Incest in dynastic elite in Megalithic Newgrange

Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic (Cassen et al. 2019)

"The history of research on the Neolithic of the Atlantic façade shows how speculation about prehistoric mobility, especially across the sea, is mainly based on three types of archaeological evidence: megalithic monuments, rare stones, and pottery decoration. With the aim of approaching the issue from other perspectives, we have focused on the Morbihan area, a focal point of the European Neolithic during the mid-5th millennium BC. The analysis of this area has allowed us to grasp which objects, ideas and beliefs may have been desired, adopted and imitated at the time. We shall begin with an architectural concept, the standing stone. These were sometimes engraved with signs that can be directly compared between Brittany, Galicia (NW Spain) and Portugal, but for which there are no intermediate parallels in other areas of the French or Spanish coast. The unique accumulation and transformation of polished blades made of Alpine rocks and found inside tombs or in other sort of depositions in the Carnac region allowed us to establish a second link with Galicia and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where certain types of the axes were imitated using a set of different rocks (sillimanite, amphibolite). Finally, the variscites and turquoises from different Spanish regions were used for the manufacture of beads and pendants at the Carnacean tombs, without it being possible – once again – to retrieve similar objects in the intermediate areas. The mastery of direct Atlantic sea routes is posed as an explanation for this geographical distribution."

Cassen et al. 2019



Megalithic journeys: mobility and maritime interaction in Europe in the 5th and 4th millenium cal BC (Paulsson 2017)



















Cassen et al. 2019




Cunliffe 2017, p.136
 
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“A detour in Morbihan, focused not on the signs but on the material used, is essential before considering the ‘technical’ possibility of these long-distance contacts. Thus, the orthogneiss – a coarse-grained granite – employed as raw material for the largest stelae of Arzon, Crac’h, Saint-Philibert and Locmariaquer (Querré et al. 2006; Bonniol, Cassen 2009) has its closest source at the Rhuys peninsula (Pen Castel). The challenge posed by the majority of the blocks is not the distance covered during their transportation (5 or 10km as the crow flies is not an exceptional distance among European megaliths) but the weight transported, as in the case of the 330t of the Grand Menhir. In addition, there are the deep rias with strong tidal currents that had to be crossed. The feat is even more obvious in the case of the Runélo stela, weighing between 27 and 29t, transported to the summit of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, 60km as the crow flies from its geological source, and at least 40km offshore. Like the Grand Menhir, such a displacement cannot be conceived by simply resorting to dugout canoes, even if these were juxtaposed, as pointed out by Le Roux (1997). We thus must suggest that these populations must have mastered relatively complex naval techniques (e.g., sewn panel boats) in order to carry such a heavy cargo during open sea navigation.”

Cassen et al. 2019






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locmariaquer_megaliths


 
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Social interpretations of the transfers of Alpine jades axe-heads in the Neolithic Europe (2017)

"The ANR program JADE 2 is dedicated to the study of long axeheads and ring-discs made of Alpine jades (jadeitites, omphacitites and fine-grained eclogites) in Europe, during the Vth-IVth millennia BC. Exploited at high-altitude quarries in the Italian Alps, jade objects circulated throughout western Europe, over considerable distances, up to 2000 km. Beyond the apparent unity of these transfer networks, from the centers of production in Piedmont, Liguria and western Emilia, a complex way of diffusion appears, involving selections of raw material and transformations of objects. A systematic and detailed inventory across Europe exploited with a set of spatial analysis makes possible now to understand some of the mechanisms behind this unique phenomenon of transfers. The picture drawn by the distributions and contexts of burying is highly unequal societies in which the elite controlled the circulation of the most valued jades for their social representation and religious rituals. The multiplicity of transfer networks, selection processes aiming to increase their added value, regional re-appropriations of the best pieces in order to revive their ideational value, are particular phenomena which prove that the transfers of Alpine jades axeheads are related to particularly complex diffusion processes where the social, politic and cultural factors took precedence over the economic functions."

