This is a chapter from the book "Children, Spaces and Identity" entitled "Infant Burials During the Copper and Bronze Ages in the Iberian Jarmama River Valley".
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| A young Madrid woman, child behind her. |
The authors take a chunk of time in the Jarama valley of Iberia, 3,000 B.C. to 1,500 B.C., and look at how children were treated in death over time. This is in the center of the Iberian Peninsula.
Period 1: The Early Chalcolithic before the Beakers.
We have a Early Chalcolithic phase that is basically community tombs. Bunch of people piled in a cave or in a barrow. Children over a year of age are buried with everyone else and become community ancestors.
Period 2: Beginning of the Beaker Age. We have two types of people that are contemporary and live close to one another...
a) Children/Adults buried without Bell Beaker pottery.
The skeletons of these people suggest they worked hard, died young. Adults are single burial in pits with little worldly goods. No children under six months old are ever found, all other children are grouped together and no single burial of a child is found, and certainly without worldly goods.
b) Children buried with adults and Beaker pottery is present.
These people are often buried in small, nuclear collectives, something along the line of mom, dad and children or otherwise closely related people. Men outnumber women like everywhere in Beakerworld.
They appear to have been wealthier in burial having exotic, costly or rare items. They also occupy spaces that took a lot of effort to construct. Isotopes show their diet was high in meat and dairy and the mortality numbers suggest they lived longer than people buried without beakers. People buried with Beaker pottery don't exhibit the kind of repetitive physical stress markers that the people buried without exhibit. Beaker children above the age of 6 months are buried, but always buried with an adult.
I suspect that graves were reopened for children so they could be buried with an adult. At a later time I'll expand on some evidence for the 'Beaker underworld' and the kinds of tests and trickery found in a Bronze Age Hades.
Period 3: The Bronze Age
Basically this is now our modern situation. All children of any age from their first breath are buried completely and fully as an individual person. A strange caveat is that these children are buried with a dog. That's right. The authors suggest the dog was a protector for the afterlife, and again I'll pitch my sometime-in-the-future-canoeing-through-purgatory comments.
Lastly, the authors note that the Beaker children were not achievers and did not earn or merit a higher status by our understanding. Again, I think this has the marks of ethnicity, but only a few hundred miles up the Tagus and Douro Rivers! What!?
That's why I love this. Bang head here.
This really powerfully makes the case for a Beaker people as a ruling class rather than a mere group of traders and/or missionaries, and for the role of milk and meat consumption as a major advantage for them.
ReplyDeleteThe balance of power seemed certainly in their favor. The ease of mobility and settlement seem to testify to this.
DeleteI think a more narrow social situation is something like predatory pastoralism, something like in Somalia.
A very interesting read, thank you. Should we conclude from it that the "Beaker folk" were not so much a "people" (ethnos) but a social class?
ReplyDeleteIf so, I wonder why this emergent social class shared those cultural elements across long distances (while obviously the non-Beaker commoners did not). Is this something like romanized upper classes sharing the toga dress or the worship to the Capitoline Triad, like modern bourgeoisie wearing nearly everywhere the same standardized suit-with-tie type of clothing, be it Tokyo, London or Istanbul?
In the particular case of the Jarama valley another thing that intrigues me is that it is a new center, one that did not exist, at least not with any importance, before Bell Beaker. I wonder why and around what kind of economy (and politics?) did this center coalesce. Is it a product of the growing importance of herding (transhumance) or rather did the district have also a flourishing agrarian production and maybe even some degree of trading centrality (it's a centric position in the peninsula but AFAIK it was not too important in this aspect)?
Can we imagine BB folks as herd-owners and the commoners as their servile workers? If so, how did this unequal social order remain stable?
I tend to believe Bell Beaker had a core ethnicity, or at least a common denominator in ethnicity.
DeleteThis is what I think might be a loose comparison: the relationship between Hondurans and Mexicans, two of many. There really is no direct, linear or genetic relationship between Hondurans and Mexicans, yet for all intents and purposes the result of the 16th century is similar both in genetics, language, culture, religion and self-identification.
