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Tungids: Asiatic Nomadic Fishers with Conical
Tepee Huts
One of the most archaic
tribes is recognised in the Tungusoid lake-dwelling
fishermen. Tungusic nations occupy a secondary
homeland in northeast Siberia and from here they proceeded to the tertiary
cradle-land north of the Black Sea.
The latter became the starting-point of the Aurignacian
westward colonisations (37,000 BP). In a relief displayed at L’Institut du Paleontologie humaine at Vallois the Chancelade man with
a gracile Europoid
physiognomy was labelled as a Tungid. The hypothetical cradle of Pre-Aurignacians is situated at the archaeological site Kostenki (39,000 BC) on the Don River.
About 5,000 BC their descendants founded sites of the pit-grave culture
referred to as Yamna or Yamnaya.
Their survivors may be identified with the medieval tribes of Polovtsy, Polane, Kypchaks and Volga Bulgars.
Nowadays they are classified as Turcoids because their
languages got assimilated under the pressure of the fraternal moiety of Turcoids residing east of the Caspian. The secondary
impact of Slavs in the north and Turcoids in the
south caused that they now remain scattered and dispersed all over Eurasia. Traditional hypotheses reckoned with a diaspora launching an eastward colonisation that
arrived in northeast Siberia
about 40,000 BC. Owing to this plantation the rapid watercourses of Siberia were settled by the Tungus
tribes of Evenks, Nanais,
Negidals, Oroch and Udege people. A new different account is offered by
population genetics that advocates a westward move of the Y-DNA haplogroup C from Tungusic
Siberia to the Pontic settlements of the Yamnaya north of the Black Sea.
The westward Aurignacian colonisation of nomadic fishermen
started from the Black
Sea and headed
for the lake district on the boundaries of France, Italy and Switzerland. Archaeologists assume that Aurignacian industry propagated in two directions. One
group marched through the southern Balkans and continued south of the Alps to Italy. The other group advanced along the Danube Basin as far as the Pyrenees and arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. Special types of its artifacts were manufactured by the Bachokirian group in Bulgaria, the Pavlovian culture in Moravia and the Uluzzian
in Italy. Their possible descendants survived for
ages in the Chasséen cultures of Lagozza and Polada remarkable
for building lakeside post-dwellings. Herodot
described the lifestyle of Macedonian lake-dwellers called Paeones: “In the centre of the lake is a timbered
scaffolding on high piers, accessible over one narrow footbridge ... They get
these stakes from the Orbelos mountains and whoever
gets married drives three stakes into the lake-ground for each of his wives.
They live in huts built on the scaffolding and every hut can be entered only
over a drawbridge projecting above the water. Little babies are tied up with
a rope by their legs in fear lest they should fall down into the water.”
The role of the Antelian
culture in Palestine is uncertain as beside
the Tungusic migration route the Aurignacian cultural type is detected also in the Near
East and eastern Africa. These areas lie below sea level along the Great
Depression and teem with lakes favoured as fishing grounds by nomadic
fishermen. Their slender gracile constitution gave
rise to Chris Stringer’s out-of-Africa theory
explaining the arrival of Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Their industry
consisted of Leptolithic prismatic knives classified as products of
either Aurignacian or Levalloisian flake-tool
cultures. The usual dating of Levalloisian artefacts ranges from 125,000 to
500,000 BP and supports hypotheses of the African origin of Levalloisian
techniques of knapping flakes.
