Who are we Europeans?

   19 joulukuun, 2024  Leave a Comment on Who are we Europeans?  Posted in Uncategorized

Have you ever wondered why Indo-European languages ​​are spoken in Europe? Or why Europeans are physically taller than people elsewhere? One culture has essentially influenced the kind of people who live in Europe today. Around 3600–2200 BC. the Yamnaya culture, which extended in the territory of present-day Ukraine and southern Russia, began to spread east, west and north. Most of today’s Europeans are descendants of the Yamnas and speak languages ​​developed from their language.

The wheel, cart and bit were top inventions of the Neolithic Stone Age

The Yamnaya were the first in Europe to use the wheel, about 3300 years BC. Before the Yamnaya culture, the wheel was introduced on the Asian side in Mesopotamia, whose war chariots are well known in history. It is not known who originally invented the wheel. At first the wheels were made of solid wood and only around 2000 BC. it was discovered that the wheel could be made lighter by making holes in it. Possibly before the wheel used in vehicles, the potter’s wheel was invented.

If the wheel had never been invented, the world would be very different now. Horse-drawn travois would wear out quickly in use. Their brands would hardly be BMW, Volvo and Kia.

The Yamnas had livestock, i.e. domesticated animals: cattle, sheep and horses. It was easy to travel even long distances in the vast aromas by bullock and horse-drawn wagons. Wagon was a camper van of that time, where you could spend the night even in the middle of the steppe. Food, water and clay pots were easily carried. Wagons have been found in many Yamnaya graves.

The Yamnas also rode horses. While a shepherd on foot with a shepherd dog can herd a flock of only one hundred sheep, a horse shepherd can have a flock of 500 sheep. Traces of bits made of organic materials (rope and leather) have been found in the oldest jaws of Yamnas horses found by archaeologists. Bronze bits came into use in Europe during the Bronze Age, which was in the Caucasus in the 3700-3500 BC. and elsewhere in Europe after that. The bits were the top technology of the time, because with the bits and the bridle attached to them, the horse is made to turn and stop. A horse’s wheel and brake, then. Stirrups, on the other hand, changed warfare after they were invented much later, in China between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD.

The Yamnas were nomads who could move with their sheep and other animals to where there was food for the animals. These nomads were also able to spread to areas inhabited by farmers. Of course, conflicts arose from it, even wars.

War must have been invented already when homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis lived side by side in Europe. As is well known, the development of tools used for warfare has always led to technical development. Two-wheeled chariots were adopted by the Yamnas who fought tribal wars in the steppes, which were replaced by light spoked wheels in the Sintashta culture south of the Ural Mountains (2200–1900 BC, Copper Age). The two-wheeled war chariot was less stable than the four-wheeled horse-drawn chariot and therefore required more of its user, but it was fast and it was good to throw spears or javelins from it.

European languages ​​spread across Europe with the Yamnas

With carts it was easy and fast for the Yamnas to travel in the steppe and with horses in the forests.

As the Yamnas spread, so did their language, the proto-Indo-European language (PIE) and its many branches. According to linguists, PIE contained vocabulary related to new innovations, i.e. moving with wagons and wool, such as axle, wheel, wagon, shaft, sheep, yarn and wool. When PIE split into different language groups (Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Greek, Tocharian, etc.), these words remained in use, but gradually changed.

The word Yamna comes from the Russian word jama, which means pit, and Yamnaja, related to pits. The Yamnas were the first pit grave culture in Europe: they buried their dead in pits and probably built hillocks, kurgans or tumuli, on top of the graves of important persons. The bodies usually lay on their backs with their knees bent. Ochre was also used in some of the burials. Tens of thousands of pit graves have been found in Yamnas, and animals, especially horses, have also been buried in many of them with their owners. Pit graves have also been a kind of innovation and have replaced cremation.

The descendants of the Yamnas can be found as far away as China

With ox or horse wagons, it was easy for the Yamnas to move across the steppe, conducting trade and wars. Millennia ago, the steppe region of present-day Ukraine and southern Russia connected the Balkans, the Middle East and China. Tin, used in the manufacture of bronze, was an important trade item, as were horses.

In Xinjiang, the westernmost part of China, mummies of fair-haired people have been found. The oldest mummies are from around 2000 BC. Haplogroup R1a1 of the genetic paternal line, or Y-DNA, has been isolated from the mummies’ genes, which was born after a couple of mutations from the haplogroup R1a of the Yamnas. About 30% of the current inhabitants of the Tarim Plateau in China belong to haplogroup R1a1.

