Ancestral Journeys

Favourite Quotes

“The idea of a permanent ethnic or national identity that can be tracked through time from the Paleolithic to the present is a chimera” - p. 48

Detailed Summary

Chapter 1: Who are the Europeans

• out-of-Africa theory

Chapter 2: Migration - Principles and Problems

• when examining ancient people, we must have some sort of factor to determine if x people are in fact ‘a people’, i.e. a unified tribe, or a culture group
• the factors in play are the remains of these people: their pots, ornaments, burial rites, house forms, etc
  • whenever we see these remains constantly recurring together, we can call it a cultural group
  • these remains, or rather, the complex of regularly associated traits, are the material expression of what we would today call ‘a people’, i.e. a culture
• in ancient times, the Mesolithic and Neolithic, migrations have been the norm
• so how do we detect ancient migrations? What are the signs?
  • take burial customs as an example: a sole merchant dying in a foreign land will likely be buried according to local customs. But if you have the migration of an entire group or tribe, they’ll likely bring their own burial rites
  • the problem with just looking at one factor/remains of a culture is that humans are complex. For example, Pagans who became Christians quickly adopted Christian burial practices on a wide scale. This wasn’t migration though.
  • So to properly detect migration, you must look at the entire complex of regularly associated traits.
    • A sudden change in many of these factors/material expressions, likely indicates migration
• haplogroup = genetic classification or ancestral groupings within a population
  • or, the cluster of genetic markers that is common in all descendants of the ancestor in whom they first appeared together
• linguistics and genetics often are correlated simply because your parents pass on both
  • but outsiders can join the tribe, interracial marriages can happen, adoption can occur, etc, so many things can occur that brings in some new genetics into the mix
• if a group of people move far away enough from their parent linguistic community where they can no longer communicate to each other, eventually the parent and child languages will diverge
• by analyzing linguistics we can determine elements about a culture/society
  • by analyzing PIE lexicon, we can determine that they were familiar with agriculture, metallurgy, wheels and wagons, and social rankings. But they had very little words for specific occupations or other clues to urban life, so they likely did have have urban living, i.e. big cities
• cognates = for 2 words to be cognates, they must have similar meaning and form, and sound correspondences that are systematic between the languages (like ‘p’ to ‘f’ in PIE > Proto-Germanic)
• we can use archelogy to determine the date of the invention of something, and use that to determine dating around languages
  • as a really simply example, take television. We know for a fact that it was invented in 1926, so the word must have post-dated 1926
• complete language replacement in an area signifies population change
  • some say that the change could be due to an invading elite (like Aryans in India), and that is true in some cases, but other evidence would be needed to confirm that
• common reasons for a language to become extinct:
  • the longer two groups of people are in contact with each other, the more likely they would become bilingual. Eventually a language may disappear
  • a smaller group is in contact with a larger group who speaks a different language. Overtime, the smaller group would have to become bilingual and eventually their language would disappear.
  • larger groups likely bring in a dominant culture (socially and economically) that would engulf smaller and less complex groups
• Roman empire is a good example of language replacement:
  • Latin was their language. In order for any Roman subject to succeed in politics, they would need to learn Latin.
  • this why we have languages like Spanish and French, both descended from Latin
  • many Italic speaking peoples are not actually fully Italic/Latin genetically. Again, this is because Latin was adopted by many diverse peoples
• the opposite would be Britain: when the Angles and Saxons went to Britain, they retained their Germanic tongue because there was no established kingdom or government there, therefore no need to learn the native Celtic language.
• place-names tell us a lot about the history of languages spoke in an area
  • the Roman often assigned place names based on the language and tribe living in the area. Through this, we’ve discovered that Celtic languages were once spoken over a much wider area than today, where it’s limited to the UK, and even then is not widely spoken anymore
• river names often stay the same over a long period of time, so they can tell us a lot about languages spoken in history
  • the rivers Danube and Don in Eastern Europe are derived from a PIE root that appears in Old Iranian as “danu”, meaning “river”
• we use language to describe people’s identity, i.e. if you speak a Slavic language, you are a Slav
  • figuring out what people called themselves or identified as can be tricky, so language is the best option we have
• people migrate for all sorts of reasons: invasions, find better land to farm, social strife, etc
  • because of this, there is no such thing as a permanent ethnic identity that can be tracked through time from the Paleolithic to the present

Chapter 3: The First Europeans

• a 24k year old boy’s DNA was found in Central Siberia. His Y-DNA was haplogroup C1, which is almost unknown in Europe today
  • proves that populations can change all the time
• a lot of this chapter talks about BS out-of-Africa
• 12700 years ago (10700BC roughly) was the last glacial conditions in Europe

