crops. The result of this hybridisation process was the formation of a new material culture, the Corded Ware Culture, and of a new dialect, Proto-Germanic. Despite a degree of hostility between expanding Corded Ware groups and indigenous Neolithic groups, stable isotope data suggest that exogamy provided a mechanism facilitating their integration. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Heyd (2017, in this issue)."

That seems a little odd: isn't even Proto-Germanic supposed to be too young for this?

Well, happy reading.

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Undoubtedly some vocabulary formed back then, but indeed they are pushing Proto_Germanic back too much. It would be nice to know what words they think came from Neolithic Farmers. I have to leave reading for later, now off to work.

Angela said:

The result of this hybridisation process was the formation of a new material culture, the Corded Ware Culture, and of a new dialect, Proto-Germanic.

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When they say Proto-Germanic, were they referring to the Corded Ware in Estonia, in Lithuania or in Belarus? Joke aside Proto-Germanic evolved from the same branch as Proto-Italo-Celtic, and therefore is linked to the descendants of R1b Unetice culture, not the R1a Corded Ware culture. And anyway there wasn't any Proto-Germanic until the Nordic Bronze Age, over 1000 years after the Corded Ware reached Scandinavia. Let's not forget that for 500 years Corded Ware was still contemporary of Yamna. The language of the Corded Ware was just a northern version of the Yamna PIE with a few Neolithic loan words in some conquered regions, and probably very different loan words in places like Finland, Lithuania, Czechia and Denmark. If it had to be ancestral to anything it would be (Pre-)Proto-Balto-Slavic. Haven't read the paper yet, but that's a bad start.

As said before the timeline does not work and they dont even make an effort to bring it all together.
There is some scism in the scientific community here maybe as they did not get the linguists to play along.

Ukko said:

There is some scism in the scientific community here maybe as they did not get the linguists to play along.

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How ironic would that be as this paper is essentially about linguistics! But you are right. I checked the author's affiliations and it's mostly history, archaeology and anthropology. Out of 12 authors, only one is a linguist, a Dutch guy (Guus Kroonen) working at Copenhagen University. Mind you, it's surely not a Slav or a Balt that you propose that Corded Ware people spoke a Proto-Germanic language! So people really can't get out of their narrow little world.

The linguisti part of the paper, only two of the fourteen pages, links the development of a pre-proto-Germanic to interaction of Corded Ware with Funnelbeaker, for Germanic probably around Denmark, which isn't clear from the abstract. It isn't specifically worked out though. Important is that loans into Germanic are often found in the agricultural vocabulary.
I know this linguist though, he is good, and one of the few trying to bring in more archaeology and paleogenomics into linguistics.
Still there is the problem that scientists of different fields working together lack knowledge about each other's field.

I don't see anything much new here. It's just repetition of the mainstream view of a lot of this.

They spend some time stating the obvious, which is that the main similarity between Corded Ware and Yamnaya is the burial practices.

They also mention the possible effect of these people carrying the plague.

Furthermore,
" What we observe, therefore, in the archaeological record is a gradual process of acculturation and integration, which meant that after 2400 BC, the former strict cultural boundaries were gradually dissolved and a new, shared material culture appeared, represented first and foremost in Denmark by flint daggers, and in Central Europe by early Únetiče metal daggers. Bell Beaker groups had by now also emerged on the scene, introducing metallurgy, and they further complicated the mix of cultures and people. In burial rituals, however, old megalithic traditions still had an impact, as seen in a revival of stone cist burial in some regions. It was only on the advent of the Middle Bronze Age that cultural homogenisation prevailed. Thus, it took nearly 1000 years before all regions in Northern and Central Europe had adopted a shared social and cultural outlook that in all probability also included shared languages."

"In a recent work on diet and mobility among Corded Ware cemeteries from southern Germany (Sjögren et al. 2016), it was possible to demonstrate that exogamy was indeed a common practice among Corded Ware groups in this larger region (from a sample of 60). Most adult women (between 28 and 42 per cent) were of non-local origin and had a different diet during childhood. Such evidence fits well with recent genetic information documenting more-varied mtDNA haplogroups among Corded Ware females than among males (Lazaridis et al.2014).The female diet was more similar to previous Neolithic diets, while in Corded Ware as a whole there is a shift towards higher δ¹⁵N values, suggestive of a shift in diet and/or in cultivation practices. There may be several different explanations for this shift, such as intense forms of cultivation, higher reliance on freshwater fish, or on animal versus vegetable protein, or a greater reliance on milk and milk products."