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Phratries
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Tungus/Danaids (Diana – bear)
– Del(ph)ians (Pythia – dolphin) – Pelasgians (Apollo, Lycaeon –
wolf) – Latins
(Leto – swan)
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Ecotype
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lakeside and riverside nomadic fishing, streets of rows of post-houses
or stilt-dwellings facing the waterside area, columnal
architecture on shores
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Nutrition
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nomadic fishing, catching
sweet-water fish, hunting antelopes, breeding goats and sheep, eating oak
acorns, planting cherry trees
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Dwellings
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lakeside dwellings, lake platforms, tepee tents, circular
conical tents with poles crossed into a wreath and bound at the top,
post-dwellings and stilt-dwellings on the lake, round houses on pillars
erected over water surface, megaron with
two columns in the hall, palace architecture with arcades, colonnades,
porticos and triangular gables, often without inner walls
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Cult
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totemism, worshipping totem
ancestors in the reincarnation of the wolf, the bear, the swan and the
dolphin, a cult of twins, myths about the tribal descent from the pair of
twins or the Roman Gemini, Greek Castor – Pollux,
Polish Lel – Polel
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Burials
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round pit-graves with
flexed knees sprinkled by ochre haematite paint, stone steles of warriors
and menhirs standing over graves
petrothanasia: faith in the
post-mortal transubstantiation of the tragically deceased into a rock or a
strong predacious fish
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Weapons
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Levalloisian leptolithic knives, Aurignacian
prismatic knives, long cutting weapons and sabres, armour with feather
head-bands
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Visage
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long black hair, whitish pale complexion, graceful stature, slender leptosomous constitution common to Mediterranids,
beautiful face
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Clothing
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Turkish kaftan tied by a belt round the
waist, drinking rhytons and chalices out of horns
stuck behind the belt, head-bands
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DNA
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ABO group B, Y DNA C1-C5, possibly Y DNA F/T, mtDNA
C
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Poetry
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auletic monodies to the flute,
elegiac distichs with parallelisms
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Language
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agglutination, SOV word order, vowel synharmony,
l-plurals, unvoiced sonorants, tenues-to-lenes
opposition, lambdacism,
affricates tl-,
dl-, laminal retroflex stops, their dephonologisation t/d → tl/dl → l, penultimate
accent
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Table 24. The cultural paradigm of Tungids and Pelasgids
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In quest of the lost ethnic identity of prehistoric lake-dwellers
we may resort either to Pelasgian ‘Sea Peoples’ or to the ancient nations of Lydians, Carians and Lelegs in Anatolia. The Pelasgian
sun-god Apollo was a brother of Diana and descended from Zeus’ union with Leto on the isle of Delos. His family-tree
contains ethnonymic roots Pel-/Bel-,
Dan-/Tung-, Lat-/Let-, Del-/Tel- of
the chief Pelasgian phratries.
Greek Pelasgians had brothers in the moiety of Danaids and in Italy the Arcadian
king Lycaeon initiated a plantation of the Apulli and Daunii. On the British Isles the torch of Pelasgian nationality was brought by the La
Tène culture and the kindred tribes
of Belgae (or their predecessors Firbolgs) and Tuath Daanu. In the Levant their relatives
worshipping the god Baal were referred to as biblical Philistines and known
as nations of Palestinians and Dans.
The
ancestors of Tungids remembered the glorious
heydays of the Aurignacian colonisation around
36,000 BC, when their bone industry and long prismatic Leptolithic knives conquered all ends of Eurasia. In the
northeast territory of Siberia they can be
discerned distinctly according to the Tungusic haplogroup C. There are hardly higher rates of C anywhere
in Europe and Africa because they
were overpopulated by other cultures. The Tungusic haplogroup C is probably a transmutation of the Y DNA haplogroup T propagated in relatively high rates all over
Europe and Africa. About 11,000 BC
Tungusic peoples got across the Bering Strait and
flooded the New World with their typical tall conical tent (tepee or tipi)
made from long posts crossed and tied at the top with a rope from sinews.
Here their relay was taken over by Uto-Aztecan tribes living predominantly on
lakeside and riverside fishing. Their settlements were outnumbered by
Algonquin buffalo hunters with the Y DNA haplogroup
Q, who became the American dominant number one. The subdominant number two
fell to the Uto-Aztecan fishermen with the Y DNA haplogroup
C represented at best by the Aztec lake-dwellers inhabiting high lakeside
tepees.