Chapter 4: Mesolithic Hunters and Fisherman

• Mesolithic = middle stone age, around 15k - 5k years ago (13k - 3k BC)
  • these people were using stone tools
  • they lived around 10,000 years ago after the ice has melted
• for these people, fishing was a big part of their lifestyle and diet. They built boats and used that for transport
• many Mesolithic sites were around the coastline
• Mesolithic Religion
• around this time is when pottery was invented and used to cook food
  • earliest sign of pottery was 20k years ago in China
  • pottery entered Europe 9k years ago
  • it pre-dates farming
• the mtDNA U family and Y-DNA I family dominated the European Mesolithic
  • Y-DNA C1, which came from East Asia was also common, but is very rare today in Europe
  • Y-DNA I only represents less than 1/5 of modern European males
  • mtDNA U is spread widely through Europe, but very thinly outside of the far northeast, only representing 7% of people
  • the incoming farmers from the near-east brought their own haplogroups into Europe and replaced the indigenous U and I families
• based on this genetic evidence above, we can conclude that Mesolithic Europeans were NOT the ancestors of early European farmers. Therefore modern Europeans are NOT descended from European hunter-gatherers ^445017
  • this plays well into my Homeland of Indo-Europeans theories. The farmers from the near east were the original Indo-Europeans and they brought farming + other ‘advanced’ techniques to the European hunter-gatherers, and mainly replaced them.
• this chapter also discusses the Saami people in depth, p. 66
  • N1C, the dominant haplogroup among the Uralic Saami, arrived in Europe around 2500BC

Uralic Languages

• name comes from the Ural mountains, the alleged homeland = proto-Uralic
• Hungarian is the largest language in this family
• Proto-Uralic was a hunter-gatherer language (it had no words for farming)
  • this is due to the fact that Uralic people lived mainly in the north of Europe where the Mesolithic lifestyle lasted a longer time
• Proto-Uralic was likely spoken around 5000BC-3650BC
• The Romans were the first to document the “Fenni” people
  • Tacitus described them as ‘wild’ and dependent on hunting and not farming
  • they lived as far south as Latvia. We deduced this by the existing of Finno-Ugrian place names

Chapter 5: The First Farmers

• Mesolithic = middle stone age, around 15k - 5k years ago (13k - 3k BC)
  • exact dates depends on which part of Europe you’re looking at
• Neolithic = final stone age, around 4500 to 1700BC
  • exact dates depends on which part of Europe you’re looking at
• This chapter covers the Neolithic era
• animal domestication started around 11k years ago
  • this lines up with my Homeland of Indo-Europeans theory on the start of PIE people, which was 9k years ago, obviously that’s just a rough estimate but the numbers are fairly close
• foragers started becoming farmers around 11k years ago
• so did near-eastern farmers spread their ideas of farming to the European foragers? No
  • genetic evidence shows us that the near-eastern farmers replaced the European foragers. It was a complete population replacement.
  • so it wasn’t spreading the ideas via trade, it was population replacement and migration

Chapter 6: Dairy Farming

• how do we know when dairy farming started?
  • fat residues on ancient pottery
  • animal bones: animals killed young were for meat, if they were killed later, that means they likely served another purpose such as providing milk
  • gender: more female cows means more dairy milking
• pottery from around the Sea of Marmara (Istanbul) that dates to 6500 - 5000BC has a significant amount of processed milk residue
• PIE language had terms for milk, curds, and whey, indicating that they knew about dairy farming
• dairy farming and farming in general spread to North Europe (Scandinavia) in 4000BC, which is much later than the rest of Europe.
  • reasons are due to the cold climate and tough soil

Chapter 7: The Copper Age

• starting around 10,000BC copper was being used in beads and ornaments
• 8000BC is when using heat to work with copper began
  • by 5000BC it was widespread
• copper smelting likely had a single origin point, somewhere in east Turkey
• Turkey was rich in raw metals like copper. They often traded with the ancient cities of Mesopotamia
• in around 3700BC, the Maykop culture in the Caucasus traded gold, silver, and copper with Mesopotamia
• the copper age also introduced the “Secondary Products Revolution”
  • this is where things started to have a secondary purpose. Examples:
  • instead of animals being used for meat, they also started to be used for milk, wool, cheese
  • instead of horses being used for transport, they also started to be used to pull wagons and ploughs
• the first type of metal to be worked in Europe was copper - p. 111
  • earliest appearance of this was in the Balkans (which makes sense considering it spread from the near east)
• smelted copper tools began to spread in 5000BC in Europe
• Balkans were rich in copper & gold deposits, which only further enabled copper-working in the area
  • gold was used for adornment. The oldest gold objects in the world were found in the Balkans
    • there is a buried person from 4600BC in Bulgaria and the grave was filled with gold ornaments
• gold was only found in a few people’s graves, indicating their status
  • this was the point where social stratification entered Europe, more specifically, outwardly marked distinctions between individuals such as wearing gold or having a gold staff
• Bronze (copper alloyed with tin) was also found in the Balkans dating to 4500BC
• a short cold period afflicted the Balkans around 4200-3800BC, bringing their metallurgy days to a close
  • some of them moved to Sardinia (island west of Italy)
  • the Sardinians are genetically the closest to European Neolithic (the farmers)
    • this probably means the PIEv2 (Yamnaya) didn’t genetically mix with them
  • the historic language (before Latin) of Sardinia was similar to Basque, indicating they might have had the same parent language
  • Sardinians, even today, cannot digest milk, which further supports that they are genetically a people that pre-date dairy farming, i.e. the European neolithic
• metallurgy shifted to the Caucasus areas where the Maykop culture used an arsenic-copper alloy