Petrequin et al. 2017









Jade, Callaïs and other artefacts from Carnac (Morbihan), Brittany.




Jade axehead from Scotland, >4000 bc, made from Jadeitite mined in the Italian Alps.

https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-c...and-archaeology/stone-age-jade-from-the-alps/


 
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The value of things: The production and circulation of Alpine jade axes during the 5th-4th millennia in a European perspective (Petrequin et al. 2013)

“During the 5th and part of the 4th millennium BC, the circulation of long axeheads of jade (that is, jadeitite, omphacitite and eclogite) demonstrates an extraordinary phenomenon featuring the long−distance transfer of these objects (over distances up to 1700 kilometres and in some cases over 2000 kilometres as the crow flies) from the source areas. The Neolithic networks that extended outwards from these source areas (the massifs of Mont Viso and Mont Beigua) spanned some 3000 kilometres, from the Atlantic to the west to the Black Sea to the east. (…)

Long distance transfers, social inequalities and control of religious rituals

An investigation of the graves containing jade axeheads will allow us to go a little further towards evoking the men who manipulated these ‘object−signs’ imbued with religious value. At the pan−European scale, large jade axeheads are very rare in tombs. … The most important exception is to be found on the southern coast of Brittany, in the gigantic Carnac mounds close to the Gulf of Morbihan. In the central closed chambers under these exceptionally large monuments which date to 4600–4300 BC (in the case of Carnac/Saint−Michel), one or more individuals (one individual at both Tumiac and Saint−Michel, but no bones were preserved at Mané er Hroëck) was accompanied by a remarkable number of objects imported over long distances, including beads and pendants of Iberian variscite and small axeheads, probably of Iberian fibrolite. Many large axeheads of Alpine jade were included in these graves and most of these were deliberately broken and sometimes even burnt in a clear act of sacrifice.

These extraordinary graves are associated with the earliest monumental funerary architecture in Western Europe (Boujot and Cassen 1992, Bailloud et al. 1995), with the emergence of megalithism and the architecture of standing stones along the Atlantic façade (Cassen 2009) and with novel religious concepts within which the axe figures prominently among the signs from the mythology of the Carnac area engraved on the stones (Cassen 2007). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these individuals held a pre−eminent social status within a highly inegalitarian society. Jade ‘object−signs’ which elsewhere in Europe were almost exclusively consecrated to supernatural powers were sacrificed to these people. These manifestations, so extra-ordinary in a 5th millennium context, take us far away from the commonly−held model of a society that indulged in ostentatious displays of wealth (Gallay 2006), as defined by Alain Testart (2005). In terms of parallel historical accounts of former societies that were markedly inegalitarian, which created monumental architecture and where the religious power was held by a supreme chief (often doubling with a war chief) who was believed to come from the Otherworld (…)

in our opinion, this offers us the most plausible hypothesis for accounting for the status of the ‘Powerful Ones’ who were interred under the massive mounds of Tumiac at Arzon, Saint−Michel at Carnac and Mané er Hroëck at Locmariaquer. These people would have been supreme sovereigns in a system of royalty based on religious concepts, where the ‘King’ is an intermediary between people and supernatural Powers. The explicit association between a very long jade axehead and a jade disc−ring in the mound of Mané er Hroëck, like the association between a phallus and a large axehead on the monumental standing stone of Mané Rutual in the same commune (Locmariaquer), encourages us to conclude that we are dealing with an ideal reproduction of society based on a male (phallocentric) ideology of power. (…)

Given our examination of Alpine jade axeheads in which we are dealing with journeys of over 2000 kilometres as the crow flies, we cannot reconcile this with a purely mercantile model. On the contrary, our approach to these exceptional Neolithic ‘object−signs’ considers these in ideological terms and we have shown that it is with religious concepts that we have to seek new keys to understanding these major phenomena of the movement and circulation of social signs on a pan−Europe scale. We are dealing with societies where the Powerful Ones, in their role as mediators, manipulated the religious signs to be extracted and shaped, to be given and received (rather than exchanged) and to be consecrated in order to communicate with supernatural Powers. This also underlines the profound inequality that existed between human beings and the social power that was linked to these religious activities.”


