Ancient DNA has revealed the Scythian warrior bodies from a site in Western Russia are actually female [ScienceAlert].
Although these girls are Iron Age Scythians, this is a good ice breaker to discuss a paper by Jan Turek regarding gender identities in the Beaker and Corded Ware Cultures where we are able to observe a number of individuals who are treated in unexpected ways in death.
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| hors d'oeuvres are served! |
In "Copper Age Transformations in Gender Identities", Jan Turek looks at some of the assumptions we have been making about the Bell Beaker and Corded Ware Culture based on gender distinctions in funerary arrangements. We can assume they had an almost idealized notion of gender and gender roles, but aside from that, what do we really know?
As modern people we project quite a bit on the archaeological past to fill in the gaps of what we are able to observe. Of course the problem is that those gaps are actually pretty huge, and the past is very distant. So I'd like to give Turek's thoughts attention in more than one post. But here, let's look at Amazons.
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| One of the Western Russia Amazon Scythians with headress |
Turek cautions that we have to be careful in interpreting (for today's topic) graves of women with objects of power, prestige and warfare. He uses the example of women pharaohs of Egypt wielding the objects of male pharaonic power, being depicted or buried as shepherd kings. Understanding why Hatshepsut has a false beard takes a few minutes to explain in context.
Below we see Kurdish female fighters, which is an even more stark image coming from the part of the world where they are fighting. What exactly does it mean though? What is the message? We have to be careful in projecting what we want it mean or don't want it to mean. There is a context for this in Kurdish Culture and Kurdish political aims.
But as with quite a number of Scythian women, it isn't all show. Many of them die fighting, often fairly horrible deaths at the hands of savages, and many have the notches on the buttstock to show for their time in the field.
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| Kurdish women fighters |
I'll update this post later with a former paper showing that Beaker women may have ridden horses and shot the bow quite frequently.
And below, a reconstruction of one of several Beaker Amazon graves. Then the question, is she displaying icons of power, as a queen of Egypt, or, are these sentimental objects of male relations. Or again, was she a fighter?
The cultures that flourish generally do whatever works. Horses and equipment help to mitigate sexual differences, and so allow greater opportunity for successful gender role crossovers.
ReplyDeleteDNA seems to suggest that ancient males tended to have the more perilous positions. Their lineages were frequently wiped out by other alpha male lineages that tended to predominate, while a more diverse range of females lineages could continue to prosper. This could have allowed females to outnumber males, and might have shoe-horned some of them into traditionally male roles.
Some Irish legends show men accompanied by a comically unsustainable number of women. As Gaddafi found, having plenty of females in his armed guard could be safer. Females might have been seen as less of a threat to the alpha male lineage and more protective/less hostile towards its offspring.
It looks to me like R1b-P312 Beaker men brought about the elimination of many R1a-M417 Corded Ware lineages, but spared plenty of the females, abosrbing them into their own communities and even bringing them back to Britain, Ireland, Spain etc. In fact, these females might have ended up holding sway, turning Beaker communities more insular, more in-bred and less culturally appropriative (i.e. rather more like the CW communities from which they came). I don't really want to go there, but it is even possible that language could have spread through these female recruits as well.
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ReplyDeleteVery interesting. It kind of makes sense that younger women rode horses frequently since they are on average not as heavy as men and the horses on average were not as big. Combine this with a father who raised his daughter as if she was a son (which happens in our current society) and you get an Amazon.
ReplyDeleteA female who acts like a male, is still a female. So, a woman warrior is still a woman. I don't understand how gender identity is relevant here. It only plays a role if you suggest Scythian female warriors identifies as males. Which is unlikely but possible.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see a more thorough look at burial position, burial goods, DNA sexed gender in Beaker and Corded Ware burials in order to assess gender-roles expressed in burials. This paper mentioned one site in Czech to show some males were buried in female position. There are many other sites to look at.
I've done some cataglozing of Beaker burials. From what I saw essentially all male positioned, female positioned burials were male/female according to DNA. There are female-specific, male-specific burial goods too.