Expanding past Latin America, you could look at Hispanized cultures in the Pacific or Atlantic where the substrates are different than those of the Americas, and the impact on language and genetics could span from Philippines or Guanches as being two extremes. Comparing Beakers to Spanish settlers is a loose comparison not without problems, but I think you get the point that we end up with a unique mosaic across Europe, still strongly Neolithic in its heritage but dramatically changed by Beaker immigration.
I think the circumstantial evidence would seem to point balance of power in which the Beakers are able to move and settle throughout Europe and Africa unchallenged. I see there settlement to be very provocative and they were able to do and go where they pleased. To me this suggests that militarily, they had the means to force decisions early that were favorable to them.
Instead I see it rather as the equivalent to the expansion of Roman iconography or even Christian one. In some specific cases it may be related to demographic expansion but in many others probably not. What happened in America (largely in the industrialist 19th century, mind you) cannot be compared with what can happen among similarly developed societies, as would be those of the Neolithic and post-Neolithic Old World. Even in America we can see how the most developed areas (Mesoamerica and the Andes) retained much better their original genetic pool and also how in order to colonize efficiently third peoples were forcibly or semi-willingly used, be them African or Irish slaves, forcibly relocated "free" Canarians, only loosely related ethnic migrants like Germans and Italians, etc. And all this in the context of very structured empires and later and very especially industrial era creole-dominated states. When we compare with something of similar structure and duration like the Roman Empire, we don't see anything comparable instead: lesser colonization was instrumental for assimilation rather than the bulk of the ethno-linguistic change. If something as massively powerful as Rome could not cause massive demic changes, it's highly doubtful that tribal barbarians could, unless specific conditions happened.
DeleteSo I fail to visualize a massive single change but rather many small changes along millennia with cumulative effect. BB just did not have enough time nor the overwhelming presence either, although they probably took part in them to some extent. If BB would be making major demic changes, everybody would become BB, and that happens almost nowhere.
"I think the circumstantial evidence would seem to point balance of power in which the Beakers are able to move and settle throughout Europe and Africa unchallenged".
Well, not in Africa in any case, except for the typical coastal exceptions. In Europe they did became some sort of an elite and that is very intriguing but how? What did that mean? I sometimes feel like you are imagining an Atlantean Empire in a very strict meaning and that is most unlikely: it would have left a much more clear mark and would require a type of organization that we do not see in any other known Chalcolithic society, not even in the short-lived Inca Empire.
Instead consider for example the spread of the Mesoamerican Chalcolithic cultural elements, such as pyramids. These existed in very different ethnic and political contexts: they all shared some sort of cultural references, even maybe top elites (some Maya kings may have arrived from the Mexica country but that's about it) but they were still a wild array of city states only punctually forging "micro-empires" (of limited extension and plural ethnic composition). In Chalcolithic Europe we don't even have cities in most cases (only in South Iberia) so...
Ok Bellbeaker blog and Maju.
ReplyDeleteBasically what you are both saying (yes Maju I am going to be mean) is that, those tallish R1b (Imo Shulaveri Shomu turned full nomads) with their turpan horses, Huge Mastiffs and definitely pushed by the climate 5.9 kiloyear event (weird name for a climate phenomenon) which was turned the Sahara into the harsh environment it is today, arrive to a paradisiac Iberia peninsula and took over. That is the story of western civilization.
So in Bellbeaker words (kidding), prior the arrival of the mean, ugly , “sob” of R1b local people buried “Bunch of people piled in a cave or in a barrow” but after the arrival of those clannish, nomatic tribes, they started to “Adults are single burial in pits with little worldly goods” like what I read of the Shulaveri Shomu ways, and after a while those clã started to use locals as forced labor, if not slaves already, and that led to the ingroup kicking started and making them value their children more and as “completely and fully as an individual person” - Ok, make perfect sense to me.
Maju, If one read United Nation FAO (food and agriculture org of the United nations), in this link about pastoralism (http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y2647e/y2647e08.htm#TopOfPage) will get a pretty good idea of what you are looking for (from social structures do their psychology)… oh, it describes mostly the nomadic Sahel tribes… wait, isn’t that the R1b hotspot resulting from the tribes splitting from the ones ended up in Tagus river and Jarama Valley ?