Basque

• the common theory back in the day was that the Basque are the descendants of a paleolithic relic population. This has now proven to be completely bogus.
• likely the Basques arrived with the farmers
  • they have the ability to digest lactose, so it could be argued they came with dairy farming
• Basques share some cognates with northwest Caucasian languages, possible indicating a common ancestor
  • the issue is that genetically they are not close at all
• genetically, the Basques share the same haplogroups common across Europe, namely R1b1a2
  • they also are extremely low in any Neolithic farmer haplogroup such as E, G, and J
  • but they do have higher levels of I2a1a, another Neolithic marker rare in Europe except in Sardinia
  • the Yamnaya were mainly R1b with minority of I2, which resembles the Basque
• it’s safe to say that the Basque, like many Europeans, are a mix of various people ranging from the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the near eastern farmers.
• The Balkans could be the original homeland of the Basque. Reasons:
  • Proto-Sardinian and Euskara (Basque language) have similarities indicating the same parent/origin
    • we know that Balkan people moved to Sardinia
  • there is linguistic similarities between Euskara and PIE, indicating that they originated near each other

Chapter 8: The Indo-European Family

Indo-Europeans

• wheels and wagons likely originated/invented by the PIE
  • PIE had words for wheels and wagons that were derived from PIE roots. And other languages also adopted those words. This means that PIE people likely invented them.
• [[Indo-Europeans#Branches[ 4]]
• The Anatolians did not have PIE-derived words for wagon or wheel, so they likely split before PIE developed vocab for that. They split around 4000BC
• The Tocharians were the first to spread east past the Ural Mountains
  • when writing was discovered written in their language, we named it Tocharian after the people known to the Greeks as Tokharoi - p. 128
  • they brought many things to China and East Asia: metallurgy, domestication of sheep and horses, wheeled vehicles
  • there were some Tocharian mummies discovered in Xinjiang province. These are the famous ‘blonde Chinese mummies’
    • these mummies exclusively carried R1a1a Y-DNA, which is the same as Yamnaya
• The Yamnaya had a lot of influence over Europe. One of the most visible cultural elements was the kurgan burial model.
  • not everyone was buried this way, just important people, male and female
  • when metallurgy collapsed in the Balkans, it was revived in the lands of the Yamnaya
  • around 3200BC there was a massive climate change that made the Yamnaya lands more cold and dry. This is likely what caused them to migrate to new lands and spread their culture and language
• The Indo-Iranians spread east towards the Ural Mountains, following a similar path as the Tocharians albeit much later
  • they were attracted to the copper deposits and marshlands
  • They developed the Sintashta culture which dates to 2100BC
  • The Sintashta were the ones to invent chariots
  • they spread their chariots all over. For example, in Mesopotamia the Mitanni people were famous for their chariot riding. We have records from their kings dating to 1500BC. Their names were Indic, but the mass of the people spoke Hurrian (non-Indo-European)
  • The Sintashta interacted with the BMAC culture (Bactro-Margiana Archaeological complex)
    • BMAC lived around the Oxus/Amu Darya river
  • Proto-Indo-Iranian language was influenced by the BMAC culture
    • terms taken from BMAC include terms related to bread making and cereal growing, water-works (wells and canals), architecture, tools, plants, textiles, etc
  • the BMAC started a decline in 1800BC and that led to the flourishing of the Proto-Indo-Iranians who absorbed the BMAC culture
• Ancient Persians