As you know, there's really good evidence of gender roles in Bell Beaker, Corded Ware, and Andronovo (who were all ultimately the same people). Which it unlikely there was any transgenderism. Bell beaker out of most ancient cultures, is one of the least likely to have non-traditional gender identity/roles. Even if a female is buried in a male way, that doesn't mean she identified as a male. Once again, I don't understand what gender identity has to do this. Gender roles is relevant but not gender identity.
That's partly what Jan Turek is saying. What started all of this was a popular media piece that had a story on a Corded Ware man buried in the female position. The media called it a 'gay caveman'. He said basically, hold on a moment, we can extrapolate modern fades or values on ancient cultures.
DeleteSo there's several important things that we don't know about Bell Beaker and Corded Ware gender-oriented burials, and that is why men and women point different directions in the first place. Obviously, they face the rising sun, and that is a spiritual nod to the resurrection or reawakening in the netherworld.
However, I have speculated that the reason why women, girls and very small boys are buried one direction and big boys and men in the opposite direction, is because men and women separated into two groups at night to sleep. This has ethnographic-historical precedent in many primitive cultures. The reason is obvious, to give women and girls their dignity and also have all the crying babies on their side of the home. Men and boys probably rose very early in the morning to hunt and mend fences, chase stray animals, etc.
So if an old man is buried in the women's position, doesn't necessarily mean he's lost his manhood. Could well be that he was in the final stages of lung cancer and needed constant care of women. Who knows?
With women buried as warriors, it is very unlikely they were as we might expect. Rather as a warrior culture, personal toughness before marriage might have been viewed very favorably, or they could have had some sort of dynastic power that required the use of wielding implements of power. Consider Queen Elizabeth II of the UK using a sword to knight men. Her arms are male, many of her titles and positions are male. That's the nature of power in Ancient Egypt or Britain or really, anywhere.
edit..."can't extrapolate"
DeleteIf I remember correctly, Herodotus wrote that among the Sauromatai (Sarmatians?) female toughness was not only been looked upon favourably, but women were not allowed to marry until they had killed an enemy (ok ok we should not take Herodotus as a reliable source, etc, but still). I wouldn't even speak of gendered roles, because in some cultures some roles (as being a warrior, for example) could perfectly be a male AND female thing, not "females doing male things"
DeleteOk, I understand what you're arguing now. You're saying we don't know the purpose of the gender-specific burial tradition in Bell Beaker. And some factors may have caused males to be buried in female position and females to be buried in male position but not because of transgenderism but for other reasons.
DeleteHow about Tomyris Queen of the Massagetae ?
DeleteDo we think that Turek's example is unique within Bell Beaker? Two out of fourteen male child context burials being female, and six out of seven female child context burials being male (including two males in their late teens) seems a lot.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see the DNA of these cross-gender children. I wonder if the males in female contexts might have been children of foreign women or prior partners, and therefore not wanted as part of the main pack of related males; and if the females in male contexts were children of native or favoured wives being treated as male to help assert their status as offspring of the alpha male.
On the other hand, I go back to a point I've made before. Bell Beakers arriving in Central Europe seem to have taken on plenty of Corded Ware female partners and become more militant after doing so. Perhaps the Beaker men admired and were heavily influenced by some of these 'female warriors'?
It extends beyond Central Europe into Iberia (see here:
Deletehttps://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/search?q=girls+with+guns
So the phenomenon, or at least this particular flavor, may have been more widely seen but not as archaeologically present as Central Europe has the strict gender alignments that allow us to see the deviation.
But there are examples of women with arrows and boar's tusks in the West, otherwise irregular.
Interesting. Do we have any dates and/or DNA for these Iberian females?
DeleteIf the women died violent deaths, I suppose the daggers might have been placed in the burials by men for the women's protection in the afterlife, rather than the women themselves being naturally associated with them?
I wonder if the burial position has to do with a special ritual for warriors, regardless of their gender. Something like sending them to a place in heaven exclusive for warriors, for which they have to be positioned in a certain way with prayers/songs/rituals performed. Fantasy land, of course
Deletela señora bibiloni: I wonder. A Beaker "Valhalla" perhaps
DeleteMaybe the warrior's afterlife lays in one direction and the householder's afterlife lays in the other.
