High mortality, absence of physical trauma in the Bronze Age steppe

[markozd]

found on: indo-european.eu

Traditional skeletal stress indicators and trauma were uncommonamong KA-5 people and contemporary Samara Valleygroups. The lack of trauma does not support the view thatthe MBA was a period of social strife. When the absence ofskeletal stress markers is considered with high subadult mortality,acute illness from which these individuals did notrecover suggests elevated frailty levels. The general absenceof statistically significant relationships for these skeletalmarkers between the KA-5 and Samara Valley kurgan samplesindicates a regionally homogenous long-term relationshipwith the environment, regardless of a climatic shift orunpredictability. In contrast to the paucity of caries, dentalcalculus and periodontitis were ubiquitous, though rarelysevere, among all age groups including children and adolescents.The synergy between the poor oral health of themother and the health of her unborn children predisposeschildren to premature or low weight births, placing them atrisk of early death or a lifetime struggle with health. An optimalweaning program at KA-5 promoted children’s healthand nutrition, but following weaning subadults were at riskfor physiological insult and many succumbed quickly. Whypeople congregated in these complex settlements remains aquestion, but there was little skeletal evidence for chronicphysiological stress, nutritional deficiencies, physical violence,or unintentional injury. Based on these skeletal samples,achieving old age or even biological maturity at KA-5and during the MBA was not a regular occurrence for thoseselected for kurgan interment. A fast life history, characterizedby high fertility and high subadult mortality, suggestsan adaptive response to a less hospitable or unstableenvironment.

The adaptation to fast life histories as the authors call it is interesting considering what we know of the DNA of the steppe cultures. Fertility was very high, and adolescent women (10-14) seem to be quite frequent among the dead. The authors suggest that this is due to trend towards very low maternal ages in the bronze age steppes, which lead to an elevated risk of death during childbirth.

Indicators of physical trauma are almost completely absent from Yamnaya to Potapovka. They become extremely common in the Iron Age however.

The authors also suggest that the people buried in Kurgans did not frequently reach a high age or even biologically maturity, suggesting that the association of Kurgan burials with tribal chiefs and such doesn't really hold.

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajhb.23129

 

[Maciamo]

The study only analyses mortality within the Steppe (Sintashta culture). Since these were people from the same culture, I don't see why there should be signs of trauma or war casualties. Conflicts would have happened after the Steppe people moved into foreign lands.

 

[markozd]

The study only analyses mortality within the Steppe (Sintashta culture). Since these were people from the same culture, I don't see why there should be signs of trauma or war casualties. Conflicts would have happened after the Steppe people moved into foreign lands.

I think the authors sought to address Anthony's idea of endemic warfare in the steppe, which made those cultures become expanionist and militaristic. It seems that this wasn't the case.

 

[I1a3_Young]

I think it probable that a large component of the attack vector of IE expansion was disease. I've been reading about Central and South American events and it's truly horrific what happened from old world diseases alone.

I would venture a guess that all of the enormous expansions and replacements were aided in large part by disease. Neanderthal replacement would be plausible by disease. EEF replaced the euro HG at about a 90% rate, similar to the death toll of natives in Meso-America.

The nasty diseases all seem to spawn out of Asia, including bubonic plague. The effect of diseases on native populations of the Americas was far worse than "the black death" in Europe.

Is there a way to search for pathogens in ancient remains reliably? It would explain a high adolescent death rate with an absence of physical trauma.

 

[Angela]

This applies to Samara Valley groups too.

I think it's clear from the Krause paper and another one before it that the steppe people carried plague with them. We just don't know how it presented in them versus in European MN people, or, who knows, even Central and South Asian people. Going by the situation in the Americas, where Europeans died at much lower rates from certain gastrointestinal disorders like enteric diarrhea, measles, mumps, and even smallpox than the natives, something similar was probably going on during the Bronze Age in Europe at least.

http://www.shh.mpg.de/680495/stone-age-plague

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-plague-stone-age-central-europe.html

There's also the finding that the fleas transmitting the disease don't like the smell of horses. So, that must have been a factor too.

I don't know if this is what the authors mean by this phrase, however. Are they talking about something else?