Chapter 9: Indo-Europeans and Genetics

• Among the Yamnaya, R1a1a and R1b1a2 dominate
• R1b1a2 has been found in non-Indo-European speaking people too, such as the Bagvalals (67%) and Assyrians (55%)
  • this has caused a lot of confusion for geneticists and linguists.
  • likely it was caused by genetic drift: a few men carrying this DNA crossed into these areas and married into the farming folk
• The Ossets speak an eastern Iranian language. Most believe they are descended from the Scythians
  • the Scythians had primarily R1a1a, which is barely present in the Ossetians.
  • the common Y-DNA group is G2a (which is most frequent in the Caucasus)
• present-day Armenians are most similar genetically to Greeks, Turkish, and their various neighbors in the Caucasus
  • this makes sense considering Armenian and Greek are of the same branch
  • R1b makes up around 1/3 of Armenian DNA
• no haplogroup dominates in Greece, they have a very complex genetic picture.
  • this makes sense considering they were a sea-faring people in the crossroads of major regions and empires. They likely had lots of admixture over the years
• Iran is the same; no group dominates
  • the largest is J2a followed by R1a1a, then G then R1b
  • R1b likely did not come with the incoming Medes and Persians because the groups with the highest R1b in Iran are the Assyrians and Armenians
• In India, R1a1a and J2a dominate in the upper castes
• the ability to digest milk corresponds to the areas where Indo-European languages are spoke - p. 156
  • it it said that lactase persistence was the genetic edge that allowed the dairy pastoralist Indo-Europeans to spread
  • dairy farming produces 5x the amount of calories per acre as simply raising cattle for slaughter
  • these extra calories plus calcium and protein would help in size and strength. In fact, prehistorical dairy farmers tended to be taller than other farmers

Chapter 10: Beaker Folk to Celts and Italics

• the speakers of Proto-Italo-Celtic were the Bell Beaker culture
• they predominately had R1b
• by 500BC, Italic and Celtic languages dominated most of western Europe
  • Celtic was spoken in modern UK and basically all of western and central Europe (Germany, France, Austria) and some parts of Spain
  • Italic was spoken in Italy
  • Italo-Celtic was spoken in some parts of Spain
• Places where Celtic was spoken was slowly turned into Latin speaking people because of the Roman Empire, with the exception being Britain (Germanic)
• The Celt group known as Britons dominated Britain before the Anglo-Saxons came in

Chapter 11: Minoans and Mycenaeans

• Ancient Greece
• Greeks, like practically all European people are a mix of all 3 main components of European ancestry:
  • Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
  • Neolithic farmer
  • ANE (ancestral north Eurasian)
• The Neolithic is stronger, while the Yamnaya is weaker ^6deecf
  • this supports the near-east homeland theory! Because the Aryans would’ve went straight to Greece from the near-east. The little Yamnaya that Greeks do have would’ve been from the second birth, i.e. Yamnaya descendants spreading into the rest of Europe likely passing by the Greeks and intermixing with them

Chapter 12: Iron Age Traders and Warriors

• the linguistic similarities between Celtic, Iranian, Slavic, Baltic, and Albanian are NOT found in their proto languages which indicates that these linguistic features came afterwards by intermixing/communication with each other - p. 186
• the Celts dominated western Europe, but eventually were absorbed into the Roman Empire - p. 191
  • and then eventually Germanic tribes came into the picture, like France being half Frankish and half Gaulish

Chapter 13: Etruscans and Romans

• Etruscans were the predecessors of the Romans, they were NOT Indo-European
  • by the 8th century BC that had a thriving culture. They expanded in the 6th century BC. Map on page 193
• The Etruscans left bronze mirrors that were decorated with scenes from Greek Myth - p. 192
• The Etruscans entered Italy at a time when Indo-European peoples were already there
• so where did they come from? Likely from the Eastern Mediterranean, probably Anatolia - p. 192
• The Romans at this time held a small area of land in central Italy, with the Greek Empires to their south and Etruscans to the north; they were a small player in between the ‘big boys’
• The Romans mainly lived on grains and vegetables while meat was for the rich. Due to this (and probably other reasons), the Romans were significantly smaller than their foes - p. 195
  • the Celts and Germans towered over them.
  • The milk-drinking Britain folks were half a foot taller than the tallest Roman per Strabo
  • Caesar reports that the Gauls called the Romans pygmies
  • due to this, looking back, it’s quite a feat that the Romans conquered so much and were such a good military… but they had help…
• The Roman army was composed of not only Italic-origin folks, but also Germans, Sarmatians,
  • there was no sense of unity among Germanic or Celtic tribes, so Germans fighting Germans was not an issue
  • Sarmatians fought for the Romans in Britain - p. 196
• due to Rome’s power and status in the world, the Roman Empire was a melting pot. People from all over came to live there.
  • The Romans did not allow their culture to disappear, instead they took measures to Romanize their immigrants. This allowed the Latin culture and languages to spread like wildfire - p. 199