https://www.docdroid.net/1qSOlnN/the-value-of-things-the-production-and-c-pdf








Cassen et al. 2011
 
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Fig.1 Comparative distribution across Europe, of the large jade alpine axes (green) and copper objects (red) or gold (yellow) during the 5th and early 4th millennium.
A western Europe of jade, with Carnac as the epicenter in the west and a Europe of copper, with Varna in the east, coming into opposition.
Database: JADE 2010 (P. Pétrequin). DAO: E. Gauthier and F. Desmeulles.

Dominguez-Bella et al. 2015





Acta Archaeologica 2014



Sheridan et al 2020


“The concentration of gold and copper as well as other status symbols at the core of the cemetery of Varna [c.4500 BC] signify something qualitatively new. For the first time individual men were distinguished with symbols of power and their bodies were brought to shine with gold. (...)

The innovations that appeared in the western Black Sea area, the central Balkans and the Carpathian Basin are traceable far beyond this “el Dorado” as well. The distant contacts already maintained in the second half of the 5th millennium BC are highlighted by a grave discovered long ago, in 1865, near Pauilhac, in Gascogne, southwestern France. It contained six silex blades, the longest of which measures 34.5 cm; as mentioned above, the silex blade in grave 43 in Varna is – in comparison – 40 cm in length. Special attention should be drawn to the 20.8 cm long diadem made of sheet gold; namely, it has comparable finds in Moigrad in Transylvania. Likewise made of gold are seven elongated beads (lost today), for which there are comparisons in Varna grave. Among the other grave goods are two jade axes (27.8 and 25.3 cm in length), both perfectly polished. The slightly outcurving blade of the axes is unusual, which can only be understood as the stone craftsman’s answer in stone to copper axes with hammered, fine cutting edges. The phenomenon of jade axes, which predominated the image of ritual depositions in western Europe from 4700 BC onwards, has already been linked explicitly to the phenomenon of early copper axes in east central Europe. Hence, the impression arises of corresponding and concurrent systems in the circulation of prestigious goods... In this respect, it is no coincidence that a jade axe was present in Varna as well.”

Hansen 2013





Gold plaque/diadem, boar-tusk pendants, long silex blades and jade axes from the grave in Pauilhac, southwestern France.


Photo showing the gold beads from Pauilhac, now lost. (Roussot-Larroque 2008)
 
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That is... massively interesting. It does look like a lot of things were happening at the time. I am trying to put this into some kind of mental context with what happened with the Early Farmers and the Western Hunter Gatherers. So what I got is this:

6000 BC: WHG hunter-gatherers bury their dead in stone cemeteries covered with shell middens in Brittany and the Targos-Sado in Portugal. Almeneders I construction phase of the Cromlech. There are many similarities between these places.
5500 BC: EEF farmers settle Iberia, initialy in a thin coastal band running along the eastern coast of present-day Spain.
5300 BC: El Trocs, a massacre of EEF individuals inland in Spain, bodies of young adults absent.
5300 BC: Early trade network of Callais objects
5000 BC: Neolithic population crash ?
5000 BC- 4500 BC: Increasing evidence of developed trade networks
4500 BC : WHG male-driven genetic resurgence. Growth of the Atlantic Megalith Culture. From here on, megalithic constructions spread across the Atlantic coastline, to Scandinavia, North Africa and Mediterranean islands.