Haplogroup simply means a piece of a gene. A haplogroup is a type of human inheritance that is different in populations of different origins. It means the line of development of a part of the genome and a group of closely related DNA haplotypes, i.e. gene types. Haplogroup R1 is thought to have originated in the area of ​​Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan already in the Paleolithic period – when most of Europe was under the continental glacier. R1a and R1b have arisen from R1 as a result of mutations.

The descendants of Yamnas in the direct paternal line are all those who have haplogroup R in their Y-DNA or one of its mutations, R1a something or R1b something, for example R1a1b1a. Nowadays, shorter codes are used, for example the author of this belongs to the haplogroup R-YP682. One or more mutations occur every millennium. My haplogroup R-YP682 arose about 2000 years ago as a result of a mutation from R-Y5570. The common ancestor of the line was born around the year 50.

With modern technology, the genes of a single person can be studied precisely based on one sample taken from the cheek with a cotton swab, and when the databases contain data from thousands of people’s samples, studying the genes of populations is statistical mathematics. Technology has developed in recent years so that DNA replication is fast and inexpensive.

I won’t say anything about women here, because they don’t have a Y-chromosome and therefore don’t have Y-chromosome haplogroups either. The genetic paternal line on the Y chromosome is inherited only by sons. Each woman can still consider herself to represent the same haplogroup as her father and brother. The genetic maternal line (mtDNA), on the other hand, is inherited by both men and women, because it is located in the mitochondrial DNA of the cells.

Half of Europe are descendants of the Yamnas

The Yamnas left haplogroups R1a, R1b and their subhaplogroups in the genes of Europeans.

With some of the Yamnas, the journey continued (perhaps generation after generation) to the Atlantic coasts, to Spain and Ireland. They took their genes with them with their R1b subhaplogroups. More than 80% of men in Ireland, the Basque Country and the Brittany region still have it.

If you count the Jamna haplogroups R1a and R1b together, the countries with the most Yamna descendants are Spain (71%), France (61.5%) and Germany (60.5%). The top of the provinces is the Basque Country, where 85% of the men are descendants of the Yamnas. Next come Scotland (81%), and Normandy (77%). A total of 52% of Latvian men are descendants of Jamnos in the direct paternal line, 43% of Italians, 57.5% of Norwegians, 57.5% of Portuguese, 52% of Russians, 53% of Dutch, 37.5% of Swedes and only 8.5% of Finns (source: https ://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml).

The genes brought by the Yamnas are thus still visible in the genes of today’s Europeans. R1a is common in Eastern Europe and R1b in Western Europe. It is assumed that R1a first spread to the forest zone and R1b first to the steppe zone.

Today’s Europe is the way it is today precisely because of the influence of the Yamnas. If the Yamnas had not spread one tribe or family at a time to Europe, languages ​​other than, for example, German, French and English would be spoken here today. Nations would probably have very different goals than today, and the European Union would never have been founded.

Yamnas and Corded Ware culture lived side by side and mixed with each other

The Yamnas and the people of the Corded Ware culture were in contact with each other. In the area from the Danube to the Urals, the Yamnas were further east and the Corded Ware culture, i.e. the Hammer Ax people, were further west.

In Northern Europe, the Corded Ware culture spread with the descendants of the Yamnaya, and at the same time the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages ​​spread in their preliminary stages.

Photo: Wikipedia

The hammer ax of the Hammer Ax culture has basically been both a tool and a weapon of war. A hammer ax is a stone ax that has a hammer-like butt and often has a pattern on top that is made to resemble the cast seams of copper or bronze axes. Hammer axes were made where bronze or even copper was not used yet. During the Hammer Ax culture, bronze was only used in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. The Hammer Ax culture of the Neolithic Stone Age was ending the Stone Age in Central and Northern Europe and was followed by the Bronze Age.

However, the hammer axes found show little signs of use, which gives a hint that they had some other purpose. Maybe they have been some kind of status items, the Mercedes of their time, and maybe they have told what position their owners had in the community. Perhaps. There is no certainty about the thoughts of past people.

The linguistic influence of Corded Ware culture has probably been preserved in Finland. Up to a quarter of the names of Finland’s largest lakes are thought to come from the language that was spoken in the area of ​​present-day Finland before Sami and Finnish. For example, the names Saimaa, Päijänne and Inari come from a language that has been lost for a long time, probably from the Indo-European language spoken by the Corded Ware culture. It would be more difficult to explain what language other than Indo-European would have been spoken here before Sámi.