"A fast life history, characterizedby high fertility and high subadult mortality, suggestsan adaptive response to a less hospitable or unstableenvironment."

Also, the following is all news to me. Wouldn't the same diet or lack of hygiene cause both cavities and periodontitis, and how does it have such an effect on the health of the children?

"In contrast to the paucity of caries, dentalcalculus and periodontitis were ubiquitous, though rarelysevere, among all age groups including children and adolescents.The synergy between the poor oral health of themother and the health of her unborn children predisposeschildren to premature or low weight births, placing them atrisk of early death or a lifetime struggle with health. An optimalweaning program at KA-5 promoted children’s healthand nutrition, but following weaning subadults were at riskfor physiological insult and many succumbed quickly. Whypeople congregated in these complex settlements remains aquestion, but there was little skeletal evidence for chronicphysiological stress, nutritional deficiencies, physical violence,or unintentional injury."

 

[Maciamo]

I think it probable that a large component of the attack vector of IE expansion was disease. I've been reading about Central and South American events and it's truly horrific what happened from old world diseases alone.

I would venture a guess that all of the enormous expansions and replacements were aided in large part by disease. Neanderthal replacement would be plausible by disease. EEF replaced the euro HG at about a 90% rate, similar to the death toll of natives in Meso-America.

The nasty diseases all seem to spawn out of Asia, including bubonic plague. The effect of diseases on native populations of the Americas was far worse than "the black death" in Europe.

Is there a way to search for pathogens in ancient remains reliably? It would explain a high adolescent death rate with an absence of physical trauma.

Diseases surely helped clear the way, just like when the Europeans arrived in the Americas. But, to keep the same analogy, it's not because the Spaniards brought diseases that they weren't violent, militaristic and expansionist. The Steppe cultures derived from Yamna were all quite warlike. It's not by chance that they were the first to make weapons out of bronze, while the contemporary Kura-Araxes people used bronze mostly for decorative and utilitarian artefacts. When we look at how paternal lineages were constantly replaced where Indo-European peoples went, and how egalitarian societies suddenly became stratified and elitist, it agrees with a not-so-friendly conquest, rather than just a migration of people.

In fact, if we look at historical sources of Bronze and Iron Age Indo-European societies (Mycenaeans, Hittites, Indo-Aryans, Scythians, Celts, Germanics...) they are all militaristic and paternalistic societies where war is a way of life and free men seek honour in military training and battle. That's why I have a very hard time to believe that Steppe people just spread because Neolithic societies in Europe collapsed on their own due to climatic change and diseases. Like in the Americas, it is both military conquest and diseases. Like with the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire, it is both climate change and opportunistic invasions by warlike tribes.

 

[Ygorcs]

I think it probable that a large component of the attack vector of IE expansion was disease. I've been reading about Central and South American events and it's truly horrific what happened from old world diseases alone.

I would venture a guess that all of the enormous expansions and replacements were aided in large part by disease. Neanderthal replacement would be plausible by disease. EEF replaced the euro HG at about a 90% rate, similar to the death toll of natives in Meso-America.

The nasty diseases all seem to spawn out of Asia, including bubonic plague. The effect of diseases on native populations of the Americas was far worse than "the black death" in Europe.

Is there a way to search for pathogens in ancient remains reliably? It would explain a high adolescent death rate with an absence of physical trauma.

In the Mesolithic > Neolithic transition of Europe (and other regions), I think disease may have played a role, but the main one was simply much higher fertility rate and higher population growth, both of which accumulate over many generations leading eventually to a huge demographic advantage of farmers in comparison with hunter-gatherers, even in the absence of any major deadly conflict and severe epidemics (both of which must occur along this transition period). That said, I agree with your main assertion.