I have found dating the first megaliths difficult, due to the number of competing claims. Dating on the Cromlech has several references, but in Portugese. Recent research suggests the oldest megaliths are in Brittany and date back to 4500 BC. I've also found the WHG resurgence hard to date, most sources just say "middle neolithic"

It does seem to me though, that the WHG at some point took over the EEF on the Atlantic seaboard. Most likely violently, given the male-dominated genetic input, drop in EEF Y-DNA, some scant evidence of EEF massacres near the front of their expansion, and the tendency towards male-dominated burials in large tombs. And it also seems to me that the Atlantic Megalith Culture expansion was what drove the WHG resurgence. Reasons for their success, where the central European EEF expansion never seemed to have experienced anything similar may have been naval ability, reliance on multiple biomes for food, extra calories from the sea allowing higher population densities, and the ability to draw upon extended kinship connection and call upon warriors from geographically distant areas on shorter notice. Although the EEF also seems to have been competent at maritime expansion.

It somehow makes me think of the Tollense battle. Huge Homeric battle, thousands of warriors from across Europe. And no records of either the war, the warriors or the policies that fought.

Things I wonder about: How much of the Atlantic Megalith Culture came from the WHGs? Language, burial customs, trade networks, maritime orientation? What came from the EEF? Calendar functions of the megaliths seem very useful for farming. Thousands of years later, Indo-Europeans in Britain seem to have treated them as useful infrastructure investments, not cultural objects. The EEF had expanded along the mediterranean coast and to the Islands of the Med, with livestock, seedcorn etc, indication considerable seamanship. The trade really seemed to take off after the agricultural transition.

How much was a hybrid culture thing?

I am rather diverging from the sites interest in genetics here I know. The genetics are just starting to show the outlines of a long forgotten story I think.
 
That is... massively interesting. It does look like a lot of things were happening at the time. I am trying to put this into some kind of mental context with what happened with the Early Farmers and the Western Hunter Gatherers. So what I got is this:

6000 BC: WHG hunter-gatherers bury their dead in stone cemeteries covered with shell middens in Brittany and the Targos-Sado in Portugal. Almeneders I construction phase of the Cromlech. There are many similarities between these places.
5500 BC: EEF farmers settle Iberia, initialy in a thin coastal band running along the eastern coast of present-day Spain.
5300 BC: El Trocs, a massacre of EEF individuals inland in Spain, bodies of young adults absent.
5300 BC: Early trade network of Callais objects
5000 BC: Neolithic population crash ?
5000 BC- 4500 BC: Increasing evidence of developed trade networks
4500 BC : WHG male-driven genetic resurgence. Growth of the Atlantic Megalith Culture. From here on, megalithic constructions spread across the Atlantic coastline, to Scandinavia, North Africa and Mediterranean islands.

I have found dating the first megaliths difficult, due to the number of competing claims. Dating on the Cromlech has several references, but in Portugese. Recent research suggests the oldest megaliths are in Brittany and date back to 4500 BC. I've also found the WHG resurgence hard to date, most sources just say "middle neolithic"

It does seem to me though, that the WHG at some point took over the EEF on the Atlantic seaboard. Most likely violently, given the male-dominated genetic input, drop in EEF Y-DNA, some scant evidence of EEF massacres near the front of their expansion, and the tendency towards male-dominated burials in large tombs. And it also seems to me that the Atlantic Megalith Culture expansion was what drove the WHG resurgence. Reasons for their success, where the central European EEF expansion never seemed to have experienced anything similar may have been naval ability, reliance on multiple biomes for food, extra calories from the sea allowing higher population densities, and the ability to draw upon extended kinship connection and call upon warriors from geographically distant areas on shorter notice. Although the EEF also seems to have been competent at maritime expansion.

It somehow makes me think of the Tollense battle. Huge Homeric battle, thousands of warriors from across Europe. And no records of either the war, the warriors or the policies that fought.

Things I wonder about: How much of the Atlantic Megalith Culture came from the WHGs? Language, burial customs, trade networks, maritime orientation? What came from the EEF? Calendar functions of the megaliths seem very useful for farming. Thousands of years later, Indo-Europeans in Britain seem to have treated them as useful infrastructure investments, not cultural objects. The EEF had expanded along the mediterranean coast and to the Islands of the Med, with livestock, seedcorn etc, indication considerable seamanship. The trade really seemed to take off after the agricultural transition.

