Culture

Understanding how the Corded Ware

Culture was formed in Europe

Posted on April 5, 2017

In an earlier study Professor Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden

and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the

University of Copenhagen, and their research teams, showed that the large demographic changes

during the first part of the Bronze Age happened as a result of massive migrations of Yamnaya

people from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into Neolithic Europe. They were also able to show that

plague was widespread in both Europe and Central Asia at this time.

Now Professor Kristiansen and Professor Willerslev with co-authors reveal a more detailed view

of the mechanism behind the emerging culture known as the Corded Ware Culture — the result

of the encounter between the Yamnaya and the Neolithic people. Professor Kristian Kristiansen

says: “We are now for the first time able to combine results from genetics, strontium isotopes on

mobility and diet, and historical linguistics on language change, to demonstrate how the

integration process unfolded on the ground after the Yamnaya migrations from the steppe. In

our grand synthesis we argue that Yamnaya migrants were predominantly males, who married

women who came from neighbouring Stone Age farming societies” These Stone Age Neolithic

societies were based on large farming communities reflected in their collective burial ritual often

in big stone chambers, so called megaliths. Very different from the traditions of the incoming

migrants.

The origin of the Yamnaya

The Yamnaya people originated on the Caspian steppes where they lived as pastoralists and

herders, using wagons as mobile homes. From burial pits archaeologists have found extensive

use of thick plant mats and felt covers. Their economy was based on meat, dairy products and

fish, they were tall and rather healthy with little caries in their teeth. No agriculture is

documented. Barrows were aligned in groups forming lines in the landscape to mark seasonal

routes and after death diseased people were put into individual graves under small family

barrows. Their burial ritual thus embodied a new perception of the individual and of small

monogamous family groups as the foundation of society. The continent encountered by the

Yamnaya people around 3000 BC had seen a decline in the agrarian Stone Age societies, thereby

allowing space for incoming migrants. This decline was probably the result of a widespread

plague from Siberia to the Baltic.

“The disease dynamic here may have been comparable to the European colonization process in

America after Christopher Columbus“, says Kristiansen. “Perhaps Yamnaya brought plague to

Europe and caused a massive collapse in the population“.

“Black Youth” as migrating males and their marriage to Neolithic women

In the new synthesis article, Kristiansen and colleagues argue for a dominance of males during the early phase after the migrations, and correspond to the old Indo-European mythology of later times. These sources talk about war-bands of youths – called “Black Youth” — who were employed in pioneer migrations as a dynamic force. Evidence from strontium isotopic analyses, published in 2016 by Kristiansen together with Douglas Price and Karl Goran Sjogren, showed that a majority of the women in Corded Ware burials in south Germany were non-locals who had married in from Neolithic societies, since they had a Neolithic diet in their childhood. These results now form part of the new synthesis. Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: “Existing archaeological evidence of a strong 90% male dominance in the early phase of the Corded Ware/Single Grave Culture settlement in Jutland, Denmark, and elsewhere can now be explained by the old Indo-European tradition of war bands of young males who did not have any inheritance to look forward to. Therefore they were probably more willing to make a career as migrating war bands.”

These Neolithic women also brought new knowledge of pottery production, and started to imitate

pottery containers made of wood from the Yamnaya migrants. In this way a new pottery culture

was created called Corded Ware, because of the cord impressions around the neck of the pots.

They were made for beer drinking, and the new migrants also learned how to grow barley from

the in-married Neolithic women in order to produce beer.

Rapid genetic changeover from Neolithic to Corded Ware cultures after 3000 BC

Eske Willerslev undertook the ancient DNA analyses together with Morten Allentoft and Martin

Sikora. Professor Willerslev says:

“In our big Bronze Age study, published in 2015 we were astonished to see how strong and fast

the genetic changeover was from the Neolithic to the Corded Ware. There was a heavy reduction

of Neolithic DNA in temperate Europe, and a dramatic increase of the new Yamnaya genomic

component that was only marginally present in Europe prior to 3000 BC. Moreover, the

apparent abruptness with which this change occurred indicates that it was a large-scale

migration event, rather than a slow periodic inflow of people“.

New words and new Proto-Germanic dialect

The Yamnaya brought the Indo-European languages into Bronze Age Europe, but as herders,

they did not have words for crops or cultivation, unlike the Neolithic farmers. As the Corded

Ware Culture developed it adopted words related to farming from the indigenous Neolithic

people, which they were admixing with. Guus Kroonen, a historical linguist, was able to

demonstrate that these new words did not belong to the original Indo-European languages.

Therefore it was possible to conclude that the Neolithic people were not speaking an Indo-

European language, as did the Yamnaya migrants. Thus, the process of genetic and cultural

admixture was accompanied by a process of language admixture, creating the foundations for

later Germanic languages, termed Proto-Germanic.

The birth of the Bronze Age

The Yamnaya migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into temperate Europe changed the

course of history: they brought not only a new language, but also new ideas about how society

was organized around small monogamous families with individual ownership to animals and

land. This new society became the foundation for the Bronze Age, and for the way European

societies continued to develop to the present.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Citation:

Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen. (2017, April 4). Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 1, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170404084429.htm