And oh, I’ve been digging genetic papers and analisys like crazy about Horses, dogs and grapes in Portugal. And if anything else, anything else, see this youtube (is in English) video about what I think are the remains of the turpan horses the R1b arrived in Portugal with. Special see minute if not the all 5 minute video, just look at the minute 2.30… and it will blow you mind.
That is just a detail, don’t get me started on this Sorraia horses, lusitano horses and dogs and grapesvine… all scientific papers I am compiling.
Cheers.
Sorry the video I mentioned... about the horses R1b arrived in iberia with ( :-) )...
DeleteYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWxAQns-7mM
(The Wild Sorraia Horse: Was it the first horse before domestication)
And, by the way, already booked a weekend there, when we will ride horses to go and see the sorraia horses in the wild. its actually just over 1/5 hour drive from where I am at.
DeleteNo, I'm not saying what you say I'm saying. Not at all.
DeleteI don't believe in any Bell Beakers from Africa conjecture (no BB in Africa, except for a few coastal spots) and much less believe in R1b from Africa speculation either (Western European R1b, and R1b in general, clearly stems from West Asia, albeit at an unknown date, with local scatter centers in South France and maybe the Netherlands, again with unknown dates). I also do not make yet any correlation between BB and R1b: although it's possible (in part rather than in full) it requires of direct evidence.
The spread of BB through all Iberia, SE France and North Italy (long before the rest of Europe) in very few decades, without substantially altering the previous cultural frame, suggests that this is a fashion or comparable phenomenon, maybe religious iconography, status fashion, a guild... or a mix of all three. As with the case of ties and suits in modern society, it does not need to imply any sort of demographic expansion but just is part of social complexity increase, including hierarchy and inequality, which goes with the era (the Chalcolithic), in the parts of Western Europe where civilization was more advanced (i.e. the South).
A key issue in BB formation seems to be archery. Maybe the most notorious archer culture was Artenac, which incidentally was only weakly affected by BB. Artenac people took over all West France and Belgium, repelling Michelsberg/SOM-affiliated intruders and establishing a consolidated border with Indoeuropeans at the Rhine. Incidentally Artenac culture does not look particularly hierarchical or unequal, unlike what happened in southern Iberia and SE France and like what seems to have been the case with later Aequitani (those of aequitas = equity) and historical Basques. As time passed it became more individualist however and tended to dissolution into cultural indefinition but without replacement by anything else until La Tène.
I'm not sure what you're looking for but if that's the origin of R1b-S116, maybe it's worth taking a look at Artenac culture, at least in part.
Anyhow, what I said above was specifically thinking in the Iberian Plateau: each context is very possibly quite different.
@Olympus
DeleteI'd be interested on any paper about Mastiffs or other dogs. There was apparently a genetic turnover in dogs at the beginning of the Neolithic and again at the end of the Neolithic, although the dog population is thought to drop considerably in the Early Bronze Age (which I am skeptical of).
I believe you are correct that the old Iberian horse was similar to the Turpan and was native to Iberia and North Africa. To a degree, American/Spanish breeds and mustangs have a greater percentage of this 'hot blood'. Thanks for posting the video
Hi Maju,
ReplyDeleteI know that is not what you said…
but its what I Read out of bellbeaker post.
And what I am saying is very direct. Shulaveri- Shomu (maybe) turned full nomad and real tough and ruthless archers moved south with a nasty habit of raiding and theft pastoralism, with theirs smallish Turpan and huge matiff (molossus dogs) entering Africa where they slip and V-88 turn Africa and maybe already L11 or just simply M269 got in dire straits because of the changes happening with the climate event 5.9 Kiloyear that we now know was brutally fast and had no choive but to move forth…. Into naturally Iberia. L11 turn it all those mutations. Just facts (my view). Entering Iberia was like a pack of wolves get to a strolling sheeps. And yes, they ditch the Turpan (now part Sorraia) and got into Lusitano horses much better horses by then… why do you think all the 22 samples early bronze age horses from El Portalon cluster with and only with lusitano horse?