How much was a hybrid culture thing?

I am rather diverging from the sites interest in genetics here I know. The genetics are just starting to show the outlines of a long forgotten story I think.

Thanks, good comments. I'll let you know if/when I have some answers to your questions!
 
'Alpine axes and early metallurgy' (Klassen et al 2012):


“At the same time as large axes made of Alpine jade (i.e. jadeitite, eclogite, omphacitite and other rock types) were circulating around much of western and central Europe, early metallurgy was undergoing a major development in south-east Europe. Heavy copper shafthole tools and abundant artefacts of gold played a significant role in the social and ritual life of the Chalcolithic populations there, just as the Alpine jade axes did at the opposite end of Europe. Even though the distribution areas of these two groups of artefacts are generally separated by a zone, several hundred kilometres wide, that is devoid of any finds of the categories in question, nevertheless various kinds of contact, both direct and indirect, between the two areas be can observed. This paper discusses these relations through an investigation of artefacts that were exchanged, in either direction, between the two groups. These may include a few copper and gold objects found in France as well as a comparatively large group of Alpine axes found in south-east Europe, especially Bulgaria. (…)

since Bulgarian objects of copper and gold must have been known in France at the transition between the 5th and 4th millennium BC (see below), since copper objects from south-east Europe indeed reached France at the time in question, and since at least an exchange of ideas can be demonstrated to have taken place between the Morbihan region of Brittany and Varna in Bulgaria in the mid 5th millennium BC, a south-east European origin and a 5th/early 4th millennium date of the gold finds from Pauilhac does indeed seem probable. (…)

From the Bulgarian necropolis of Durankulak, a number of disc-shaped copper bracelets are known. This type of bracelet only appears here, while other types of bracelet in copper, gold and spondylus shell are known in large numbers from many sites in south-east Europe. Some copper bracelets from Romania come rather close from a typological point of view. The Durankulak-type bracelets, especially the find from grave 245, resemble the west European stone rings, which in some exceptional cases were made of jades and found together with large Alpine jade axes in elite burials and hoards in Brittany. As demonstrated by the copper axes from the region of Fougères and the Paris Basin, the pendant from Renongar and possibly by some of the gold finds listed above, it is possible that artefacts were exchanged between Bulgaria and Brittany at opposite ends of Europe. West European stone rings of jadeitite or other materials might therefore well have reached Durankulak and been imitated there. The production of the stone rings of jadeitite, eclogite and serpentinite is attested by numerous finds from northern Italy, and an exchange towards Bulgaria could therefore have started in the Alpine region, and not necessarily as far away as Brittany. The presence of several Alpine jade axes in graves from Durankulak demonstrates that an exchange between these two regions did indeed take place. Therefore, the disc-shaped copper bracelets of Durankulak type may very well be imitations of Alpine models. (…)

At the time of interest here (c. 4800-3800 BC), the distribution areas of large Alpine jade axes on the one hand, and of heavy copper shafthole tools and gold artefacts on the other, were distinct and mutually exclusive. The exceptions that exist can be accounted for by the power of attraction of the social elites in the Varna centre in Bulgaria at one end of Europe, and in the Morbihan and Paris Basin regions at the other. …The gold finds from Pauilhac, while found outside these regions, were clearly connected to a social elite also, to judge from their find context (…)

what can we deduce about the significance of this two-part division of Europe between c. 4800 and 3800 BC? There is no doubt that the objects that we have been considering all held a considerable prestige value, thanks to the exotic and rare nature of the raw materials involved. However, this prestige value does not account for the mutual exclusivity of the distribution areas: if all elites had desired Alpine jade on the one hand, and copper and gold on the other, the distributions would have been mixed. A second set of values must therefore have been in play. Another point to consider is the very large distances covered in the exchange of some of these objects – mostly large Alpine jade axes, but to a certain degree also some of the metal artefacts. These distances far exceed those normally covered by the exchange of prestige goods in the European Neolithic. It is thus obvious that both the Alpine jade axes and the metal artefacts in question must have had a very strong ritual connotation that was recognized in huge areas of western and central Europe and in south-eastern Europe respectively. The items may have fulfilled a comparable role in their respective societies and therefore would have excluded each other, leading to the observed division of Europe into opposing parts. The different colours – green in western and central Europe, and yellow and red in south-east Europe – may have played a key role in leading elites to select objects of the one colour, and to reject (in general) the objects made of the other colour (…)

