-
Don't want to see ads? Install an adblocker like uBlock Origin or use a Europe-based privacy-friendly browser like Vivaldi or Mullvad.
Were most men killed off 7000 years ago?
- Thread starter Angela
- Start date
Angela
Veteran member
- Messages
- 21,793
- Reaction score
- 12,345
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
Yeah, well, if I have to wade into a group of MS-13 low lifes, I'll take a gun, at least as a back up. Also, like I said, no problem with repeat rapists or pedophiles, who are the lowest form of human life, if you aim strategically, either.
You forget the size and strength differential between the average man and the average woman. Then put a knife or brass knuckles or a gun in his hands. With some date who doesn't seem to understand the word "NO", or even if you're going to be out and about at night, but in a nice, safe, neighborhood like mine, indeed in most neighborhoods, yes, pepper spray or mace, a whistle, a protective dog if you're going to be running in the dark, or through more deserted areas, are sufficient. There are also lots of young women who are very reckless and don't have any of those things, more fools they.
However, if you live in gang and drug infested inner cities, it's a different story. Even if you manage to just stun or disable him, he knows where you live and he's coming back. It doesn't matter if I'm five foot six and 125 pounds and he's six foot two and 220 pounds if I have a gun.
If you're ever in that situation let me know how sprays work out for you.
As for rubber bullets, a lot of inner city Baltimore was destroyed when the police were told not to be aggressive, to use rubber bullets, etc. I've seen pictures of European cities which look the same.
I personally wish every one of those women in the Balkans who was raped during the Balkan Wars had had a gun, or even better a semi-automatic. Just mow them down. If that happened men would think twice about using rape as a weapon of war.
You forget the size and strength differential between the average man and the average woman. Then put a knife or brass knuckles or a gun in his hands. With some date who doesn't seem to understand the word "NO", or even if you're going to be out and about at night, but in a nice, safe, neighborhood like mine, indeed in most neighborhoods, yes, pepper spray or mace, a whistle, a protective dog if you're going to be running in the dark, or through more deserted areas, are sufficient. There are also lots of young women who are very reckless and don't have any of those things, more fools they.
However, if you live in gang and drug infested inner cities, it's a different story. Even if you manage to just stun or disable him, he knows where you live and he's coming back. It doesn't matter if I'm five foot six and 125 pounds and he's six foot two and 220 pounds if I have a gun.
If you're ever in that situation let me know how sprays work out for you.
As for rubber bullets, a lot of inner city Baltimore was destroyed when the police were told not to be aggressive, to use rubber bullets, etc. I've seen pictures of European cities which look the same.
I personally wish every one of those women in the Balkans who was raped during the Balkan Wars had had a gun, or even better a semi-automatic. Just mow them down. If that happened men would think twice about using rape as a weapon of war.
CrazyDonkey
Regular Member
- Messages
- 359
- Reaction score
- 80
- Points
- 28
- Location
- Seattle, Washington (Ballard)
- Ethnic group
- Irish/Scottish/British/Scandi/C Euro
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I2a-Y31616>FT435332
- mtDNA haplogroup
- U2e1d
Horses just meant you could go on long-distance, not just short-distance, raids. Wagons meant you could haul back more loot.
Angela
Veteran member
- Messages
- 21,793
- Reaction score
- 12,345
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
There's by no means a consensus that horses were used for "raiding" in the early periods. To the best of my recollection that all boils down to one possible horse bit found by Anthony.
As with a lot of "steppe-ology" imo there's a lot of back projection of Iron Age practices into the early Bronze Age.
The wagons, also to the best of my recollection, were used to transport themselves and their belongings as they moved to new pastures.
I can't imagine that anyone thinks men didn't go to war before they had horses.
As with a lot of "steppe-ology" imo there's a lot of back projection of Iron Age practices into the early Bronze Age.
The wagons, also to the best of my recollection, were used to transport themselves and their belongings as they moved to new pastures.
I can't imagine that anyone thinks men didn't go to war before they had horses.