Chapter 14: The Great Wandering

• the period of time from 1st millennium BC to the end of the 1st millennium AD is referred to as the “Migration Period” or “Volkerwanderung” (wandering of the peoples)
  • Europe went being a conglomerate of various empires birthed by the advanced cultures of the Mediterranean (1st millennium BC), to a patchwork of various Christian states (end of 1st millennium AD)
• little is known about the barbarian tribes (Germanics) because they were illiterate, so we rely on the words of others, but even them didn’t know much
  • Herodotus said, in 440BC: I have no reliable info to pass on about the western margins of Europe - p. 200
• it was during this Volkerwanderung that the Angles and Saxons tribes migrated to Britain, the Franks migrated to France, and the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths all went to various places too
• Rome under Caesar and Claudius conquered Britain and Gaul (France) because they were areas with a rich economy and good agricultural land. They were both purely Celtic at the time
  • The Roman Empire always avoided the Germani lands because they were poor with a bad economy. Conquering this land would not repay itself - p. 202
• The Germani were limited to Scandinavia and Jutland, but overtime they moved more and more southwards
• the Slavs began their migrations after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (480AD)
• a big reason for the Germani and Slavs migrating was pressure from Asia. Various groups pushed into eastern Europe that pushed the Germani and Slavs elsewhere - p. 203
• The Goths were living near the Black Sea, but were kicked out by the Huns in 375 AD - p. 204
• The Slavs were living around the Caucasus but were driven out by the Avars in the 6th century AD, that’s when they moved into eastern Europe around Poland and other countries
• the climate in western Europe started getting worse around 250-550AD, which coincides with the fall of the Western Roman Empire
  • crops started dying, climate was dry, temperatures fell, etc
  • this would’ve led to food shortages and disease
  • we see evidence of population decline and plagues
  • on the other hand, the Eastern Roman Empire was thriving; Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Greece were all booming by every metric
• the fall of the Western Empire allowed the various Germani tribes to come into former Western Roman land
  • the Eastern Emperors wanted to take back those lands, but they were dealing with plague and natural disaster. By 700AD the Byzantine’s lost half their population to plague - p. 206
• plague killed off much of the Roman population in the province of Illyricum (modern Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia). This allowed the Slavs to come in and basically take over those lands - p. 207
  • another reason for the Slav’s ease of taking over was that the Byzantine Empire was busy fighting a war with Persia, so they couldn’t invest too much military power in retaining Illyricum
  • today that area is now inhabited by Slavic speaking people for the most part
• The Germani started their invasions/migrations into Roman territory around 113BC
• The Germani were not a unified people, but they spoke the same language: Proto-Germanic
• The term ‘Germani’ comes from the word Julius Caesar used to describe them - p. 207
• The Germani tribes absorbed many Celtic people and we can see that in their DNA today - p. 209
• Proto-Germanic was spoken around 500BC - p. 210
  • the cradle of Proto-Germanic was the Nordic Bronze Age, 1730 - 760BC
  • near the end of the age, the climate deteriorated, making it colder. Farming could no longer continue. So the Scandinavian farmers moved south
  • since the Celts (Halstatt) were moving north around this time, they would’ve crossed paths. The product was the Jastorf and Pomeranian cultures
• branches of Germanic: [[Indo-Europeans#Branches[ 4]]]
• around 200BC - 200AD the climate got better and farmers moved back north into Scandinavia
• Germani enter history with the Goths and Vandals - p. 213
• although the various Germani tribes were not united, they were all genetically the same people. A successful warlord from one tribe could win the hearts and minds of people from another tribe. Often times the army/warbands of tribal leaders included multiple tribes’ men - p. 213
• The Germani people originated in Jutland and Scandinavia (that as their homeland)
• The Goths made their way to eastern Europe (the Black Sea area) via migration, but moved into Roman Empire territory due to pressure from the Huns moving westwards into Eastern Europe around 375AD - p. 214
• The Huns also conquered the Alans, Iranian descendants of the Scythians - p. 214
• Some of the Goths weren’t allowed into Roman territory. Eventually they rose up along with some Huns and Alans and defeated the Roman Empire multiple times.
• The Huns ravaged Eastern Europe but were defeated by the Romans in 398AD. Then they went north and drove other Germani tribes west towards Gaul (France) in 406AD - p. 215
  • one of these tribes were the Germani
• The Alans and Vandals, moving together fleeing the Huns, moved into Gaul and Iberia. They signed a peace treaty with the Romans, with the Alans gaining Lusitania (Portugal) and the Siling (sub-tribe of Vandals) gained province of Hispania Baetica (Spain) and Hasding (sub-tribe of Vandals) gained Galicia (Spain)
• The Visigoths migrated westwards after sacking Rome in 410AD and conquered Gaul and parts of Iberia. They mostly defeated the Vandals that settled their earlier - p. 216
  • the Visigoths then lost their Gaulish territory to the Franks in 507AD - p. 217
• The Goths had Spain under their control for a while. But since they were close to the Romain Empire, then adopted Christianity and worshipped in Latin and adopted Roman customs. It was around this time Gothic likely started to dwindle as a language. Gothic culture also was decreasing - p. 217
• in 476AD a Barbarian named Odovacar was king of Italy, taking it from the Romains. The Ostrogoths in the east made a deal with the Byzantine Emperor Zeno that if they could take Italy from Odovacar, then they get to keep it - p. 217
  • Ostrogoths were successful in 493AD. Like Goths in Spain, they adopted Roman customs which was east considering their subjects were Roman
  • once the Ostrogoth king died in 526AD, in-fighting ensued and led to the fall of the Ostrogoth kingdom