Good connection.
DeletePerhaps it is significant that a female would choose which of the dead went to Valhalla (presided over by a male god) and which to Folkvangr (presided over by a goddess)? Generally, the males might have gone with the male god and the females with the goddess, but it was for the goddess to choose as she saw fit.
Lots of videos from archaeologist/historian Dr. Alexandr Semenenko promoting his new books in the Russian language.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Vritrahan2014
He says the dispersal of Indicus cattle is proof of OIT. I notice he left Old Kingdom Egypt off the map, probably because it would hurt his argument. The dispersal of heat tolerant cattle after 4.2kilo year event had everything to do with the need for heat and drought tolerant cattle.
Deletehttps://www.academia.edu/41671121/Dr._A._A._Semenenko_Indo-European_dispersal_map_updated_variant_19_01_2020
Hello,
DeleteI have posted your question on Youtube under one of his videos. Will let you know if there is an answer.
I think the Male spread of Indicus Cattle Genes basically speaks for itself. Trade. Which tribe will leave their cows behind while migrating ?
DeleteA while back some Archaeologists claimed that some Indicus reached Italy about +-70 000 years ago. Wonder if they already tried to sample these ? It is interesting that some breeds like the Romagnola possess Haplogroup Q which is close to the Bos Indicus/Taurus split. This could account for some of the Indicus-like genes they picked up among Italian Cattle. Could it be that Human Y-DNA Haplogroup K spread out of India or neighbouring countries to the North due to this event ? Yes I know there is a huge gap between 70 000 and 55 000 years ago, but yes there is also a huge gap of dating knowledge between the Archaeology of then and now...
DeleteSeems like a fair question that needs an answer.
ReplyDeletePlease refer to
VII. Appendix 2: The Evidence of Animal and Plant Names
H. The Evidence of the Cow:
below for the full linguistic case
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-rigveda-and-aryan-theory-rational_27.html
There in Talageri cites the following article:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6449/173
"But even more linguistically important is that the Sanskrit language contains every single common IE word associated with cows and cattle, except, significantly, the "Near Eastern migratory term" borrowed from Semitic referred to by Gamkrelidze (the implications of the absence of which, in the three eastern branches, definitely shows that "the speakers of these dialects were not acquainted with the wild cows found specifically in the Near East" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:491 paraphrased) as already discussed earlier)."
If there was migration in the other direction Indo Aryans would have the Near Easter word for cow. The same is true for words for wine and milk. Only the nine western branches have a word for it.
I mean IA do not have the milk type of word for milk.
DeleteThanks for posting that. There are a number of alternatives for the scenario you mention, or at least in the linked blog.
Delete"Milk and the Indo-Europeans" by Garnier, Sagart and Sagot addresses this issue with the IA form being a development after the departure of IA from the others, and all others being in the process of development from the Anatolian languages to the breakup of Core IE.
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01667476/document
But more than the linguistic evidence alone, you can show in archaeological contexts lipid residues from beakers in the second millennium of Europe among the Copper Age cultures having a strong steppe element. Also can be shown the spread of T-13910 the lactase persistence allele which is now almost universal in Northern Europe, but also most of the IE successor cultures in various frequencies. Harrapans were probably universally lactose intolerant as were Neolthic Europeans. I have a difficult time believing that Proto-Indo-Europeans could be a culture full of lactose intolerant folks.
I think I have found the samples for the Iberian Bell Beaker females buried with daggers.
ReplyDeleteThey are accompanied by contemporaneous male samples analysed as being of varied ethnicity, either R1b-P312 50:50 Central European/prior Iberian or I2a-M223 wholly prior Iberian; but the females too are analysed as being wholly prior Iberian and having little or no Central European Bell Beaker/Bronze Age related ancestry.
Accordingly, if the daggers indicated them to be 'warrior females', they do not appear to have achieved this status by virtue of familial descent from the R1b males with substantial Central European ancestry. And the Olaide study does not show significant samples of females of mixed DNA until about 350 years later in the Bronze Age.
Might this indicate anything about why these ethnic Iberian females were buried with daggers?