Last edited:
Salento
Regular Member
- Messages
- 5,677
- Reaction score
- 2,945
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- T1a2 - SK1480
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H12a
Indigenous peoples of the Americas (No Horses):
“ ... Prior to the introduction of European horses and guns, Plains warfare took two forms. When equally matched forces confronted each other, warriors sheltered behind large shields, firing arrows; individual warriors came out from behind these lines to dance and taunt their opponents. This mode of combat was largely for show and casualties were light. However, sometimes, large war parties surprised and utterly destroyed small camps or hamlets. ... “
“ ... Human skeletons from as early as the Woodland Period (250 B.C. to A.D. 900) show occasional marks of violence, but conflict intensified during and after the thirteenth century, by which time farmers were well established in the Plains. After 1250, villages were often destroyed by fire, and human skeletons regularly show marks of violence, scalping, and other mutilations. Warfare was most intense along the Missouri River in the present-day Dakotas, where ancestors of the Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras were at war with each other, and towns inhabited by as many as 1,000 people were often fortified with ditch and palisade defenses. Excavations at the Crow Creek site, an ancestral Arikara town dated to 1325, revealed the bodies of 486 people–men, women, and children, essentially the town's entire population–in a mass grave. These individuals had been scalped and dismembered, and their bones showed clear evidence of severe malnutrition, suggesting that violence resulted from competition for food, probably due to local overpopulation and climatic deterioration. ... “
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.war.023
“ ... Prior to the introduction of European horses and guns, Plains warfare took two forms. When equally matched forces confronted each other, warriors sheltered behind large shields, firing arrows; individual warriors came out from behind these lines to dance and taunt their opponents. This mode of combat was largely for show and casualties were light. However, sometimes, large war parties surprised and utterly destroyed small camps or hamlets. ... “
“ ... Human skeletons from as early as the Woodland Period (250 B.C. to A.D. 900) show occasional marks of violence, but conflict intensified during and after the thirteenth century, by which time farmers were well established in the Plains. After 1250, villages were often destroyed by fire, and human skeletons regularly show marks of violence, scalping, and other mutilations. Warfare was most intense along the Missouri River in the present-day Dakotas, where ancestors of the Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras were at war with each other, and towns inhabited by as many as 1,000 people were often fortified with ditch and palisade defenses. Excavations at the Crow Creek site, an ancestral Arikara town dated to 1325, revealed the bodies of 486 people–men, women, and children, essentially the town's entire population–in a mass grave. These individuals had been scalped and dismembered, and their bones showed clear evidence of severe malnutrition, suggesting that violence resulted from competition for food, probably due to local overpopulation and climatic deterioration. ... “
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.war.023
Roads are probably an alternative to horses, but horses are likely still a requirement for genocidal war, as it made war easier and more profitable.
If Amerindians had horses we might have seen two giant empires spanning each continent and bottlenecks similar to those seen in Eurasia.
I'm not sure what the weird smiley is about.Right. Better throw in some plague and some population crashes too.
It's possible that Y-DNA gives some protection against disease, and it most certainly plays a role in alcoholism. The invention of wine is believed to be around 7000 BC in China, so if that played a role we'd expect an earlier bottleneck in China.
Angela
Veteran member
- Messages
- 21,793
- Reaction score
- 12,345
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
It's a roll eyes, meant to be semi-humorous. Pretend I've added another virtual one.
I don't see what the heck alcoholism has to do with this. Could we keep on topic?
As for the y chromosome, nobody really knows yet what it does other than code for male genitalia and sperm etc., so get back to me when you have some research pinpointing that it gives immunity to plague.
What is clear is that even with their far, far, superior weapons, and horses, what really spelled the end for the Amerindians were the European diseases to which they had no immunity. Conquest is a heck of a lot easier when 90% of the native population is dropping dead around you. No need for an army of Conans.
"Numerous diseases were brought to North America, including bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, and pertussis (whooping cough)"
" A specific example was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. This shows the main effect of the arrival of Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity against these pathogens, Native Americans died in huge numbers. Yale historian David Brion Davis describes this as "the greatest genocide in the history of man. Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs."[9] By 1700, less than five thousand Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region.[4] In Florida alone, there were seven hundred thousand Native Americans in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2000.[4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
So, if the question is whether possession of the horse alone would have been enough to spread the Indo-European languages, or to give dominance to one tribe of Amerindians, I think the answer is clear: NO. It was a confluence of factors.