 

[Ygorcs]

Diseases surely helped clear the way, just like when the Europeans arrived in the Americas. But, to keep the same analogy, it's not because the Spaniards brought diseases that they weren't violent, militaristic and expansionist. The Steppe cultures derived from Yamna were all quite warlike. It's not by chance that they were the first to make weapons out of bronze, while the contemporary Kura-Araxes people used bronze mostly for decorative and utilitarian artefacts. When we look at how paternal lineages were constantly replaced where Indo-European peoples went, and how egalitarian societies suddenly became stratified and elitist, it agrees with a not-so-friendly conquest, rather than just a migration of people. In fact, if we look at historical sources of Bronze and Iron Age Indo-European societies (Mycenaeans, Hittites, Indo-Aryans, Scythians, Celts, Germanics...) they are all militaristic and paternalistic societies where war is a way of life and free men seek honour in military training and battle. That's why I have a very hard time to believe that Steppe people just spread because Neolithic societies in Europe collapsed on their own due to climatic change and diseases. Like in the Americas, it is both military conquest and diseases. Like with the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire, it is both climate change and opportunistic invasions by warlike tribes.

I completely agree with you, but still I find it very surprising and unexplainable that they didn't find many signs of intentional or non-intentional violence in those steppe skulls. That people were most certainly not a unified polity, nor did they have some sense of belonging to one large nation that only attacks foreigners from different cultures. That just wasn't how tribal societies of the past worked, especially very mobile ones. They had alliances and even tribal confederacies, but they were mostly fleeting, unstable, changing according to the circumstances, external influences and internal divisons, so we'd expect inter-tribal or even inter-clan/village violence at least occasionally. A warlike chiefdom-based people, unless they''re unified under one centralized state (that most probably didn't exist in the Bronze Age steppes), doesn't attack only outsiders from lands very far away and belonging to other cultures. A lot of internal, local warfare was to be expected, as it was usual among Germanic, Italic or Celtic tribes, and even among settled civilized Greek polities.

 

[Angela]

As in so many aspects of the "Indo-European" mythos, these ideas of warriors riding their horses and swinging bronze swords as they conquered Europe may have been back projected onto people of the steppe so that what they were supposedly like is, in fact, anachronistic.

Just look at the Corded Ware people. They weren't nomads like the Huns, they barely had copper weapons, much less bronze, and the number of horse finds are minimal. All of that happened later, and much further to the east, under different influences.

 

[Ygorcs]

As in so many aspects of the "Indo-European" mythos, these ideas of warriors riding their horses and swinging bronze swords as they conquered Europe may have been back projected onto people of the steppe so that what they were supposedly like is, in fact, anachronistic.

And, strangely enough, I'd admire their ability to spread so widely and establish enduring cultural/linguistic ethos from Europe to South Asia much more than in the usual and (to me) not in the least appealing "Indo-European horse-riding conquerors" narrative.

 

[Maciamo]

As in so many aspects of the "Indo-European" mythos, these ideas of warriors riding their horses and swinging bronze swords as they conquered Europe may have been back projected onto people of the steppe so that what they were supposedly like is, in fact, anachronistic.

Just look at the Corded Ware people. They weren't nomads like the Huns, they barely had copper weapons, much less bronze, and the number of horse finds are minimal. All of that happened later, and much further to the east, under different influences.

For the Corded Ware, that's correct, but they were an exception due to their early expansion. By the time Proto-Celts reached Western Europe, they had bronze weapons. In fact, I was able to predict the arrival of R1b people in Western Europe between 2500 and 2100 BCE specifically because it was when bronze weapons first appear. The bulk of the Indo-European migrations/invasions took place later when not only bronze weapons but also chariots were common place. That is the case of the Mycenaeans, the Illyrians, the Hittites, the Iranians/Persians/Medes, the Indo-Aryans, the Italics, the Hallstatt and La Tène Celts...

 

[A. Papadimitriou]

What is 'known' about the 'culture of Indoeuropeans' is 'known' by the work of people who have certain type of ancestry and projected elements of their culture or their national myths to proto-Indoeuropeans, whom they modeled after Attila the Hun and the Golden Horde.

 

[CrazyDonkey]

I think the authors sought to address Anthony's idea of endemic warfare in the steppe, which made those cultures become expanionist and militaristic. It seems that this wasn't the case.

Anthony also makes it clear that Cucuteni farmers had previously expanded from the Prut to the Dneister to the Bug to the Dnieper River, building fortifications in the latter stages. Militarism might have been a reaction to Cucuteni territorial expansionism.

Would elites buried in kurgans be more or less likely to display skeletal stress indicators or trauma?