Franks and Anglo-Saxons

• The Germanic Anglo-Saxons established their own country (Angle-land) and language (Angle-ish) in Britton. But the Germanic Franks become Romanized in France. Why?
  • There was no established order or hierarchy in Britain pre-Anglo-Saxon migrations. So the Angles and Saxons established one
  • The lands of Gaul were very well established Roman lands. The Franks simply inherited it all
• The Britons were pushed to Armorica, the western tip of France - p. 220
• So many Angles and Saxons went to Britain that their original homeland, northwest Germany was deserted - p. 220

Chapter 15: Enter the Slavs

• similar to how the Germani tribes in early Roman history were obscure, Slavic people were even more obscure before Christian Slavic states emerged - p. 224
• the first mention of Slavs is from the 6th century AD
• first written language is Old Church Slavonic, dated to 865AD
• modern Slavic Europe was almost entirely non-Slavic during the Roman period
• the Slavs have the closest genetic affinity to each other than any other group (i.e. Polish and Serbians have a closer genetic similarly than the Iranians and Pashtuns, or the Swedish and Anglo-Saxons, etc)
  • this is because they all originated in a relative small geographical area. Their homeland (modern day north Ukraine) was a very small area.
• The Slavs entered history by raiding Byzantine territory around 530AD
• the Slavic ethnonym that appears in Old Church Slavonic is ‘Slovene’
• The Slavs dominated the region north of the Black Sea, modern Ukraine and Romania. These were the lands that the Goths abandoned due to the Huns pushing them out - p. 225
  • when the Hunnic empire fell in 454AD it left a power vacuum on the western steppe, which was easily filled by the Slavs.
• The Slavs lived a simple life. Compared to other cultures around their time, they were very primitive
  • their pottery was hand-made rather than wheel-thrown
  • they had no imported luxuries
  • they paid no heed to bodily comfort. They lived in small hots
• At the same time, Byzantine writings tell us they were a very independent people, refusing to be ruled over or taken as slaves. They were self-reliant
• The Greek scholar Procopius said Slavs were neither blond nor very dark in coloring - p. 226
• Reasons for the homeland of the Slavs being in north Ukraine / Black Sea region:
  • proto-Slavic has borrowings from East Germanic (this was influence from the Gothic in eastern Europe)
  • proto-Slavic also has influences from Baltic in the north and Iranian on the steppe. These 2 groups influenced the development of proto-Slavic
• early Greeks viewed all of Eastern Europe as Scythia, because those were the people known to them who lived in the area - p. 227
  • later Greeks named eastern Europe Sarmatia since they took over later on
• other tribes living in eastern Europe that were identified by the early Greek and Roman writers (excluding the Iranians) were usually Baltic tribes like the Wends - p. 228
• The Slavs were pushed west into eastern Europe due to the rise of Avars in the steppe - p. 228
• the Slavs then quickly migrated all across eastern Europe. Simply due to the fact that today that region mostly speaks a Slavic language, we can come to the conclusion that the migrations were in mass numbers, with the Slavs incorporating the other tribes into themselves
• the Serbians, before they appear as a Slavic tribe, were known as ‘Serbi’ living in the steppe near the Sea of Azov. They were presumably Iranian Alans. Likely they took refuge with the Slavs when the Huns raided the steppe - p. 230
• from their homeland in Ukraine, Slavs first migrated deeper into eastern Europe and the Balkans, and even touching Central Europe, namely lands of the Germani Tribe. Then some Slavs went the other direction into Russia
  • even today there is a Slavic minority living in Germany
• Slavs are primarily R1a and I2a1b2a1 - p. 231
• The Slavs pushed out most of the Illyrians. The only living descendant are the Albanians - p. 232
  • some Illyrians migrated to Italy about 500 years ago. They are called the Arbereshe.