"There is additional evidence to support the idea that males dominated the initial Yamnaya migrations and the formation of the early Corded Ware Culture: in burials from the earliest horizon, often with males, as in Tiefbrunn and Kujawy, there was no typical Corded Ware material culture. This was followed shortly afterwards by the deposit of A-type battle-axes in male burials, but there was as yet no pottery (Furholt 2014: 6, fig. 3). Corded Ware pottery appeared later in Northern Europe, and we may suggest that this did not happen until women with ceramic skills married into this culture and started to copy wooden, leather and woven containers in clay. This process began in the early phase both south and north of the Carpathians (Ivanova 2013; Frînculeasa et al. 2015)."

"This is precisely what recent linguistic research has been able to demonstrate (Kroonen & Iversen in press). In their study on the formation of Proto-Germanic in Northern Europe, Kroonen and Iversen document a bundle of linguistic terms of non-Indo-European origin linked to agriculture that were adopted by Indo-European-speaking groups who were not fully fledged farmers. The most plausible, and perhaps the only possible, context for this to have happened would be the introduction of Proto-Germanic by the intruding Yamnaya groups. Archaeologically, this adoption can be understood from their interaction over several hundred years with late Funnel Beaker groups still residing in eastern Jutland and on the Danish islands, where they maintained a largely agricultural economy. "

There is nothing new in this paper. It just confirms what I wrote since 2009 about R1a and R1b migrations from the Steppe, and the mostly male-dominated Early Bronze Age migrations from the Steppe.

Here is an article about the paper. The interview with the authors showed how little they trusted my judgement (and that of the minority of people who thought like me, including several Eupedia members) but were forced to concede. Here are a few quotes to illustrate what I am referring to:

Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: "Existing archaeological evidence of a strong 90% male dominance in the early phase of the Corded Ware/Single Grave Culture settlement in Jutland, Denmark, and elsewhere can now be explained by the old Indo-European tradition of war bands of young males who did not have any inheritance to look forward to. Therefore they were probably more willing to make a career as migrating war bands."

Eske Willerslev undertook the ancient DNA analyses together with Morten Allentoft and Martin Sikora. Professor Willerslev says:
"In our big Bronze Age study, published in 2015, we were astonished to see how strong and fast the genetic changeover was from the Neolithic to the Corded Ware. There was a heavy reduction of Neolithic DNA in temperate Europe, and a dramatic increase of the new Yamnaya genomic component that was only marginally present in Europe prior to 3000 BC. Moreover, the apparent abruptness with which this change occurred indicates that it was a large-scale migration event, rather than a slow periodic inflow of people".

They were astonished, in 2015, by a massive Steppe migration during the Corded Ware period. Aren't these people reading Eupedia or following other papers (Adler 2012, Lazaridis 2013, Brandt 2013, Brotherton 2013, Wilde 2014, just to name a few) relating to Paleogenetics? Their academic credibility is at stake here.

Angela said:

They also mention the possible effect of these people carrying the plague.

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I've mentioned this before, the collapse of western European neolithic societies happened 5.5 ka, 500 year before this plague and 600 year before corded ware.

http://search.proquest.com/openview...0d51cfd1881/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=546298

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3486

bicicleur said:

I've mentioned this before, the collapse of western European neolithic societies happened 5.5 ka, 500 year before this plague and 600 year before corded ware.

http://search.proquest.com/openview...0d51cfd1881/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=546298

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3486

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Bicicleur, how could we possibly know when the plague first reached Central Europe? All we know is when we see it in the few ancient samples we have. I posted an article not too long ago showing how trade goods, blankets in that case, brought infectious disease to the Pacific Coast Indians decades before the first European descent person ever set foot there.

Plus, they're not saying that plague was the sole cause. They're saying it was one of the causes. Malnourished people weakened because of poor harvests would have absolutely no resistance to diseases like this at all.

Angela said:

Bicicleur, how could we possibly know when the plague first reached Central Europe? All we know is when we see it in the few ancient samples we have. I posted an article not too long ago showing how trade goods, blankets in that case, brought infectious disease to the Pacific Coast Indians decades before the first European descent person ever set foot there.

Plus, they're not saying that plague was the sole cause. They're saying it was one of the causes. Malnourished people weakened because of poor harvests would have absolutely no resistance to diseases like this at all.

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Poor harvests cant malnourish such limited sized population in Europe if they dont have cultural restrictions to consuming game and fish.

Ukko said:

Poor harvests cant malnourish such limited sized population in Europe if they dont have cultural restrictions to consuming game and fish.

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To which specific MN cultures are you referring, and what do we know of their subsistence strategies? Given that a lot of them now had substantial Mesolithic type European ancestry are you sure hunting and fishing was not part of those strategies?

Do we have any data on the population figures for these cultures at the time when the first waves from the steppe arrived? The number of people who can be supported by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a given area is extremely small.

Granted, there were a lot of people in Ireland when the potato blight hit, but apparently even the fish in the rivers and the rabbits and squirrels weren't enough to stave off starvation.