Ancient genomes reveal social and genetic structure of Late Neolithic Switzerland

@kingjohn @Regio X





In fact, interesting, considering that it is an individual whose dating of the remains dates from the period 178BC-2AD, much time before the arrival of Huns, Avars, Alans and Magyars to Central Europe.

https://static-content.springer.com...MediaObjects/41467_2020_15560_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx
Scythians were not that far from Central Europe as early as 500 BC according to this map.
Achaemenid_and_Iranic_Peoples_in_the_Ancient_World.PNG


(Early) Cimmerians had some Central/East Asian admix too, and some of them would also have entered Balkan, earlier, pushed by Scythians.
cimmerians.jpg


Not sure the maps are accurate enough, but...
 
Scythians were not that far from Central Europe as early as 500 BC according to this map.
Achaemenid_and_Iranic_Peoples_in_the_Ancient_World.PNG


(Early) Cimmerians had some Central/East Asian admix too, and some of them would also have entered Balkan, earlier, pushed by Scythians.
cimmerians.jpg


Not sure the maps are accurate enough, but...

German studies show that they where once a thracian group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thraco-Cimmerian

and also

[url]https://www.academia.edu/20037727/_The_Cimmerians_their_origins_movements_and_their_difficulties_

[/URL]
 
one of the vizogoth remains from girona
Dated to 500-600 Ad
Had mtdna c4a1a+195c 😉
It is eastern found in mongolia india and russia
But in this case it is logical to asume the vizogoth aquired it in the east during there long journey...
about the B mtdna case i truly have no clue....🤔
 
Scythians were not that far from Central Europe as early as 500 BC according to this map.
Achaemenid_and_Iranic_Peoples_in_the_Ancient_World.PNG


(Early) Cimmerians had some Central/East Asian admix too, and some of them would also have entered Balkan, earlier, pushed by Scythians.
cimmerians.jpg


Not sure the maps are accurate enough, but...

Yeahthat second map was copyrighted by the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies. They do tend to exaggerate a bit :).
 
I confirm what Moesan said. This study is not just about the Neolithic, but actually more about Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Switzerland. In the three periods described in the paper, the first (4500-2600 BCE) corresponds to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, the second and third (2800-2200 BCE and 2200-1700 BCE) to the transitory Bell Beaker culture (Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age).

attachment.php


What I find the most interesting in this study is that the vast majority of Bell Beaker R1b samples belonged to the L2 clade (11 out of 14; the other being P312 or L51). In other words 100% of these Early Bronze Age Swiss R1b-U152 were L2. This confirms that L2 is predominantly 'Alpine' Celtic (related to Hallstatt and La Tène cultures), although at least one L2 branch was also found among Italics. The absence of the Z56 and Z193 clades of U152 in Bronze Age Switzerland also confirms indirectly that these were Italic rather than Celtic clades.

Interesting post, but this would make inevitably Bell Beakers the putative people of the origin for Western Indo-European languages right?
 
Please look also the following, from https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat4457:

"It is noteworthy that the oldest of the Cimmerians studied here (cim357) carried almost equal proportions of Asian and West Eurasian components, resembling the Pazyryks, Aldy-Bel, and Iron Age individuals from Russia and Kazakhstan (12). The second oldest Cimmerian (cim358) was also the only one with both uniparental markers pointing toward East Asia. The Q1* Y chromosome sublineage of Q-M242 is widespread among Asians and Native Americans and is thought to have originated in the Altai Mountains (24). It has previously been identified in numerous ancient samples from Siberia, the Americas, and in representatives of the Siberian Bronze Age and nomadic populations (4, 24). This is the first indication that Cimmerians did not originate in the PCS region but were nomads tracing their origin to the Far East."

cim358 had mtDNA C5c. Whatever their origin as a group was, it looks like Eastern admix (earlier) and Eastern uniparental markers were present.
The other Cimmerian was Y-DNA R1b and mtDNA H9a though (apparently a third one had mtDNA U2e1a1).
These individuals, particularly, were from ~800 BC.

Those few Cimmerians tested in a more recent paper include in turn Y R1a plus mts H35, U5a1b1 and U2e2. See:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...etic-Landscape-of-the-Western-Eurasian-Steppe
 