I read Caroline Hannon (http://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/paleo_0153-9345_2008_num_34_2_5258.pdf) , Yoshihiro Nishiaki (bullamerschoorie.374.0001) or Bertille Lyonnet (Lyonnet_etal2015QI) about Shulaveri Shomu sites and then read all perdigoes papers coming out here near home and I am reading about the same “people” some centuries apart. I accept that that outlook and anthropological frame was common around Europe (which I don’t) and that two people so far way were so alike… but not when Bellbeaker makes this posts where it (to me) obvious that they came, and they come heavy and mean.
You said: "Ok Bellbeaker blog and Maju. Basically what you are both saying..."
DeleteSo?
... "but its what I Read out of bellbeaker post".
Not in this entry. There's no mention whatsoever to what you say. You may be getting something like that from other entries but not this one.
In any case it is bad style to put words in other people mouths because that's manipulating what they are actually saying. I once banned one person from my blog because he did that all the time, year after year, and then he argued against his personal interpretation of what I was saying, which was rarely what I was actually saying. So I had first to counter his manipulation (I did not say that and blah, blah) and then his other claims, which he also had wrong often enough. Double pointless work, day after day, for years... until I finally exploded. I've become extremely sensitive to this kind of manipulation that consists in putting words that I (or whoever) has never uttered nor even in a remotely approximative form. I beg you to cease with that horrible practice: if you say "Maju says", follow it by a quote or at the very least a good synthesis of what I'm actually saying and not what you imagine that I might (probably not) be implying somehow.
Now about Shulaveri culture, that seems a fetish you have. For some reason I always think Indonesia (Sulawesi, I guess) but it's apparently an obscure culture from Georgia (a pre-Kurgan one). We have already discussed that in my blog recently (search for "Shulaveri") and it was clear that your two main arguments (dogs, R1b) were just wrong or meaningless and that the other (horses, grapes and speculation about gender-biased replacement) were non-arguments (unfounded speculations themselves). I'm truly surprised that you still stick to that idea afterwards: it means that you are not paying attention nor chewing on the discussion. And that may become a problem when one tries to have a serious discussion in which evidence and logic matters. I beg you to "shut up and calculate" in the wise words of Niels Bohr by what I mean: less repetitive speculating and more sticking to the facts, thinking again based on them, not on wishful thinking.
DeleteBy the way, Perdigoes is not, like all that area of the Alentejo, much affected by Bell Beaker. There is a significant contrast between the Alentejo and Estremadura in the Chalcolithic: the first ones erected tholoi (like Almeriense people) and did not have much BB, the latter ones dug "artificial caves" (like Languedoc elites) and had lots of BB. I'm pretty sure to have discussed this issue of irregularities in the BB patterns recently but anyhow look for instance at the map in this page, which is very informative. The main center of Bell Beaker in Iberia is no doubt VNSP but otherwise Portugal is scarcely affected. The other SW European centers are all Mediterranean (Catalonia and Languedoc very particularly, also Almeriense and Southern Valencian Country) and the inlander Ciempozuelos group discussed here. The Basque Country is not a center per se but almost certainly acted as communication node between the two Atlantic groups and Treilles (as well as very possibly Brittany and other locations that required navigation, which would be at least much safer following the coast than adventuring in the deep ocean). The Treilles-VNSP connection is underlined by all types of findings in both cultural groups, not just tombs but also specific types of conical buttons, etc.
DeleteOops, the link: http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/p/iberian-chalcolithic.html
DeleteMaju,
ReplyDeleteWhat’s up with the attitude? – I thought it was clear by my in bracket comments to you and BellBeaker that I was being Ironic and not literal. Maybe I should have make it more clear and stated so. Sorry, but you should lighten up.
First let me give a lesson about how brain works. Our brain isn´t primed for truth. Our brain is optimized for finding good arguments that support our a priori views. It means that when you hear something if it goes your way then your brain tells you “hey, I CAN believe in this” if it goes against then it, in a nanosecond, says “Hey, MUST I really HAVE TO believe in this” and tries hard to find arguments to reject it. The more invested one is in a subject the further it does that (confirmation bias). I truly think you are too invested and too in depth into your own views.. hence…! You figure the rest. - This was a friendly advice and that is why at the end you will be wrong. Like I said, this was just a friendly advice and I will not go further (I could write an essay about it).