Chapter 16: Bulgars and Magyars

• the steppe region, by virtue of it’s geographical placement and importance, being on the Silk Road, etc, was a linguistic spread zone. It experienced language replacement many times.
• it was the Indo-Europeans, the Tocharians specifically who spread the inventions of the Aryans to Central Asia, like the chariot, pastoral lifestyle, domesticated horses, etc. It was these same Central Asians that later became known as the Huns, Mongols, and Turks that flipped the switch and went into Europe and Anatolia - p. 236
• the Asian nomads were speakers of Turkic and Mongolian languages

Huns

• the rise of Turkic began with the spread of the Huns
• the Huns entered the Sea of Azov area in 200AD and entered Europe in 370AD - p. 237
  • Atilla the Hun was the ruler of the Hunnic Empire at its largest extent
• the Huns spoke an Oghur Turkic language, the same as the original Bulgars

Bulgars

• the Bulgar language was an Oghur Turkic language
• following the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in 453D, the Bulgars started to emerge as their own tribe - p. 237
• the unifier of the Bulgar tribes with Kubratos, who was baptized in Constantinople and grew up in the palace during Heraclius’s reign. He unified them in 635AD
• The Bulgars ruled in various places in Eastern Europe, but as the ruling elite, their language never spread to their subjects, who were mainly Slavic
• By the time the Bulgars entered the Slavic lands, the Thracians had already been incorporated by the Slavic tribes
  • modern Bulgarians do have about 55% DNA of Thracians and other pre-Slavic Balkan groups. Likely this was because the Slavic groups that assimilated and subsumed the Thracians ended up producing the Bulgarians
• Genetically modern Bulgarians are similar to other south Slavic speakers
  • groups C, N, and Q, distinctive in Turkic speakers is only found in 1.5% of Bulgarians
• The descendants of the Bulgars are the Chuvash, the only surviving ethnic group to speak Oghur Turkic
• So overall modern Bulgarians are mainly Slavic and Thracian, with a little bit of Bulgar Turkic DNA

Magyars

• they are a group that comes from the Ural mountains, descendants of those who spoke proto-Ugric
• Proto-Ugric speakers came in contact with Iranian speakers around 500BC. That’s where Ugric got words for horse, saddle, etc, and adopted horse riding - p. 238
• linguistically the closest Magyar relative is Mansi
• The Hungarian language has Turkic words in it. This is because the Volga Bulgars and the Hungarians/Magyars often traded
• some Magyar tribes were subsumed by Bashkirs Turkics in the east
  • this explains why we see Uralic DNA in modern Bashkirs
  • looking at Google images, Bashkirs don’t look as Asian as many other Turkic groups do
• Bashkirs have predominately R1b DNA followed by R1a-Z93
  • R1a-Z93 is characteristic of Iranian speakers
  • They have little East Asian groups like many other Turks do like Kazakhs
  • Why is this? Probably because the Bashkirs lived more north-west, near eastern Europe. On their migration there they likely assimilated many Iranian speaking groups - p. 239
• The Magyars conquered Hungary around 900AD
  • they migrated there in mass numbers allowing them to retain their language.
• Modern Hungarians don’t have much Magyar DNA in them
  • we know that 900AD Hungarians did have Magyar DNA, but it looks like overtime it went down.
  • Modern Hungarians have a lot of Slavic DNA. This indicates the Magyars ruled over a Slavic subject population - p. 240