Please look also the following, from https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat4457:
"It is noteworthy that the oldest of the Cimmerians studied here (cim357) carried almost equal proportions of Asian and West Eurasian components, resembling the Pazyryks, Aldy-Bel, and Iron Age individuals from Russia and Kazakhstan (12). The second oldest Cimmerian (cim358) was also the only one with both uniparental markers pointing toward East Asia. The Q1* Y chromosome sublineage of Q-M242 is widespread among Asians and Native Americans and is thought to have originated in the Altai Mountains (24). It has previously been identified in numerous ancient samples from Siberia, the Americas, and in representatives of the Siberian Bronze Age and nomadic populations (4, 24). This is the first indication that Cimmerians did not originate in the PCS region but were nomads tracing their origin to the Far East."
cim358 had mtDNA C5c. Whatever their origin as a group was, it looks like Eastern admix (earlier) and Eastern uniparental markers were present.
The other Cimmerian was Y-DNA R1b and mtDNA H9a though (apparently a third one had mtDNA U2e1a1).
These individuals, particularly, were from ~800 BC.
Those few Cimmerians tested in a more recent paper were in turn R1a. See:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...etic-Landscape-of-the-Western-Eurasian-Steppe

yes I agree......around modern Kazaks ...........more north central asian than south central asian

but they moved to north of the black sea and ancient studies state this land was thracian lands, before being sarmatian, scythian or gothic
 
It's complex, as always. :) Here are my two cents.
Apart some evidences or facts being discussed (I won't talk on them), perhaps this conflict of ideas originates from different contexts? One refers to culture in broad sense, which is not entirely determined by genetics, naturally, and the other refers to human nature in broad sense. I tend to agree that cultures are different in many relevant aspects, and we can see it in the world we live, as there are important differences between individuals belonging to the same ethnical group. It looks obvious, but we may lack it sometimes*. I also tend to agree that different groups of people would be prone to acting in a "similar" way under the same "pressures", or cultural forces. I say "similar" because, while we're all human and there is this nature we share, variations are expected, even if small, since genetics itself is influenced also by environment.

One related example that comes to my mind is South Korea vs. North Korea. So similar, and so different.

Btw, don't they say a group may act as a psycho without most of members of the group being actual psychos? :)

*Just a silly example. I remember this talk I had with a Canadian time ago. I said him that one problem in Brazil is violence. He answered "oh! Here in Canada we also have violence. It's really a problem." Later I commented about the notorious corruption Brazil faces, then he answered in the same fashion: "That's a problem also in Canada".
The statements are not wrong per se, but relevant dimensions were not considered by him. Someone who doesn't know anything about both countries would think they're the same in these aspects, and they're not, whatever the reasons are.

Another pertinent modern example, perhaps. One could say that in the vast majority of human societies now and in the past women have been or are treated inequitably and have a lower status in society. Looking at modern cultures, however, there's a vast difference between, say, women in western cultures, SSA, and Afghanistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The past and the ancient past were not so different, imo. One easy way to see the differences is in nutrition and burials. Were females (including female children) fed the same amount of nutritious food as males? Apparently it varied by culture. Were the bodies of the dead treated with equal respect whether male or female? It depended on the culture. In Megalithic tombs whole families were buried together. Look at Etruscan burials with catacombs showing loving couples in embrace. In steppe burials very few females were shown even the consideration of burial. Or how about religion? How much of a role did female deities, with attendant priestesses, play?

It's easy to say that in virtually all human societies women were subservient, and that violence is present in all human groups, increasing when there is scarcity. That's a given. That doesn't mean differences between cultures don't and didn't exist.
 
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.

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.
https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/42562597/CHAPTER_8_Murphy_and_Khokhlov_pdf.pdf

Which brings me to the institutionalilzed violence exemplified in their "marriage" patterns. This is what comes of polygamy...more violence.

"
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: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).

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).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.
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.


interesting post Angela
 
Another pertinent modern example, perhaps. One could say that in the vast majority of human societies now and in the past women have been or are treated inequitably and have a lower status in society. Looking at modern cultures, however, there's a vast difference between, say, women in western cultures, SSA, and Afghanistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia.
The past and the ancient past were not so different, imo. One easy way to see the differences is in nutrition and burials. Were females (including female children) fed the same amount of nutritious food as males? Apparently it varied by culture. Were the bodies of the dead treated with equal respect whether male or female? It depended on the culture. In Megalithic tombs whole families were buried together. Look at Etruscan burials with catacombs showing loving couples in embrace. In steppe burials very few females were shown even the consideration of burial. Or how about religion? How much of a role did female deities, with attendant priestesses, play?
It's easy to say that in virtually all human societies women were subservient, and that violence is present in all human groups, increasing when there is scarcity. That's a given. That doesn't mean differences between cultures don't and didn't exist.
why do you give megalithic tombs as an example?

last year 2 DNA studies were published

Megalithic tombs in western and northern Neolithic Europe were linked to a kindred society
Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain

they don't seem to be the peacefull egalitarian societies as Kristiansen depicts them here :

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE - 30 March 2019 | NewScientist |

appearantly Kristiansen is preparing a new publication

this is what he says on the Eulau Massacre in the NewScientist :

If the Yamnaya migrants did behave as Kristiansen suggests, Neolithic Europe’s men are likely to have objected, setting the stage for violent encounters. Some evidence that this was the case comes from a remarkable Corded Ware site called Eulau in Germany. Here, a handful of unusual graves each contain between two and four bodies – mostly women and their children. Analysis of isotopes in the women’s teeth reveals that they did not grow up locally. And injuries on five of the 13 bodies indicate that they met a violent end.
Kristiansen interprets this as evidence of a brutal raid by Neolithic men taking revenge on migrants who had stolen “their” women. The absence of male burials suggests they waited until the village’s men were out tending their cattle before making the attack.