Let's not forget too that the use of horses, and chariots, spread like wildfire in the Near East. There was a form of an arms race in chariots. Horses can be stolen, or they run off and can be captured. How do you think Indians got them and became so adept with them?
Ygorcs
Active member
- Messages
- 2,259
- Reaction score
- 813
- Points
- 0
- Ethnic group
- Multiracial Brazilian
Not only is warfare possible without horses, it is possible to even build entire militaristic empires without horses (Aztecs, Incas, etc.). Inter-tribal or at the least clannish warfare was actually common fare way back into the Paleolithic and very noticeable, even in some cases endemic in the Neolithic societies, e.g. in Pre-Columbian Brazil, as in many other places that lacked even metals, warrior clans took warfare and raiding basically as a "yearly tradition" with or without any concrete reason). Fertile Crescent societies were experiencing violent and wide expansions of organized states (e.g. the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt) even before horses were first used in the region.
_______________________________
As for "1 man for 17 women", that should be read in a much more moderate way: "1 man left male (the only ones with a Y-DNA) descendants in the long term compared to 17 women who left descendants in the long term". The fact that only men have Y-DNA already IMO favors the random extinction of some local lineages, but in any case we shouldn't presume that those men died and 17 women were left. There were so many factors involved in a male's reproductive success: slavery, socioeconomic status (usually much more relevant to men than to women), the ability to pay a dowry, the freedom and access to resources to take care of one's offspring (don't forget 30% to 60% of all children died very young, many of those BA men may have had children, but none survived into adulthood) etc.
Just look at some examples from seemingly more "civilized" and "modern" eras: in colonial and post-independence Brazil, which must've felt initially pretty lawless and full of population expansions and crashes like the Bronze Age, you had some 6 million European immigrants, 5 million African forced immigrants, some 5 million natives that were reduced to probably 500,000 to 1 million by the 1700s. Yet what you see in the average gene pool is not a direct proportion of the number of immigrants that came and the local indigenous people (that would be more or less 50% European, 41% African, 9% Amerindian), it is in fact more like 60-70% European, 15-25% African, 10-25% Amerindian. In the Y-DNA the disparity is even much more striking: 85-90% of the paternal lineages from Europe, some 10% from Africa, only 5% from Native America.
Those African and Native American males existed, they weren't all annihilated at once, there was no time in history where more than 80% of the men in Brazil were white. They just lived tougher and shorter lives, had no wealth and/or no freedom to raise a family, had little socioeconomic strength to compete with the white males, and were probably shunned by many women as potential candidates for marriage and procreation (families actively encouraged, partly because of "Brazilian style racism", that is, the lighter, the better, the so-called "redemption of one's race" by making the family lighter and lighter - and thus possibly more respected and valued by society - along the generations).
I'm absolutely sure that similar dynamics were present in many previous historic periods, not just in the Bronze Age, but perhaps more strongly so due to the tribal and actually more properly clannish nature of those societies and the lack of larger meta-ethnic institutions, polities and identities not centered around bloodlines and kin loyalties (e.g. empires, bureaucratic states, universalist religions, etc.).
Rizla
Regular Member
- Messages
- 45
- Reaction score
- 23
- Points
- 0
- Ethnic group
- Scandinavian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I1
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H3n
I guess you people all know this study by Haak et al, 2017.
"Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the late Neolithic/Bronze Age migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people who lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically–inherited X chromosome with the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 late Neolithic/Bronze Age human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality ofmany agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic Steppe during the late Neolithic/Bronze Age, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with approximately five to 14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest."
"Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations". http://www.pnas.org/content/114/10/2657
If there really were 5-14 males for every female, among the steppe people, then you basically have a situation with gangs of cowboys roaming the countryside looking for women - and the farmers are hardly going to give them up freely. Of cause exotic diseases and famine could play a role too, but I think it's a pretty plausible explanation how Y-DNA lines like G2a came to dissapear from Europe.