As there was a 5 year old Central European boy buried with an axe, I would guess that burial with weapons is not necessarily indicative of warrior status. And as it seems to be mainly children that were found in cross-gender burial contexts, I would guess that the burial says more about the adult burier than the buried child.
ReplyDeleteChange in burial practice, particularly if this involves weapons, is perhaps likely to indicate a context of conflict or instability. When needs must, females and children might also have borne arms; and alternately, small boys might have stayed with the females for their own safety - and these positions might have been represented in their burials.
If we look at the contexts of these burials, they both seem to have occurred in periods of conflict:
1. Central Europe, at a point when Beaker R1b-U152 lineages were wholesale replacing Corded Ware R1a-M417 lineages.
2. North Central Spain, at a point when traditional Iberian Neolithic descendants appear to have been fairly successfully rebuffing incursions from minorities with Central European ancestry (I say Central European, although it was only semi-Central European and more like ancestry that had already arisen in Spain in a small minority of samples up to a millennium beforehand).
In the case of the Iberian women with daggers, I wonder whether they were standard Iberian Neolithics who had joined a minority community along with at least one Iberian Neolithic male, and were targeted for it. The daggers might have reflected their perceived dangerous situation or bravery to others in their community?
I think with children you are more likely to find small boys buried in the female context that a small girl in a male context. I think the reason again has something practical to do within the domestic household, like men and women sleeping on opposite sides of the living quarters, be it a longhouse, roundhouse, wagon or tent.
DeleteTurek eludes to something similar in his paper, showing small boys dressed in lacy gowns with ribbons and curls. I think most Western Europeans treated "baby" as gender neutral up until recently, probably because birth rates were high and reusability necessary.
Neolithic Iberia was an increasingly militarized place before the Beaker era. But there may have been a shift from collective defenses towards personal bravery, a "come and take it" sort of attitude among the men and women (especially within the vast interior land). These marriages between Beaker men and Native Iberian women were legitimate, monogamous marriages as far as I can tell. So there is a cultural fusion that incorporates these impulses in the interior especially, and women holding daggers in burial is in my mind a reflection of the toughness of these early ranchers.
Makes sense. Two of the cross-gender Czech burials of males were estimated as ages 15-20 though, which seems pretty old for pre-pubescent gender neutral (especially as I think they must have been R1b-U152, as virtually all males were in Czech Beaker). I can't find reference to the ages of the two girls; but based on the entirely Neolithic DNA of the armed Iberian females, I don't think we can necessarily assume they were daughters of elite R1b-U152 alpha males. Perhaps they just had a talent for this kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteAlthough legitimate, I'm not sure of the extent to which mixed marriages in Iberia were considered socially acceptable. The first sign of such admixture is ATP7 (early 4th millennium BC), but from then on the intrusive component dwindles and appears to retreat. Then, as Olaide's study indicates, further intrusive people arrive from 2,500 BC, strikingly with the women turning up before the men.
The first R1b men were already admixed when they appeared, and were probably not Central European in any case as they are unlikely to have been R1b-U152 (as virtually all were in Central Europe); perhaps they came from somewhere nearer to home and had the same direct ancestors as ATP3 and ATP7?
If there were mixed marriages between the natives and the early immigrants, they would appear to have been few and far between, as Olaide shows the Iberian samples as autosomally distinct and apparently unadmixed until the natives diappeared off the record in the Bronze Age (around 1,900 BC). When there does appear to be fusion of these peoples (as at Humanejos), we find apparently violent deaths and women with daggers.
Sorry, I meant late 4th millennium BC for ATP7.
DeleteInteresting article on Punic influences on Proto-Germanic. It pins the influences to Iron Age loan words from trade relationships rather than substrate influence, which is probably about right. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-shillings-gods-runes-clues-language.html
ReplyDeleteSeemed kinda thin with no references. Would have been stronger if it had compared and contrasted with sister languages of Proto-Germanic. And address the evidence for a western contact area over a eastern contact area. Did I mention no references?