Now, it is weird to see you, above all people to make a confusion about the “people” and the culture (bell beaker). Just strange. I never said anything about the bell beaker. It is what it is. I was talking about the “people” , and only the people that later end up been the Bell beaker. If people keeping saying that the bell beaker are strangely interconnected with dispersion of R1b in Europe starting from Portugal and they say there is no bread crumbs on how they got here from the caucasus all I am saying is yes there is(!) It isn’t even too hard to find it. Can it be wrong? Absolutely. – but remember, I am not at all invested in this stuff as you are. You are a strong, if not staunch and obsessive, defender of a continuous presence and not a Caucasus migration, and that starts to blind you to all that is new and contradicts your view. You are becoming dogmatic.
I didn’t just pick Shulaveri Shomu. I looked for “something” in the Caucasus that was disruptive by 4000 BC. By then they were simply and mysteriously vanished. They had no prior and no after. It fit the bill of a largish population moving way. Read all those papers by French researchers (some from late 2015) and by 5000BC to 4000BC they had, Pit graves, Crouch position burials with no ostentations stuff, a lot of anthropomorphic figures, beads, lots of arrowheads, cattle and horses buried around small round home negative structures in enclosure in small elevations terrain. Unlike any one before, at the same time around them and after.
I read the stuff from Perdigões Just centuries later, (forget Bell beaker) and they have exactly the same stuff (exactly) . I go to http://www.matriznet.dgpc.pt/ (where the Portuguese government has all the archeology stuff- I am impressed, real detailed with pics) and make advance search on archeology from 6000BC to 4000BC just freaking rocks (precursors) them just make search from 4000BC to 3000BC and boom! A myriad of exactly the same lithic and arrowheads, and sharp knifes and spears … that you see portrait in those shulaveri papers. You could actually switch and would not see difference in shape (for belic material) . and exactly the same elements, from figurines, to beads, to cattle burials, to arrowhead and all the same lithics. And you find the same people buried in pits, crouch, etc… and Bellbeaker blog just showed us that not long before they “Bunch of people piled in a cave or in a barrow”. Yeah a coincidence.
Now, one can say Olympus you are just seen a pattern that does not exist because… just look at this examples between 6000 and 4000 BC in Caucasus, then latter in Caspian, and later in the balcas and Italy and France and so forth, so Olympus it’s just your brain playing tricks. Ok, go for it, where is it? Where is it exactly the same match?
Well, sorry, Olympus: the irony was completely lost to me. I took you to the letter. Actually that happens often in written format, unless maybe in a humoristic forum, where people are more ready for it. Try using emoticons like ;) next time.
Delete"Our brain isn´t primed for truth".
It depends on whose brain maybe. In any case what is primed for truth is reality check: walls are hard to go through no matter how convinced you are of being an ectoplasm or able to deactivate electromagnetic coherence at whim. There is a spoon: even if "virtual" in the deepest of senses (maybe), it works fine for eating the soup.
"if it goes against then it, in a nanosecond, says “Hey, MUST I really HAVE TO believe in this” and tries hard to find arguments to reject it"...
Sure. We all do. But then again if you have good arguments, evidence, if what you say makes sense according to the available data, I MUST believe in it. I may be more or less reluctant but I cannot oppose strong evidence in the end. I know that some people can (creationists and such) but I like to think I'm not that way: that I can be mercilessly scientific even against my own prejudices. It is not easy but neither impossible: just collate the facts and be able to argue against yourself.
"I didn’t just pick Shulaveri Shomu. I looked for “something” in the Caucasus that was disruptive by 4000 BC. By then they were simply and mysteriously vanished. They had no prior and no after".
Cool, an exotic mystery. Unrelated with Western Europe. Let's parse the "evidence":
1. "Pit graves, Crouch position burials with no ostentations stuff" - Absolutely normal, ignore.
2. "a lot of anthropomorphic figures, beads" - do they look like something we see elsewhere? Can I see a picture or a dozen?
3. "lots of arrowheads" - archers, OK, quite normal
4. "cattle and horses buried around small round home negative structures in enclosure in small elevations terrain" - rare stuff, again do they look like anything else we can see anywhere?