"Dramatic events in human prehistory, such as the spread of agriculture to Europe from Anatolia and the late Neolithic/Bronze Age migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people who lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations. We use a mechanistic admixture model to compare the sex-specifically–inherited X chromosome with the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 late Neolithic/Bronze Age human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggested by the patrilocality ofmany agricultural populations, we find no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic. For later migrations from the Pontic Steppe during the late Neolithic/Bronze Age, however, we estimate a dramatic male bias, with approximately five to 14 migrating males for every migrating female. We find evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation. The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers, perhaps whole families, whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration, potentially connected to new technology and conquest."
"Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations". http://www.pnas.org/content/114/10/2657
If there really were 5-14 males for every female, among the steppe people, then you basically have a situation with gangs of cowboys roaming the countryside looking for women - and the farmers are hardly going to give them up freely. Of cause exotic diseases and famine could play a role too, but I think it's a pretty plausible explanation how Y-DNA lines like G2a came to dissapear from Europe.
Rizla
Regular Member
- Messages
- 45
- Reaction score
- 23
- Points
- 0
- Ethnic group
- Scandinavian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I1
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H3n
I agree. I'm just now reading "guns, germs and steel", and I think he's completely right, that the fact that the amerindians didn't have any large domesticable mammals (except lama's) were a limiting factor to their development. Or at least it slowed it down. It definitely one of the major reasons europeans conquered them, and not the other way around.
hrvclv
Regular Member
- Messages
- 453
- Reaction score
- 229
- Points
- 43
- Location
- Auvergne, France
- Ethnic group
- Arvern
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b-U152-DF103
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H1bm
The farmers coming from Anatolia were no doubt better fed than HG, and had grown more sedentary.
When food is more plentiful, you stand a better chance not only to survive yourself, but also to save your babies in larger numbers.
When you grow sedentary, you learn to build - not only proper "houses", but also fences, ditches, etc...
Besides, we know that the first "administrative structures" emerged in sedentary groups in the Fertile Crescent. I am not suggesting that the farmers who moved into Europe had a proper "administration" at the time; but I think they had begun to develop higher forms of collective organization than their HG rivals.
Food and numbers, techniques, and organization may have been extra advantages on their side in times of conflict.
As for horses being indispensable for warfare, I suggest whoever thinks so should (re-)read Ray Bradbury's short story "A Piece Of Wood". It's only three pages long, and tells you what equipment a man needs when he feels the urge to fight.
When food is more plentiful, you stand a better chance not only to survive yourself, but also to save your babies in larger numbers.
When you grow sedentary, you learn to build - not only proper "houses", but also fences, ditches, etc...
Besides, we know that the first "administrative structures" emerged in sedentary groups in the Fertile Crescent. I am not suggesting that the farmers who moved into Europe had a proper "administration" at the time; but I think they had begun to develop higher forms of collective organization than their HG rivals.
Food and numbers, techniques, and organization may have been extra advantages on their side in times of conflict.
As for horses being indispensable for warfare, I suggest whoever thinks so should (re-)read Ray Bradbury's short story "A Piece Of Wood". It's only three pages long, and tells you what equipment a man needs when he feels the urge to fight.
bicicleur 2
Regular Member
- Messages
- 6,450
- Reaction score
- 1,488
- Points
- 113
my guess ...
conflicts often escalated during climate changes causing periods of food scarcity
and being sedentary was a disadvantage at such times
conflicts often escalated during climate changes causing periods of food scarcity
and being sedentary was a disadvantage at such times
CrazyDonkey
Regular Member
- Messages
- 359
- Reaction score
- 80
- Points
- 28
- Location
- Seattle, Washington (Ballard)
- Ethnic group
- Irish/Scottish/British/Scandi/C Euro
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I2a-Y31616>FT435332
- mtDNA haplogroup
- U2e1d
Horses allowed you to raid someone who can't raid you back. Prior to that, conflict was more likely a neighbor-to-neighbor, or parochial, thing.
As to the plague, considering its means of transmission, if a nomad caught it, it would likely have been while trading in one of the "tells" or agricultural settlements, due to not being resistant. Spread would be from people fleeing an outbreak. The Cucuteni periodically burned down their settlements, to purify them of vermin and pestilence, it would seem.
