Q&A for History of Mankind (32)

Scientists making up happy Kumbaya history; and questions about esoteric societies, communism, historical dates and the Roman military

To check all previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

This is the thirty-second Q&A for History of Mankind. Paying subscribers received an email asking for questions; and those are right below the paywall.

As usual, a quick reminder: all new paying subscribers get an electronic copy of my 2023 book ”Emperor Whisperers: a comparative history of ancient Western and Chinese philosophy” (also available here) and also one of “Gods & Heroes,” an updated compilation of the first 43 posts in the History of Mankind series. So, if you are paying subscriber and you didn’t get both already, please let me know.

Today I’m going to try something slightly different from the usual proceedings, so bear with me here. You know I often use these introductions to Q&As to present papers or new evidence that has made reconsider or tweak narratives or interpretations from eras I already wrote about.

Today I’m going to do something pretty different: I’m going to present a scientific paper that I found lacking, and that DID NOT MAKE ME RECONSIDER anything much, as I way to display the method I use to accept (or reject) new evidence for historical interpretations. That is: I will give you a glimpse of my system to marshal historical evidence, to say “this sounds like something I should mention” or to say “this definitely doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The paper “Tracing social disruptions over time using radiocarbon datasets: Copper and Early Bronze Ages in Southeast Iberia,” by Rafael Micó et al (Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 58, October 2024) makes the claim that in Iberia the arrival of steppe Indo-Europeans in the late 3rd millennium BC was mostly a peaceful affair, leading to the peaceful mixing of the newly arrived with a preexistent population of Anatolian origin, people like Otzi the mummy found in the Alps.

This is a strong claim to make, given the abundance of evidence proving the violent displacement of pre-existing Anatolians across Europe, the murder of males and the (obviously forced) taking of their women. As it’s typical in these papers, there’s a lot of verbiage so I will go straight to the (longish) money quote. Near the end of the paper, the authors write:

Probably, the earliest groups with 'Steppe' ancestry spreading slowly from northern and central Iberia reached a depopulated Southeast. DNA analysis shows that the weight of this genetic component decreased in a north–south gradient and excludes a 'male bias' in the sex ratio of these groups. Thus, it seems unlikely that a rapid migration of male warriors and herders caused the collapse of a powerful farming, proto-urban southern Chalcolithic society. In other words, this scenario challenges the claim that local Copper Age men were either killed or excluded from sexual intercourse with women by a new warrior elite of 'Steppe' men carrying the R1b Y-chromosome who, in turn, gained privileged rights to mating with these local women. Reich (2018: 240-241) has proposed this model for Early Bronze Age Iberia, perhaps drawing from the dynamics suggested for ancient India (i.e., the violent imposition of a foreign ruling male group who, through privileged mating with low-ranking local women, had a significant number of offspring), and Lalueza-Fox (2022: 115-116) holds a similar view. Alternatively, the scenario raised here does not involve the massive elimination of local males nor the subjugation of local females after conquest. The inhabitants of southern Iberia were likely in low numbers already in the 23rd century cal BCE and mixed with ‘Steppe’ ancestry groups lacking 'male bias'. Later on, approximately from 2000 cal BCE onwards, when most of the genetic results of Bronze Age males are dated, R1b Y-chromosome was the most frequent by large. Obviously, the fact that a number of Copper Age sites were destroyed by fire does not rule out the possibility of violent episodes before or around 2200 cal BCE. Nevertheless, violence was already an ingredient of the Chalcolithic social life, and up to now nothing proves that these destructions were the consequence of a generalised conflict between genetically distinct populations.

So, the authors posit that very scarce DNA evidence showing that at least some Anatolian males did not die around 2200 BC represents a challenge to a pre-existing scenario of mostly (but not entirely) violent displacement. And the authors assert this even as they concede that the R1b Y chromosome, a genetic marker of patrilineal steppe ancestry (the one that I and many other Western Europeans carry) was, just a couple of centuries later, “the most frequent by large” [I assume they mean far].

I disagree. I believe they are grasping at straws, trying to use limited genetic evidence to support an idealized scenario of noble savages living happy, diverse lives that multiple lines of evidence have contradicted for years.

It’s worth keeping in mind that this paper was published almost at the same time as this other paper concluding that, as elsewhere in Europe, the Anatolian farmers who arrived in Scandinavia essentially exterminated the existing hunter-gatherer population (not entirely, since they almost certainly raped and forced enough of the captive women into marriage, so that part of the new population was genetically related to the old) pretty comprehensively.

This, admittedly, was of course before the Anatolians found themselves as the settled side being invaded and displaced, often fairly violently. The central scenario I discussed in How Europe Became European remains fully unchallenged. As I wrote:

Chronic tribal warfare generally favors pastoral over sedentary economies as herds can be defended by moving them, whereas agricultural fields are an immobile target – a truth that would be rediscovered in history time and time again, with the triumphs of Parthians, Huns, Magyars, Turks and endless other horseback marauders.

However, much emphasis must be put on the carrot-and-stick approach during the Indo-European drive into Europe. Chiefs carried with them an ideology of political clientage, and were used to becoming patrons of their new clients among the local population; like those in other cultures (notably Semitic chiefs), they cemented their power and prestige by providing animals for public sacrifices and feasts, and were in turn rewarded with the recitation of praise poetry. As usual, they had little to no objections to taking the women of pre-existing tribes, so they mixed with the local populations, rather than displacing them entirely.

What Indo-Europeans displaced was the old cultures, traditions and languages, which were mostly erased from the face of Europe or hidden beyond layers of new lore and ideology. The pre–Indo–European languages of Europe were abandoned because they were linked to social groups that became stigmatized, much diminished or subjected to servitude.

Over centuries, Indo-Europeans combined peaceful expansion and acculturation with mass murder and displacement, since – as in the case of the earlier Anatolian invasions – bloodshed wasn't always necessary: with low population densities and vast tracts of land still vacant or at least very sparsely inhabited, Indo-Europeans didn't always find stiff resistance and, even when they did, had no need for extreme displays or violence.

Now for the questions from paying subscribers, on esoteric societies, communism, historical dates and the Roman military: