We've discussed the violence in steppe societies numerous times on this site on numerous threads, a conclusion drawn from numerous papers. It just never seems to stick.
Here we go again...
Up to 20% of skeletons examined in Yamnaya settlements showed evidence of violence. If you remove the few women whom they bothered to bury and didn't just leave for the animals, the percentage would be even higher. The percentages were lower later on in settlements like Srubnaya which the authors attribute to the fact that resources weren't quite as scarce.
I don't know what samples people like David Anthony and Kristiansen were looking at, from which time period, when they stated the steppe peoples were strong and healthy and this could partly explain their success further west in Europe. Someone should show them the percentages here for congenital skeletal malformations. There is, however, a contradiction in their own data to the hypothesis that there was less violence in later periods such as Srubnaya because resources weren't quite as scarce in the fact that health and stature decreased from Yamnaya to Srubnaya. It particularly decreased in women. So their treatment was obviously worsening with time.
They also had a high percentage of skeletal lesions which the authors claim are caused by lack of Vitamin C, D and certain B vitamins, poor hygiene, and infectious diseases. Likewise, the percentages for dental hypoplasia, indicative of nutritional distress in childhood is astronomical throughout these cultures.
All of these nutritionally related issues were much higher in women than in men, even in childhood.
In line with our discussions here, the skeletons showed little change as a result of infectious processes, and they had no caries. However, they obviously never cleaned their teeth, because evidence of gingivitus was high.
Now, I'm not claiming that some of these issues might not have been prevalent in Neolithic Europe. I know I looked it up once, but didn't keep the papers.
My point is that I don't get these statements about how much healthier they were.
[FONT="]That would have only occurred in Corded Ware when they took land from cultures like Globular Amphora and turned it into pasturage. From their stolen Neolithic women they adopted pottery, and probably the intensive cheese making of these late Neolithic cultures.
[/FONT]https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/42562597/CHAPTER_8_Murphy_and_Khokhlov_pdf.pdf[FONT="]
Which brings me to the institutionalilzed violence exemplified in their "marriage" patterns. This is what comes of polygamy...more violence.
"[/FONT][FONT="]They describe, as a typical feature of these societies, the formation of warrior youth bands consisting of boys from 12–13 up to 18–19 years of age, when they were ready to enter the ranks of fully grown warriors. Such youthful war-bands were led by a senior male, and they were often named ‘Black Youth’ or given names of dogs and wolves as part of their initiation rituals. The nature of this institution was recently summarised as follows:[/FONT][FONT="]In the Indo-European past, the boys first moved into the category of the (armed) youths and then, as members of the war-band of unmarried and landless young men, engaged in predatory wolf-like behaviour on the edges of ordinary society, living off hunting and raiding with their older trainers/models. Then about the age of twenty they entered into the tribe proper as adults (Petrosyan 2011: 345).
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[FONT="]The activities of the young war-bands were seasonal; during the rest of the year they lived within their households and communities, perhaps engaged in herding animals and other forms of farm labour. Such bands were mainly made up of younger sons, as inheritance was restricted to the oldest son. Thus, they formed a dynamic force that could be employed in pioneer migrations (Sergent 2003). Archaeological evidence of this institution has been documented in the Russian steppe from the Bronze Age onwards (Pike-Tay & Anthony 2016; Brown & Anthony in press).[/FONT][FONT="]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)."
We may also note that pastoral economies historically tend to dominate agrarian economies, as they are both more mobile and more warlike in their behaviour. Such a pattern of economic and social dominance, reflected in taking wives from farming cultures while sending young males in organised war-bands to settle in new territories, would explain both the genetic and linguistic dominance of the Yamnaya steppe migrations, the results of which we can observe to this day..
How this can be seen as anything but institutionalized and ritualized violence is beyond me.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour.../E35E6057F48118AFAC191BDFBB1EB30E/core-reader
There's also a paper from a much later period of the Indo-Iranians which does show better health and less evidence of violence. Of course, they were acquiring pasturage and encountering few adversaries, but of course, this has nothing to do with the original steppe peoples who entered Europe.
"The low frequencies of violence-related trauma contrast sharply to the epidemic of skeletal violence observed during the Iron Age (8th-2nd centuries BC) at other regional sites, notably Aymyrlyg (Murphy, 2003). The paucity of weapon-related injuries among the Bronze Age groups may be the outcome of many factors. While weapons and chariots did exist, they could have had multi-functional contexts aside from warfare. Individuals killed in warfare may not be present if bodies were abandoned on battlefields or disposed of where the individual died. Alternatively, warfare may have involved the capture of humans in addition to material resources, such as herds or weapons, leaving no skeletal trace of physical violence (Martin, Harrod, & Fields, 2010; Wilkinson, 1997). Trauma analysis is further complicated by the lack of soft tissue, which is the target for those attempting to kill or immobilize their opponent (Judd, 2008; Judd & Redfern, 2012), and it is possible that violence-related injuries or burns sustained from metallurgy were absent because only the soft tissue was affected. The skeletal evidence for trauma is minimal at KA-5 and its contemporary sites, which may be partially attributed to the less than desirable preservation of the collections. Based on the skeletal material available, internal or external social tensions resulting in altercations are not supported."
https://indo-european.eu/2018/04/fa...le-and-unstable-early-indo-iranian-territory/
This is always the problem when there are discussions about the "steppe" people. No such discussion is fruitful unless you look at the context in terms of culture, time period, changing genetics and patterns of eating, etc.
Oh, one further point about the paper's conclusion concerning the long length of time for "Neolithic" culture and presumably "y lines" to disappear. .It very much depends on the area. It disappeared in Britain in two to three centuries.[/FONT]practices shifted dramatically, a warrior classappeared, and there seems to have been asharp upsurge in lethal violence. “I’ve becomeincreasingly convinced there must have beena kind of genocide,” says Kristian Kristiansenat the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
, after all, and hunting/fishing is best during the twilight hours (morning/evening hours when daylight changes into darkness or vice versa which is really long in the North)