DeleteYes, but are there any alternative (non-Punic) etymological explanations for Germanic shillings and pennies? And how do we compare with sister languages that might have been similarly influenced when their equivalent terms would have all been blotted out by subsequent Roman or English colonisation? It is also a little curious that Germany is the only European country away from the Mediterranean that seems to show minor traces of Phoenician-like DNA.
Delete''Interesting article on Punic influences on Proto-Germani''
DeleteI suggested the same a few weeks ago. Seems a lot more realistic than the flimsy idea that British Neolithi spoke Semitic, proposed by the blog host
I'm not sure that this idea is any flimsier than the Punic influences idea. Both seem have a little supporting evidence, linguistically and genetically, but nothing conclusive. And it's not necessarily one or the other - there could have been multiple sources of minor Semitic influences on European languages, especially as these influences seem to differ from one language to the other (word order in Goidelic, monetary terminology in Germanic).
DeleteThe significant thing is that this indicates how young proto-Germanic might be, and perhaps suggests an alternative route for its spread into Northern Europe. As (i) these monetary terms do not seem to arise in neighbouring sister languages and (ii) mildly significant traces of Punic-like DNA only seem limited to Germany, it is perhaps suggestive of proto-Germanic (like proto-Celtic) being influenced from somewhere closer to the Mediterranean where Punic was known to be present (e.g. the Alps).
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DeleteNot so. At least we know Punic/ Phoenecians spoke Semetic, and reached the western Mediterranean, as did an assortment of west IE groups, incl Nordic seafarers.
DeleteSo if theres anything to the Semitic adstratum , thats the best bet.
On the other hand, the idea of Semitic western huntergatherers (which is essentially what western farmers are) is simply not based on anything
Possibly, although didn't the Nordic seafarers come quite a while later?
DeleteThe point is, if we know that Phoenicians reached the Western Med, it is still a relatively long stretch for them to have made it all the way to a pre-Proto Germanic Baltic without having left much of a trace of themselves along the way in Celtic and Scandinavian populations.
It is a shorter stretch for them to have made contact in the Northern Med or Adriatic, possibly through the Etruscans, perhaps encountering Germanics in the vicinity of the Alps or Slovenia. After all, we know that there were Germanic-associated populations in the Carpathians at around that time, and that Germanics were in Italy battling the Romans not long afterwards.
As Proto-Germanic is considered to have been spoken fairly recently (possibly as late as the end of the first century BC), it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Punicisms were picked up from contacts in the South and subsequently disseminated among the Germanic tribes on returning North. We can see Celticisms spreading almost contemporaneously in a similar direction.
Yes, interesting. Could the Irish language have been influenced from the same source? (earlier thread)
ReplyDeleteThis would presumably make the Semiticisms post-Beaker, and the Punic influences on pre-Proto Germanic (so at a less certain location).
My son tells me that, in Viking legend, anyone who died nobly with sword in hand was sent to Valhalla (buried in a male context), regardless of biological gender.
ReplyDeleteHeads up: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=47645
ReplyDeleteInteresting how he cousins some of the early splits. It seems to more concretely nestle the Corded Ware into the Balto-Slavic-Indo-Aryan node timewise (not that evidence hasn't already been piling up). It probably also fits together the pieces of a SGC/CW/Beaker horizon as essentially LPIE (or SAIE as he calls it).
DeleteYes, although Corded Ware had an odd mix of homogeneities and heterogeneities, so it would seem uncertain when its core population coalesced and whether it had a common language.
DeleteFirstly, the genetic profile of its core population was already distinctive in the late fifth millennium BC (Alexandria, NE Ukraine), so this would seem to indicate that it arose from a very split.
Secondly, there are at least two other varieties of it with different genetic profiles - Latvian/Scandinavian (Siberian-looking) and Polish (little or no Yamnayan/CHG input) - so it is unclear which of these sub-groups would have introduced LPIE and whether all of them spoke it.
To revert to females buried with weapons, the legends of the Vikings (who retained Beakerish traits) might be instructive. One of their principal deities, Freyja, was essentially a powerful chariot-riding warrior goddess, who received and took charge of the slain. I suspect that Beaker females might also have been considered an integral part of the 'warrior' machine, albeit having mostly supporting roles.
ReplyDelete