Furthermore the ritual role of gold artefacts is obvious from the fact that in Varna, investigations of the objects demonstrated that at least a large part of them were made specifically for the burial of high ranking individuals and thus did not serve as everyday adornment. As described by Pétrequin et al., due to its indestructibility jade is associated with beliefs in immortality in societies in south-east Asia and central America. It is reserved for the elite and the gods in very complex societies. Exactly the same is true for gold : due to its indestructibility, it symbolises eternity and was used in elite burials to achieve immortality for the deceased, especially by covering the face, but also other body parts. Examples for this practice are numerous and widespread, for example in Africa (in the gold masks of Egyptian pharaohs); in Europe (in the gold masks from the shaft graves of Mycenae) and in South America (e.g. at Sipán and Trujillo in Peru). It is likely that the same beliefs also were bound up in the ritual use of gold in Varna, where some of the famous symbolic graves with clay masks show golden objects covering (inter alia) the eyes, mouth and ears (graves 2 and 3). This specific ritual use of gold can be compared to the famous burial suits and masks of jade (nephrite) from the western Han dynasty in China, which were made to achieve immortality for the deceased emperors. Mayan jade (jadeitite, serpentinite) masks from Central America may constitute another possible example, but in addition to being used for death masks in graves these objects also had other ritual uses, which were related to their colour. The fact that jade and gold, in an amazing range of different cultures and through many millennia, were associated with comparable ritual beliefs around the world indicates that the same was probably also the case in 5th millennium Europe. This lends support to the proposition that objects of jade and gold, and some copper objects, may have fulfilled a comparable role in their respective distribution areas. The fact that ritual beliefs relating to jade and its green colour were widespread in the distribution area of the large Alpine axes can therefore be seen as one of the main reasons why early metallurgy, in the specific form that existed in south-east Europe, did not spread further west during the 5th millennium than it did. (…)

Long distance, trans-Alpine exchange of large Alpine jade axes started around 4800 BC, as did their transformation from woodworking tools into ritual objects. The emergence of social elites in the Morbihan with their enormous power of attraction by c 4700-4600 BC led to an intensification of this exchange; and the manipulation of the imported objects by re-shaping added to the complexity of ritual beliefs bound to them.

By following the distribution and typological development of symbols of power made from Alpine jade on the one hand and from copper and gold on the other between the early 5th and early 4th millennium BC, it is possible to demonstrate how two related sets of ritual beliefs competed with each other over large parts of Europe. It is also possible to show how the elites in the two centres of social evolution in Europe at the time - Varna on the Black Sea and the Morbihan region on the Atlantic coast - created and manipulated these beliefs and thereby indirectly exerted a profound influence on the life of Neolithic groups in large parts of Europe through the circulation of the objects bearing ritual messages. … Over the course of almost one millennium of interaction, metal-related ideas gradually replaced those linked to Alpine jade, and by the middle of the 4th millennium they led to the demise of Alpine jade as a socially valued material. It is a fascinating thought that jade could still have been as much appreciated in western and central Europe as it is today in south-east Asia and central America, had it not been for the ingenuity of the Varna elites.”


Alpine axes and early metallurgy (Klassen et al 2012)











Stone/ Jade ring bracelets from Brittany, Carnac museum.