So the issue would be to fit 2 and 4, the rest seems too common to be important, with other cultures.
...
...
Delete"I read the stuff from Perdigões Just centuries later,"
That's a problem because 5000-4000 BCE is also a time-frame that fits with early Iberian Neolithic, early Perdigoes included if I'm correct. So any confirmed correlation could go in either direction or originate at some intermediate point. A difference is that the Portuguese farmers had dolmen burials and the Georgian one did not.
"they have exactly the same stuff (exactly)"
Really? I've been reading about the site for some time now and I'm not aware. Anthropomorphic figurines (point 2) in Iberia don't show up before the Chalcolithic (some people link them to Cycladic ones but it's controversial) and what you describe in point 4 I've never read about before in Iberia or anywhere else.
You talk about the toolkit but is it really that characteristic? Look: "the same lithic and arrowheads, and sharp knifes and spears …" sounds like very weak to no evidence, although we can of course imagine that there is some sort of remote common origin, maybe in Syria or Kurdistan Neolithic, tools are practical stuff and it's difficult to establish a clear parallel unless there's a very characteristic style.
You speak about "the same... figurines", etc. but I find myself before 1500 "pesquisas" only for the 5000-4000 BCE time period and no direct comparison. You may want to open a blog or write a text with images an upload it to the cloud. It's extremely difficult to see what you "see" in text format, really. If you really are onto something and you want to persuade people, you have to work a bit.
I'm skeptical but open-minded. Do your work of pointing to the similitudes you so-clearly "see" and if you do it well, I'll ask you to publish it at my blog (under your name or pseudonym), but first you have to persuade me that you're actually onto something (not necessarily convince me, just persuade me that you're serious enough, that your evidence is really there and strikes my eye as much as it does to yours, at least to some some extent).
To Bell Beaker blogger,
ReplyDeleteLook, one can believe which pet theory one likes. What it cannot be said is that there is no bread crumbs of the R1b from Caucasus to Iberia peninsula, or from Iberia to Iberia (isn’t it incredible that the old name (600BC) south Caucasus I am talking about was… Iberia kigdom??!)
Inquire in portugal about the serra da estrela dog and experts will shrug their shoulders and say they were “always” here . Does anyone think is a fluke that a genetic MTtdna studies made on Dogs all around the world, for over 700 specimens, builds up Haplogroup D Clustering the only Portuguese autochthonous dog we have the huge Serra da Estrela with just four dogs making their one specific Dna haplogroup D ? Go figure which - the kangal (eastern anatolia near caucasus) the Spanish galgo and a Scandinavian dog… and even so the Scandinavian is 5-8 mutational steps further than the Kangal and the Portuguese do (see a1). And all this Dogs are related to the Caucasus Speppard. Just look at pics of those dogs and the caucasus sheppard and you understand why they are so genetically related.
A1 - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166218X08003703
One can say, look olimpus, it’s a fluke some dogs just where sent that further way and …. Oh yeah? Then see the next study (a2) on the diversity of the gene pool for those serra da estrela. It will blow you mind. They were many and they kept on coming.
A2 - http://bmcgenet.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2156-6-37
No bread crumbs for R1b in norther part of the mediteranean…. Now, Horses? – Does anyone think that “we all know” that horses were introduced in northern Africa just after 2000BC but, hey, just found one remain of well over 4000BC (go figure the timeline) and strangely at a certain point (don’t know exactly when) cave paintings of horses started to appear in Hoggar, Tassili and in Kabylia where humans paint for over 10,000 years.
And like the Sorraia Horse that is a Turpan like horse In Portugal the purebread Barbs of Morocco, Algeria and Libya also shows the same traits? Is it too farfetched to say those were the Turpan like horses of the Caucasus that the R1b brought while entering the Iberia Peninsula…. Well just read this following papers.
https://horseoftheamericas.com/uploads/3/1/3/7/3137829/jansen_et_al_pans.pdf
http://eprints.ucm.es/10548/2/Mol_Ecol_2009_Lira_et_al_Ancient_Iberian_horses.pdf
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015311#pone.0015311.s005
And… wine.