As to the plague, considering its means of transmission, if a nomad caught it, it would likely have been while trading in one of the "tells" or agricultural settlements, due to not being resistant. Spread would be from people fleeing an outbreak. The Cucuteni periodically burned down their settlements, to purify them of vermin and pestilence, it would seem.
hrvclv
Regular Member
- Messages
- 453
- Reaction score
- 229
- Points
- 43
- Location
- Auvergne, France
- Ethnic group
- Arvern
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b-U152-DF103
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H1bm
Well, conflict is more or less always a neighbor-to-neighbor affair. But when people move from Anatolia all the way to Portugal (however long this may take) "parochial" confrontations tend to turn into pretty recurrent events, and grow into a wide-scale adventure. It gives men time to learn from their mistakes, improve on strategies, weaponry, effective attitudes.
Horses are definitely an advantage, but I wonder why they are so insistently mentioned here, in a thread that refers to events dating two to three thousand years before they were domesticated.
Angela
Veteran member
- Messages
- 21,793
- Reaction score
- 12,345
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
I'm sure you know why.
There's no doubt that once domesticated horses were helpful indeed in warfare, but from the actual hard evidence they were first used with chariots, and the warfare from horseback was a later development. This is just another back projection into the Bronze Age or before of methods of warfare that are actually part of the Iron Age, and peoples like the Scythians.
However, why let facts get in the way of fantasy?
It's obvious that warfare existed before horses, and it exists after them. In the period before the arrival of the steppe people, Europe experienced population crashes because of crop failures brought on perhaps by climate change but also perhaps because of environmental degradation caused by farming itself. The brutality and loss of life is "impressive" even by modern standards. It was also collective.
That's why there are so few y lines in Neolithic Europe.
See:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4568710/
https://books.google.com/books?hl=e...nepage&q=violence in Neolithic Europe&f=false
Rizla
Regular Member
- Messages
- 45
- Reaction score
- 23
- Points
- 0
- Ethnic group
- Scandinavian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- I1
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H3n
Absolutely. And once horses entered the picture they didn't take part in the act of warfare itself until quite late - they just made people extremely mobile. Which leads to the transfer of ideas over much larger areas, and the option to create "organizations" that can dominate more people. Yes, the incas and aztecs created large empires, but information still had to travel by foot from town to town, which is a huge limiting factor to their development.
I see my earlier post missed the the scope of this thread with a few 1000 years, lol. Well done.
hrvclv
Regular Member
- Messages
- 453
- Reaction score
- 229
- Points
- 43
- Location
- Auvergne, France
- Ethnic group
- Arvern
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- R1b-U152-DF103
- mtDNA haplogroup
- H1bm
So did mine apparently. Join the club !
It seems my mind read 7000 BC when it was 7000 ya. I thought those mass massacres referred to the first confrontations between incoming Farmers and extant local HGs. So I was a few thousand years off too - except it was the other way round.
Thanks for the links above, Angela. They dispel a number of wrong ideas.
Angela
Veteran member
- Messages
- 21,793
- Reaction score
- 12,345
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
If you go back to my first post starting this thread you'll see that the bottleneck is from 5-7,000 years ago, although the title of the article and therefore the thread said 7,000 years ago.
The point is that this may have happened not only on the steppe, but in late Neolithic Europe. It wasn't only on the steppe that we wind up with only a couple of sub-lineages of major y haplogroups flourishing, in that case, of R1b and R1a. Something similar happened in Neolithic Europe, where one line of G2a flourished, and then we also see one line of I2a, which ironically enough would have been picked up originally by incorporating a local hunter-gatherer.
So, given those facts, the domestication of the horse was not necessarily a factor. This type of scenario just seems to be endemic when population density is high and resources dwindle. It happened in Africa too, with the Bantus, and they didn't have horses.
The point is that this may have happened not only on the steppe, but in late Neolithic Europe. It wasn't only on the steppe that we wind up with only a couple of sub-lineages of major y haplogroups flourishing, in that case, of R1b and R1a. Something similar happened in Neolithic Europe, where one line of G2a flourished, and then we also see one line of I2a, which ironically enough would have been picked up originally by incorporating a local hunter-gatherer.
So, given those facts, the domestication of the horse was not necessarily a factor. This type of scenario just seems to be endemic when population density is high and resources dwindle. It happened in Africa too, with the Bantus, and they didn't have horses.