Petrequin et al. 2019



'Axeheads of 'Alpine Jades' In Bulgaria'


"It has long been recognised that, in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Europe, there existed a kind of ‘mirror image’ between Carnac and the Gulf of Morbihan in the west and Varna in the east. Around the middle of the fifth millennium BC, these two areas display a remarkable wealth in their funerary assemblages (with jade and variscite being used in the west and gold and copper in the east), and they also shared some social concepts, featuring a marked degree of social inequality, expressed through symbols of violence and of power, curved throwing weapons, sceptres and axes. (…) Mont Viso and the Beigua massif occupied a central position in the diffusion of Alpine axeheads (through repeated contacts) across a vast swathe of Europe, from Carnac to Varna."


Petrequin et al. 2012, p.1232





Jade Europe / Copper Europe (Europe du cuivre)
 
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The representation of an object possessed : contextualising stelae and megalithic engravings (Cassen 2012)

“Among the several hundred engravings on rock outcrops, on stelae and on orthostats of megalithic tombs that have been inventorised from Morocco to Ireland, the representation of an axe or an axehead is unique to 5th and 4th millennium Armorica (Brittany). This presentation will focus on the concentration of engravings in the Morbihan region of Brittany, for which the first full discursive inventory is currently being established and a chronological sequence proposed. Other Continental regions would seem, in contrast to the Morbihan, to have reproduced a narrow, conservative canon of images : roughly the same kind of engravings can be seen whether one is in Poitou-Charentes, in the Auvergne, in the Paris Basin or in Burgundy, and the engravings are both graphically and semantically unambiguous. This canon follows a geographical axis and the distribution of the carvings is far from random. By way of contrast, we shall see that the Iberian Peninsula, Great Britain and Ireland did not participate in the same canon, despite the fact that technological and morphological study of the signs there has confirmed that links did indeed exist with other areas. It is in Bulgaria, and in particular in the Varna region, where we find the clearest evidence for the existence of a common, Europe-wide system of signs - even if the cosmology that accompanied it, and the power implicit in the signs, may have varied from one area to another. The signs shared in common are the 'crosse' - a throwing weapon shaped like an inverted hockey stick - and the axe. These are concrete objects that both operated within the physical world of the living and had roles that were projected onto the Otherworld, the world of supernatural power. (...)

Partly contemporary with the phenomenon of the large engraved steles of Armorica (Brittany), the necropolis located not far from the shore of Lake Varna, on the Black Sea shore, makes it possible to observe on several bodies a significant series of rare and often unique objects, in gold and stone, objects sufficiently far from the functionality of classic tools and the normative nature of regional ornaments, and sufficiently comparable to the symbolic representations inventoried on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, in order to question the causes of such a trans-European identity. … Reciprocally, some objects foreign to Armorican traditions can only be found in the good matches than in the directory of Central Europe and the Balkans.”

Cassen 2012


 
the oldest H2 individual is a HG in Israel, who lived there at the time of PPNB
PPNB Israel Motza [I0867 / Motz 1] M 7300-6750 BCE H2 M2713+, M2896+, M2936+, M2942+, M2992+, M3070+ (H), P96+ (H2). It was not derived for any downstream mutations K1a4b 772778 Lazaridis 2016
he was probably not Natufian in origin, these were E1b1b1,
but more likely he was derived from the Kebaran HG with bow and arrow
the bow and arrow probably came from India
check this thread
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...d-in-Sri-Lanka?p=606086&viewfull=1#post606086

Why would it come from India? THere's no AASI ancestry in Europe and H2 isn't from there either.
 
@rachet fan
the fact there is no AASI trace todate in Euope is not the proof of no AASI in far past at a very low level; and Y-H2 (H) ancestors could very well be come from India, and their AASI drowned later. AASI is kind of specialisation of more ancient more widespread element of ancestry. Plus bicicleur doesn't speak of AASI autosomes but of bows and arrows: It doesn't require too much DNA exchanges by force...
 
@rachet fan
the fact there is no AASI trace todate in Euope is not the proof of no AASI in far past at a very low level; and Y-H2 (H) ancestors could very well be come from India, and their AASI drowned later. AASI is kind of specialisation of more ancient more widespread element of ancestry. Plus bicicleur doesn't speak of AASI autosomes but of bows and arrows: It doesn't require too much DNA exchanges by force...

