Angela
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Ritual sacrifices of domesticated animals could point to cultural influence of Cucuteni or through Caucasus farmers. These HGs could have been converted to farmers religion, where domesticated animals were sacrificed to farmers' gods. This cultural influence should be accompanied by flow of farmer genome into HGs. Culminating in agricultural society of late Yamna.
I think the true herding on stepps flourished when people learned to ride horses. Only then they could have managed big herds and move them around looking for fresh grass. Move them north for summer grazing and south to survive winter. When they mastered steppe herding they became numerous and almost unstoppable.
That sounds plausible to me...the importation of domesticated animals, the technology of how to manage them, and the idea that they serve a ritual function, beginning around, as Anthony says, 5200 BC. It's interesting, however, that it didn't spread to the whole steppe. Even in 3600 BC, the people of the Botai didn't have them.
I decided to do a little more digging as I was waiting around in offices all day, and I found this summary of the Anthony thesis, which purports to summarize Anthony's point of view with regard to agriculture on the steppe.
This is the link: https://anarchelariu.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/recent-studies-on-the-indo-europeans-first-contact/
Here are some of the author's conclusions:
Analyzing the archaeological data in conjunction with the linguistic reconstructions Anthony reaches the conclusion that most likely the penetration of the Proto-Indo-European culture and the fall of the Southeast European settlements was the result of a combination of several factors: cultural and economic exchanges, warlike incursions, and climate conditions.
The Criş culture, developed on the east side of the Carpathian Mountains by the farmers from Anatolia, came in direct contact with its neighbors, the Pontic-Caspian population of foragers and hunters. Around 5800-5500 BC the archaeological data shows that the hunters and gatherers on the Bug-Dniester valley selectively and on a limited scale adopted the Criş farmers-herders influence, consisting of small plots of grain, cattle and pigs, and perhaps borrowed the word *tawr-. After 5200 BC the lower Danube valley settlements and the Criş culture know the results of centuries of peace and prosperity. Beginning with 5200-5000 BC the Pontic-Caspian steppe societies became attracted to the Old Europe copper trade, and the beautifully decorated ceramics of the Cucuteni Tripolye cultures.
(I would just insert here that I don't know how to integrate Anthony's comments that there was little to no agriculture on the steppe.)
After one thousand years of prosperous existence by 4200 BC the Old Europe cultures reached their peak. Unfortunately, the lower Danube valley civilization was hit by a period of terrible winters (Anthony: 227) which resulted in burned and abandoned settlements. The destruction of Old Europe cultures took place from 4200 to 3800 BC, as a result of the shift in climate, with a period of 140-150 years of terrible winter colds, that lead to the end of farming activities. To this hardship contributed also the incursions of the steppe immigrants, a mobile force on horseback looking for Balkan copper and perhaps forceful accumulation of herds.
(Again, if the first evidence of horse domestication is all the way in the Botai in 3600 BC, I'm not so sure how they know that they were mounted. Also, in 2013 Anthony seems to be waffling a bit about this.)
Some of the settlers from this area retreated to north-west into the Transylvanian territory, where they settled and developed other cultural complexes.
(Does anyone know precisely which ones he's talking about?)
Yet, the traditions of Old Europe continued for a longer period of time in the western part of Romania, in Transylvania and western Bulgaria, while the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultures maintained an undisturbed economic and probably social relation with their steppe neighbors. Beginning sometimes before 4000 BC the steppe population adopted more of the farmers and herders way of life and economy, creating the conditions for the start of what it is accepted as the Proto-Indo-European:
This all certainly provides support for not only a flow of technology into the steppe, but a flow of genes as well. I don't know how we get from Balkan farmers to a half "Armenian like" genome, but I guess we'll find out.
Given that Anthony is a contributing author on the Samara paper, I wouldn't be surprised if they still find it coming from the Balkans, but I think that given the influence of Maykop on the steppe cultures, there must have been gene flow from that direction as well. There's also the fact that the people on the steppe were, according to the Sandra Wilde paper considerably darker than the people in the Copper Age cultures of central Europe, at least.
Oh, I just did want to note one thing...the whole spread of Anatolian or break off of Anatolian first and movement to Anatolia from the Balkans may make sense in terms of linguistics, but I read the sections in these scholars very carefully and they don't point to any specific archaeological trail at all. Anthony rather cavalierly, when speaking of Cernevoda Culture, says something to the effect that presumably at some point in the future those people moved into Anatolia...???
Also, as JP Mallory discusses in his paper from 2013, 21st century clouds on the Indo-European homeland, it's hard to see, if Indo-European contained words for agriculture, people to the east who didn't use grains until at least 2400 BC can be called Indo-Europeans. Also, as I stated on the other thread, I don't see how actual Bronze technology could have spread to Siberia from the Steppe when Siberia apparently had the full blown technology before the steppe had it. The whole forest steppe area doesn't seem to have been part of all of this until 1200 BC.
See: http://www.jolr.ru/files/(112)jlr2013-9(145-154).pdf
So, needless to say, it doesn't seem to me to totally hang together as one package moving from one place at one time.
These people have been studying these issues professionally for decades. They can't have missed these things. So, I just must not have all the relevant data.