Europeans and the genes of Europeans changed

After spreading throughout Europe, the Yamnas displaced, according to one estimate, about 70 percent of the population of Central Europe and about 30 percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula. It has been estimated that up to 80 percent of Europeans’ genes changed with the Yamnas.

Along with the Yamnaya culture and its followers, the genes of completely new paternal lines R1a and R1b spread across Europe, while haplogroup G2, among other things, disappeared from a wide area. Ötzi the Iceman belonged to its more specific subhaplogroup G2a2b, which is very rare in Europe today.

In the beginning, the Yamnas who came to Europe are thought to have been almost exclusively male warriors who multiplied with the women belonging to the native population. Therefore, the genetic maternal lines of Europeans did not change as radically as the paternal lines. Today, up to two-thirds of European men are descended from the Yamnas in direct genetic paternal lines.

Why were the Yamnas successful?

Before the arrival of the Yamnas, the Paleo-Europeans who preceded them have died en masse from bubonic plague. A large part of Paleo-Europeans may have already died of the plague before the Jamna arrived, or the Jamna may have been resistant to it.

It is uncertain whether the Yamnas and their descendants spread their culture and genes violently. They apparently did not fight actual wars of conquest, but they did have tribal wars among themselves. The Yamnas have been bigger and stronger than the Paleo-Europeans. One influence of the Yamnas on today’s Europe is the larger physical size (i.e. the height of Europeans) and the strength it brings. The explanation for the success of the Yamnas can be as simple as that Paleo-European women wanted to mate with large and powerful Yamna men and have offspring with them. Or the women’s opinion on the matter was not asked. In any case, the genetic paternal lines of Europeans changed enormously under the influence of the Yamnas, but the genetic maternal lines remained almost unchanged.

The larger physical size and European appearance of modern Finns also suggest that we too have genes brought by the descendants of the Jamnos. In addition to the genetic paternal and maternal lines, we are talking about autosomal genes, which are all genes other than gametes, on 22 chromosomes. It may be that the autosomal genes of Finns are largely derived from the Corded Ware culture, i.e. Hammer Ax culture, from the descendants of the Yamnas. Some of it is of Siberian origin.

One simple explanation for the Yamno’s ability to spread is the Yamno’s ability to tolerate milk, to which earlier Paleo-Europeans were intolerant. Milk has been an important protein even in the Stone Age, thanks to which the Yamnas have been healthier and bigger than the people, into whose territories these nomads spread. By the way, people of Finnish descent are distinguished in Russia today by the fact that they are lactose intolerant.

The invention of iron has influenced who lives in Finland today

The Yamnas have therefore essentially influenced the genetic father lines of Europeans and to some extent of Asians as well. A clear exception in Europe is Finland, where the R1a and R1b haplogroups of the genetic paternal lines of the Yamnas are only 8.5% in total. About 58% of Finnish men belong to haplogroup N1c. Why is Finland an exception in Europe?

Before Baltic Finns came to Finland around 2850 BC. the widespread Neoceramic population consisted of 75% descendants of the Yamnas. When the Finno-Ugric people, or more precisely the Baltic Finns, arrived in Finland around 0 AD, they brought their own genes, the Y-DNA haplogroup N1c. The prehistory of this haplogroup goes back to Eastern Siberia and China. Probably, hunters and traders spread here from the east and south gradually, i.e. generation after generation. According to the latest research, the ancestors of Finns came here from both the east and the south, the Baltics.

Superior technology must have helped the matter: iron. The use of iron in weapons and plows must have charmed the women in the Baltics and Finland, or it was easy to use steel swords to fight against men who had bronze swords.

People have moved before

People moving is not a new thing. If a person claims that a people has always lived where they are now, they couldn’t be more wrong. For example, Finns have not always been able to live in Finland, because only 8,000 years ago there was a couple of kilometers of ice here, with nothing living under and on top of it.

Of course, movement was much slower than today, but wagons and horses still made it faster than walking. Even today, you can go around the whole world on foot, if you spend enough time and shoes on it.

Homo sapiens has moved across the globe in all directions, back and forth, and before sapiens, especially in Europe, Homo neanderthalis had an impact, whose genes are a couple of percent of the genes of today’s sapiens. Homo neandertalis and homo sapiens have thus interbred long ago.

R1 haplogroups are thought to have originated in Siberia. When the last ice age was at its most extensive, Northern China and Siberia were an ice-free area and it was one of the few areas in all of Eurasia where humans could live. By the way, the ancestors of the Inuits and Indians also set out from Eastern Siberia, crossing the isthmus at the site of the Bering Strait, when the sea level was more than a hundred meters lower than today.

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