Populations of lake-dwelling fishermen
with pit-graves and ochre haematite burials can be divided into several
colonisations with regard to folk architecture. Its earliest tribal archetype
was represented by tree-dwellings with a nest on a primitive platform
sheltered by tied boughs. Such summer time abodes have survived up to now in
the Solomon Islands. Their later innovations gave rise to
high circular conical tents out of long poles coated by hides or skins. The
earliest pit-graves from Blombos Cave in South Africa date from 70,000 BP and may be associated
with Levalloisian encampments with prismatic flakes. From here Levalloisian
industry spread to the Horn of Africa and Palestine where it split into the Indo-Pakistani
branch represented by the Soanian complex and the
northwest stream wandering along the water streams of southern Europe. Fishermen occupying these areas
developed the peculiar folk architecture of South African roundhouses called rondavels. Their construction looks like a round
cylindrical hut from poles sheltered by a conical roof. Rondavels
predefined the prototype of roundhouses that range with high occurrence from
southeast Africa to Palestine and Greece. From the Balkans they pursue the
coastline settlements of the Neolithic Cardial Impresso pottery as far as France and the British Isles. In Apulia it is common to build roundhouses with a
conical thatched roof called trullo, in
Spanish Galicia there appears a similar folk style palloza and in Wales, Scotland and Ireland they are known as crannogs. The
British crannog lies on a wooden platform supported by stakes. It is
linked with the lakeshore by a bridge called dun in Ireland and causeway in Britain. Another series of conical roundhouses
propagated to the Indian subcontinent and led to settlements of Tulu and Telugu tribes in southern India.
A structurally different complex of round
post-dwellings made appearance in northern areas. The Uto-Aztecan tepees
are terrestrial constructions, they were built on lakes only by Aztecs and
the Uros people on Lake Tititaca in Peru. Here they have developed into floating
raft-dwellings and artificial lakeside isles accessed by balsa boats.
American tepee abodes are obviously derived from Tungusic
high conical circular tents with a sort of wreath crossing at the top. Their
closest parallel is seen in the Karelian type lavvu, a tall conical construction topped by a
wreath of crossed poles. Its adapted derivate is found also in Finnish
A-shaped chalets with steep roofs. Some of British crannogs also
resemble tepees.
Lake-dwellings in the region of French,
Swiss and Italian lakes are post-constructions of Epi-Aurignacian
provenience but they illustrate a transition from roundhouses to oblong
ground-plans. They lie on wooden platforms supported by stakes rammed down
into the lake bottom. Their group encompasses the Chasséan
culture (4500 BC) in southeast France, the Lagozza
complex (4500 BC) in northeast Italy and the Cortailloid
site (3800 BC) in east Switzerland. Similar post-dwelling architecture is
exhibited by the Polada culture (2300-1600 BC) in
north Italy or the Pfyn
group (3900-3500 BC) and the Horgen complex
(3500-3400 BC) in south Germany. Italy has analogous sites of palafitte on Lago
Isolino and terramare
in the Po River valley (1700 BC).
The remains of Aurignacian culture can be
reconstructed according to graves with ochre burial. Ochre dye was regarded
as a sign of heavens and interpreted as a blessing given to the deceased on
his way to the Tartarus. The Pontic
Tungids were mostly Slavinised
as Bulgars, Poles, Balts,
Ladogans and Karelians.
Their noticeable colonies can be discerned in the Polish Polane,
Opolians and Malopolsko,
their Belorussian branch concentrated in the Polochane and the Ukrainian clansmen in the Polane residing south of Kiev. The advent of Polane to Central Poland from the east
was probably recorded by Map 6 of Holocene sites with layers of red dye.
Extract from Pavel Bělíček: The
Atlas of Systematic Anthropology I. The
Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties. Prague 2018, pp. 75-79
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