So did these farmers come to kill their own daughters and grandchildren?
I hope Kristiansen will come up with more evidence to substanciate this claim.
It is unfortunate for him that no mass grave of neolithic men killed by corded ware people has been found yet, as he predicted himself with absolute certainty 5 years ago.

I don't dispute the violence commited by the steppe invaders and that they were a very male-centered elite.
But there should be room for some nuance.
 
I never denied that there was violence in late Neolithic societies in Europe. In fact, I specifically said that I doubt there is any human society which ever existed which was free of violence, so accusing me of lack of nuance is completely false and misleading; a type of straw man argument.

My arguments were all about nuance, nuance as to the period discussed on the steppe, nuance about the perhaps different dynamics later on with ancient Iranians, nuance about comparisons between cultures.

I stand by them.

As for Eulau, we've debated it before. I'm not going to go into it again. No, Kristiansen's analysis doesn't make a lot of sense. It's highly improbable imo that EEF men would kill their stolen women and children, and then respectfully bury them. That they were the women and children of Corded Ware people also is unlikely; they wouldn't have buried them in that way or at all. Nor does it make a lot of sense to me that a village surrounded by Corded Ware settlements was attacked by another Neolithic settlement.

The only reason that Kristiansen doesn't attribute the massacre to the Corded Ware people is because they found an ax that was Neolithic in design. I hardly think that's enough to so quickly deny the most obvious conclusion. They stole everything that wasn't nailed down, why not a Neolithic ax from another raid. It could even have been hidden in the settlement.

Perhaps future excavations there will bring more clarity, but I'm not yet convinced that this was necessarily one Neolithic village attacking another one. The nearby Corded Ware settlements had the necessary motive, means and opportunity as any possible Neolithic village.

That's all I'm going to say about Eulau. You've heard it all before, and so has everyone else.
 
Another pertinent modern example, perhaps. One could say that in the vast majority of human societies now and in the past women have been or are treated inequitably and have a lower status in society. Looking at modern cultures, however, there's a vast difference between, say, women in western cultures, SSA, and Afghanistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The past and the ancient past were not so different, imo. One easy way to see the differences is in nutrition and burials. Were females (including female children) fed the same amount of nutritious food as males? Apparently it varied by culture. Were the bodies of the dead treated with equal respect whether male or female? It depended on the culture. In Megalithic tombs whole families were buried together. Look at Etruscan burials with catacombs showing loving couples in embrace. In steppe burials very few females were shown even the consideration of burial. Or how about religion? How much of a role did female deities, with attendant priestesses, play?

It's easy to say that in virtually all human societies women were subservient, and that violence is present in all human groups, increasing when there is scarcity. That's a given. That doesn't mean differences between cultures don't and didn't exist.
Agreed, and your modern examples seem richer and more opportune than mine.
Well, I believe that even those adherents to cultural relativism, in one extreme, would recognize that cultures may be very different from one another in a wide range of aspects. I'm not one of these relativists, by the way, but that's another story. I don't intend to develop this topic in particular.

Anyway, never mind how ancient cultures actually compare when it comes to the inclination towards violence, and I'm learning it here in Eupedia, I believe the fact that that kind of events bothers you - as it bothers many people - shows not only a good side of our culture, but also the best side of "human nature". :)
 
Almost all the Paleolithic ancestry was replaced. Only tiny bits of it remain.
My English sucks. I meant "what", not "which". I couldn't remember what the predominant component(s) in Europe was/were just before the arrival of WHGs.
 
I never denied that there was violence in late Neolithic societies in Europe. In fact, I specifically said that I doubt there is any human society which ever existed which was free of violence, so accusing me of lack of nuance is completely false and misleading; a type of straw man argument.
My arguments were all about nuance, nuance as to the period discussed on the steppe, nuance about the perhaps different dynamics later on with ancient Iranians, nuance about comparisons between cultures.
I stand by them.
As for Eulau, we've debated it before. I'm not going to go into it again. No, Kristiansen's analysis doesn't make a lot of sense. It's highly improbable imo that EEF men would kill their stolen women and children, and then respectfully bury them. That they were the women and children of Corded Ware people also is unlikely; they wouldn't have buried them in that way or at all. Nor does it make a lot of sense to me that a village surrounded by Corded Ware settlements was attacked by another Neolithic settlement.
The only reason that Kristiansen doesn't attribute the massacre to the Corded Ware people is because they found an ax that was Neolithic in design. I hardly think that's enough to so quickly deny the most obvious conclusion. They stole everything that wasn't nailed down, why not a Neolithic ax from another raid. It could even have been hidden in the settlement.
Perhaps future excavations there will bring more clarity, but I'm not yet convinced that this was necessarily one Neolithic village attacking another one. The nearby Corded Ware settlements had the necessary motive, means and opportunity as any possible Neolithic village.
That's all I'm going to say about Eulau. You've heard it all before, and so has everyone else.
I agree with what you say, but Idon't agree when you quote Kristiansen, which you did several times in this thread.
His arguments and his interpretations are to selective.