Chapter 17: Vikings

• the word ‘Vikings’ in Old Norse means ‘sea-warriors’
• Vikings age started around 800AD. Young men were in search of resources and wealth
• Vikings at home were mainly farmers, fishers, and hunters
• as they started their Viking activity, they established new trade routes and started a slave trade which was a major source of their wealth
• at the start of the Viking Age, Scandinavians lived in scattered farms. There were not really any towns or urban centers. They were pagan, while most of Europe was already Christianized at this point
  • in 1090, the last temple of the Norse gods at Uppsala fell. This was the official start of Christian Scandanavia
• in the east, Scandinavian traders were known as Vaeringar or Rus
• the Scandinavians were split into a few groups.
  • the Danes in Denmark were the most powerful and had a kingdom by the start of the Viking Age
  • Norway was also it’s own group, although split into many tribes
  • Sweden was the same as Norway, split into many tribes
• The Norwegian Vikings preferred exploration to Ireland and Scotland, and later to Greenland and eventually Newfoundland - p. 242
• the Danes preferred Frisia (modern Netherlands), France and England
• the Swedes preferred the Baltic areas like Finland. Eventually went up rivers and reached Byzantium
• a successful Viking king could recruit foreigners
  • example is king Harald Bluetooth Gormsson in the 10th century, king of the Denmark
  • samples of burials from his army show many non-Danes in his army. Swedes, Norwegians, and Slavs were part of his army
• due to their closeness to the water, the fact they were reliant on fish for food (not much farmland), and the ease of water travel to go from fjord to fjord, Scandinavians and Vikings were excellent sea-men - p. 242
• what reasons did the Vikings have to leave their home? - p. 244
  • the years from 800-1200AD had very good weather, which allowed easier sea travel to Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador.
  • they were likely lured into tales of treasure in far-away lands. Finding treasures means things they can sell in exchange for other goods.
  • good weather = good crop yields = population growth = more sons eager to find more land to grow and populate
  • potential of capturing people as slaves, which they can sell to the various empires such as the Islamic ones in exchange for silver and other goods
• Scandinavians had great ships as old as 2500BC
• the Germani Angles travelled in these Scandinavia/Germanic ships to Britain in 400AD
• Ships were clearly an important part of their life because they practiced the ritual of ship-burying
• The Vikings targeted Christians a lot in Britain during their plundering. One could argue this was retaliation as in the 700s AD King Charlemagne imposed Christianity on the Pagan Anglo-Saxons of Britain in violent ways - p. 246
• Genetically, Vikings/Scandinavians have primarily Y-DNA I-L22 and R1a1a - p. 246
• some of the first Norwegian raids against the UK area was Shetland Islands north of Scotland - p. 247
  • it’s only a 24 hours sail from Norway
• Shetland remained under Norwegian, then Danish dominion until 1468 where Scotland gained control of it - p. 248
• Vikings dominated large parts of Scotland and Britain, so much so that by the time Scotland gained control, most names were Norse in origin and the people spoke Norn, derived from Old Norse
  • genetically people of Shetland are 44% Scandinavian so Vikings left their DNA too
  • places in UK farther from Scandinavia have a lot less Scandinavian DNA, indicating that entire Norse families settled in close places like Shetland
• The Vikings ruled various parts of Ireland, Scotland, and England - p. 251
  • in Ireland, the Vikings DNA is very low today, indicating they didn’t integrate too much and the native Irish population remained the overwhelming majority - p. 252
• Vikings raided the Frankish empire since the time of Charlemagne in the 700s
  • in 924AD, a Danish Viking named Rollo was named Duke of Normandy after he conquered the territory and the Frankish king couldn’t do anything about it - p. 254
• The Normans were the product of this intermingling between Vikings (Rollo and his descendants) and the native Franks living in the area
  • it’s likely mainly Viking men moved here and married Frankish women, because Old Norse vanished in Normandy within just a few generations. Normans who arrived in England in 1066 spoke French - p. 254
• since the people living in Britain by the time of the Vikings invasions were Anglo-Saxons themselves (coming from Jutland), it is hard to genetically differentiate them from burials of Vikings invaders - p. 256
  • especially in the case of Danish people vs Anglo-Saxons, they’re practically the same cause they both come from Jutland!
  • Norwegians can be differentiated though
• England’s first crowned monarch was King Cnut (d. 1035), King of Denmark, England, and Norway - p. 257
• Iceland was first settled around 874AD by Vikings from Norway, and some Irish slaves
  • based on Y-DNA vs mtDNA, we know more Viking men settled there with their Celtic (Irish or Scottish) slaves and wives. There’s a lot more Scandinavian Y-DNA and a lot more Celtic mtDNA
• Viking Eric the Red along with some other chieftains left Iceland in the 980s to go to Greenland - p. 258
  • from there some of them went more west to Newfound, namely Eric’s son Leif

Kievan Rus

• Russia, like France and Bulgaria, is named after an incoming elite too small to impose their own language - p. 259
  • France: The Franks (Germanic)
  • Bulgaria: The Bulgars (Oghur Turkic)
• the kingdom of Kievan Rus, with their capital in Kiev Ukraine was founded by Swedish folks, likely with Finnish ancestry too
  • Swedes migrated to Finnish lands in the past so there was some mixing between them
  • people of the Rurikid dynasty have N1c1 Y-DNA which is common in Uralic people
• The Kievan Rus mainly traded furs and slaves in exchange for silver and other commodities - p. 260
• The Kievan Rus were a Scandinavian Swedish elite ruling over a Slavic subject population
  • in modern day Russia, we don’t see much Swedish DNA, which further supports they were an elite that didn’t minge with the population

Main Idea of the Book

This book aims to provide a history of the European people, specifically an account of migrations by various European people, as well as deciphering the genetics behind the European people.