Maybe but I have my doubts on H2 coming from India.
 
My opinion is that R1b-V88 people originated in the Levant and propagated the Neolithic herder lifestyle throughout Africa from there. They would have crossed from North Africa to Iberia and Sardinia.

Wasn't V88 found in Mesolithic Serbia (Iron Gates) and Ukraine even before the EEF expansion to those areas? I don't see any scenario in which a WHG and EHG European subclade of R1b could've been in the Levant so early that it would've participated in the early expansion of pastoral activities in North Africa.
 
Not yet, but R1b-V88 is present in the Levant and Egypt today and African herders that carry R1b-V88 today like the Hausa and the Fulani have no European autosomal DNA but do have Middle Eastern one.

I don't know about the Hausa, but the Fulani have a quite significant proportion of ANF admixture, so V88 could've arrived already very diluted in an overwhelmingly ANF-like population like many EEF groups.
 
That could happen as a result of hunter-gatherers killing farmer males and taking their women, or it could happen through a more peaceful process, maybe an exchange of women. In either case the DNA evidence indicates that the megalithic culture was dominated by hunter-gatherer male lineages and that near-eastern male lineages were excluded, with the exception of some H2 males.

Or what I find much more likely considering that hunter-gatherers very seldom win over more numerous and more technologically advanced farmers: the early farmers assimilated a few male hunter-gatherers and a larger number of female hunter-gatherers, in some region assimilation was much more significant than in others (particularly in border zones between prime area for agriculture and area better for fishing and hunting than for agriculture), some generations later some particular clans that descended from those assimilated hunter-gatherers, but already living fully as farmers with fishing as an additional but still very relevant activity, had developed a mixed economy of farming, herding and fishing, and started their expansion over other farming communities. I find it very unlikely that a bunch of hunter-gatherers dominated all farmers in a large area and took their women. There was probably a transition first, in which hunter-gatherers ceased to be full-time hunter-gatherers and became genetically and culturally more and more similar to the increasingly numerous farmers around them.
 
Or what I find much more likely considering that hunter-gatherers very seldom win over more numerous and more technologically advanced farmers: the early farmers assimilated a few male hunter-gatherers and a larger number of female hunter-gatherers, in some region assimilation was much more significant than in others (particularly in border zones between prime area for agriculture and area better for fishing and hunting than for agriculture), some generations later some particular clans that descended from those assimilated hunter-gatherers, but already living fully as farmers with fishing as an additional but still very relevant activity, had developed a mixed economy of farming, herding and fishing, and started their expansion over other farming communities. I find it very unlikely that a bunch of hunter-gatherers dominated all farmers in a large area and took their women. There was probably a transition first, in which hunter-gatherers ceased to be full-time hunter-gatherers and became genetically and culturally more and more similar to the increasingly numerous farmers around them.

Farmers in PPNB became more and more dependant on farming, forgetting their hunting and fishing skills.
That was a considerable disadvantage in times of climate change.
I guess European HG who made contact with farmers were more interested in herding combined with hunting than in farming.
We see it in 7,3 ka Els Trocs and Chaves, we see it in the 7,5 ka coastal area of Alpes-Maritimes, France.
In both cases , there is I2a1b, the main haplogroup in later megalithic societies.
Maybe the farmers daughters found that herding-hunting lifestyle more attractive than farming.
 
Sounds good to me; gets them out from under your feet.

Just come back occasionally to bring home the meat and milk, do some chores and other services, and then off you go again. :)
 
I don't know about the Hausa, but the Fulani have a quite significant proportion of ANF admixture, so V88 could've arrived already very diluted in an overwhelmingly ANF-like population like many EEF groups.

Is it not possible to test Fulani DNA on this? If it is EEF or ANF? Or if it is at least part EEF? That would answer this question definitively. Or do I think too simplistic here?
 

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