There is a portuguese cast (sercial) that shows up a CVg (Coefficient of variabliliy) of 43. – That is domesticated for wine, really, really but really long, long time ago. I figure, like the Shulaveri Shomu who invented wine, those guys arriving hear also new how to. Do you know where that cast is from? – yes the Zambujal Vnsp castro area… oh, another coincidence. :-)
Don't know where you got grape cast info from, but Sercial is actually not from the area of Estremadura (where VNSP is), but from way further north, in the Douro Litoral region, eventhough it's usually used in Madeira wines.
Deletehttp://www.vinetowinecircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Mapa-CERCEAL-BRANCO.png
Likewise, I'd need to see credible evidence for any of the things you're saying about the Serra da Estrela hound, or the Sorraia horses. I'm Portuguese myself and I've never come across anything that backs your claims.
By the way, I'd like to congratulate BBB on this blog, I found it through Eurogenes and I really like reading it.
DeleteCheers.
Ha! Thanks!
DeleteSo Andre...you didnt read trought the links I posted? Another lazy dude? :=)
DeleteRFP: Read the F.. papers. :)
and Andre... Sercial is actually from Bucelas, near Lisbon. And then taken up north were is known as "esgana cão". Dude, carefull with comments... this is all too flinsy and frail. It does not need that sort of comments...
DeleteOk, Maju,
ReplyDeletePoint by Point
1. "Pit graves, Crouch position burials with no ostentations stuff" - Absolutely normal, ignore.
Me: No. Direct me to papers with detailed description of such events between 6,000 years and 3.000BC. if possible with an western cline of dates.
And if possible, specifically Pit graves as described in “Lyonnet_etal2015QI”. Because read AC Valera descriptions in perdigoes of Pit 7 and it 11 and it’s the same descriptions. From the pit, the skeletons, the animals. – Normal where and by whom? Again read Lyonnet_etal2015QI” and then read “Late_Neolithic_pit_burial_fro_Perdigoes.pdf” from Ana maria Silva and AC valera.
2. "a lot of anthropomorphic figures, beads" - do they look like something we see elsewhere? Can I see a picture or a dozen?
Me: Absolutly , Just do me a favor click here, see the beads and see the dates ….http://www.matriznet.dgpc.pt/MatrizNet/Objectos/ObjectosListar.aspx?TipoPesq=4&NumPag=8&RegPag=50&Modo=1&Criterio=&SupCat=3&IdAutor=&Datacao=1%7c6000+BC%7c3000+BC
OK, then see in hamon paper http://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/paleo_0153-9345_2008_num_34_2_5258.pdf the find of carnelian beads found in 55 year old woman… now google carnelian beads and see pics… Get it?
And:
Anthropomorphic figures is in the first descriptions of perdigoes at again jus google perdigoes and those first images it shows are… Anthropomorphic figures, which is the icon of perdigoes.
3. "lots of arrowheads" - archers, OK, quite normal
Me: again click http://www.matriznet.dgpc.pt/MatrizNet/Objectos/ObjectosListar.aspx?TipoPesq=4&NumPag=1&RegPag=50&Modo=1&SupCat=3&IdAutor=&Datacao=1%7c6000+BC%7c3000+BC
Then See in Hamon and Lyonnet papers pics of lithics and weapons and show me similar. Because those are EQUAL!
4. "cattle and horses buried around small round home negative structures in enclosure in small elevations terrain" - rare stuff, again do they look like anything else we can see anywhere?
Me: See Hamon and Lyonnet papers and reas AC valera papers at perdigoes.
1. I would be honestly much more interested if instead of three children in absolutely normal position in absolutely normal pits, you had found dolmens (dolmens do appear in the Caucasus but at much later dates), which are a characteristic of Perdigoes, later expanded to include also a tholos burial.
Delete2, 3 &. Put all the stuff in a visually ready entry (Power Point, Word with images, PDF....), I'm too lazy... I'm more interested in the figurines than in semi-precious stones in any case, because it's in those where cultural similitude can be best discerned (lots of cultures had figurines but style is different). Also what about pottery, the most typical Neolithic fossil?