Here is another one Kristiansen does not mention, because it does not fit his narrative :
Early Neolithic executions indicated by clustered cranial trauma in the mass grave of Halberstadt
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04773-w
Abstract
The later phase of the Central European Early Neolithic witnessed a rise in collective lethal violence to a level undocumented up to this date. This is evidenced by repeated massacres of settled communities of the Linearbandkeramik (ca. 5600–4900 cal BC), the first full farming culture in this area. Skeletal remains of several dozen victims of this prehistoric warfare are known from different sites in Germany and Austria. Here we show that the mass grave of Halberstadt, Germany, a new mass fatality site from the same period, reveals further and so far unknown facets of Early Neolithic collective lethal violence. A highly selected, almost exclusively adult male and non-local population sample was killed by targeted blows to the back of the head, indicating a practice of systematic execution under largely controlled conditions followed by careless disposal of the bodies. This discovery significantly increases current knowledge about warfare-related violent behaviour in Early Neolithic Central Europe.

I think it puts the invasion in another perspective. Maybe it changes your mind on Eulau too.
The IE invasions were not violent invasions in peacefull societies.
The societies invaded were often as violent and as male-centered elitarian as the IE themselves.

As I pointed out before it was a worldwide phenomenon.
And yes, it were probably the societies who were best organised and focused on violence who survived in this period of reduced Y-DNA diversity.
I must say I have the impression the IE were not only good in organised violence, it seems to me they were also good at adopting new technologies and embracing customs of other societies.
They adopted the Bell Beaker styles and they continued the Stonehenge traditions.
I believe it was already like that in the paleolithic.
A good example might be the 45,4 ka expansion of haplogroup K :
https://www.yfull.com/tree/K/
They must have replaced and expelled a good deal of other clades (including the Neanderthals).
That is how in a very short time (50-40 ka) modern humans conquered the whole of Eurasia and replaced all other archaic humans.
There may have been more expulsion and less replacement at that time, because 50 ka modern humans occupied just very small parts of Eurasia - there were still many lands left to flee to.

It is new technologies since 10 ka that broke the balances again,and the world was allready much more densely populated. And we know most about the last replacements, because many traces of the earlier replacements that started 10 ka are vanished.
 
A
It's easy to say that in virtually all human societies women were subservient, and that violence is present in all human groups, increasing when there is scarcity. That's a given. That doesn't mean differences between cultures don't and didn't exist.

I think that position of women in society is best indicated by customary law. If violence against women is tolerated better than against men, if women's consent is not required for marriage, or they have no way to manage their property - it is not good, I am afraid.
To the extent I am aware of, the more agricultural in traditions the society is the worse is women's position.
 
I think that position of women in society is best indicated by customary law. If violence against women is tolerated better than against men, if women's consent is not required for marriage, or they have no way to manage their property - it is not good, I am afraid.
To the extent I am aware of, the more agricultural in traditions the society is the worse is women's position.

It is hard to find traditional societies which are not dominated by man.
The Tlingit, a Native American fishermen's tribe on the Pacific coast would have been an exception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlingit
I guess when the men are allowed to go out fishing and hunting all day, they are happy and leave all the rest to the women ..

;)
 
It just confirms the tendency that the more HG culture is the easier life for everyone.
 
I think that position of women in society is best indicated by customary law. If violence against women is tolerated better than against men, if women's consent is not required for marriage, or they have no way to manage their property - it is not good, I am afraid.
To the extent I am aware of, the more agricultural in traditions the society is the worse is women's position.

I think in this particular case it is the other way. There is very few evidence that pastoralist groups like the Yamnaya culture had women in higher positions, there are very few cultures I can think of who were more male centered. For example CWC men "stole" the women of the farmers probaly by force.
 
Well, I am not so sure - perhaps CWC were violent when on the move or against enemy tribes, but had different rules for their own people?
After all Norway and Lithuania, which has the highest percent of CWC, have customary law with very good protections for women. For instance within Baltic customary law, violence or harm against a women is punishable double compare to the same done to a man. Also, bridge kidnaping or even more rape involve very heavy punishment. In case of rape, the punishment for the perpetrator is death.
 

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