Democritus Reformatorium Prehistoric Tribes

The paragenetic model of prehistory presupposes that most hominins and hominids lived in relative interbreeding and their genetic distances were much nearer than now. What we denote as detached genera and species were actually interfertile genetic races, strains, lineages, crosses and hybrids that later lost mutual interfertility owing to isolation in different hominoid populations. It is not plausible that they developed by large jumps from one genus to another, they must have maintained and preserved their genetic pool through progressive evolutionary metamorphoses. Many categories of genus and species were only generations, so the extant binomial and trinomial anthropological classification should adopt a special term for transient generations. All strains underwent parallel processes of hominisation, gracilisation and sapientisation by means of radical revolutions and longer stages of conservative inertia. Hominins split off hominids and hominoids as a special genetic stream competing with alternative strains of Paranthropines and Australopithecines. Participation in different population strains caused intraspecial differentiation. In the following evolutionary series the symbol means digression while the arrow → implies genetic continuity. It does not mean direct mother-daugher inheritance but a complex statistic process with many digressions splitting off the dominant mainstream. The following series are chief statistic mainstreams that suggest that the Palaeolithic Urrassen had different ancestors but converged to one of predominant Neolithic racial varieties.

Tall robust dolichocephalous herbivores with marked crista sagittalis

Gigantopithecus (9 mya) → Ouranopithecus (9 mya) ( Gorillas (9 mya)) → Paranthropus aethiopicus (2.5 mya) ( Paranthropus robustus (2 mya)) → Australopithecus garhi (2.5 mya) → Australopithecus sediba (1.8 mya) → Homo gautengensis (1.8 mya) → Homo erectus (1.8 mya) → Oldowans (1.8 mya).

Slender piscivores with tall and leptoprosopic flattish faces:

Proconsul africanus (23 mya) → Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5 mya) → Australopithecus afarensis (3.9–2.9 mya) → Homo habilis (2.1–1.5 mya) → Homo rudolfensis (2–1.5 mya) → Levalloisians (0.5 mya).

Tall brachycephalous carnivores and big-game hunters with narrow aquiline noses

Australopithecus anamensis (4.5 mya) → Laetoli man → Homo heidebergensis → Homo rhodensis (0.5 mya) ( Saldanha man) → Homo neanderthalensis → Mousterians.

Shortsized brachycephalous omnivores:

Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 mya) → Ardipithecus kadabba ( Pan paniscus (Bonobo)) → Australo-pithecus afarensis (3.9 mya) → Homo habilis → Sanids → Pygmids ( Homo floresiensis) → Sinids.

Table 1. The technological evolution of industry in archaeological cultures

(from P. Bělíček:: The Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties Prague 2018, Table 8, Map p. 24)

The Phylogenetic Trees of Human Stocks

Our Palaeolithic ancestors will remain doubtable mythical chimaeras until they are identified with real living races surviving to our days. Table 8 outlines the quadripartition of four basic human stocks and elucidates their rough evolutionary branching along the axis of time. Its genealogical graph outlines probable successive bifurcation but cannot specify very precise chronology in thousands of years. Its scheme suggests that axe-tool cultures gradually split into four robust tall races with dolichocephalous skulls and the blood group O. Their inner subclasses corresponded to several well-known archaeological cultures of Oldowan chopping-tool makers and Acheulean hand-axe manufacturers. Their colonists pursued the equatorial line of the tropical rainforests, and even though their Caucasoid and Nordic progeny diverged to colder northern regions, they all remained faithful to herbivorous nutrition. Their stocks developed from plant-gathering cultures with hand-choppers, ate corn seeds and vegetal roots and showed inclination to preagriculturalist or agriculturalist economy.

Table 1 sketches a model of the probable phylogeny of human cultures that counts with four principal independent lineages of development. They divide prehistoric cultures into equatorial stocks with hand-axes, Altaic tribes with flake-tool industry and Lapponoid ethnic groups with cremation rites. The first phylum gave rise to the hand-axe cultures of agriculturalists and gatherers of vegetal plant crops that fell into the branches of Negrids, Melanesids and Australoids. They formed cultures of robust tall-statured dolichocephalous herbivores (robust plant-eaters) of the black equatorial race.

The main stream of Oldowan colonists headed eastward for the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. Their line of evolution was most probably represented by Australo-Negrids (Melanesians and Australids), who were remarkable for using pebble-stone choppers. Their long-forgotten Bantu brothers later overcame limitation of Oldowan industry and invented more accomplished Lupemban and Sangoan hand-axes. In all areas their wanderings were lined with plant-gathering subsistence, fringed grass-apron clothing, matriarchal orders and tribal marital endogamy. Their women even now go out barebreasted and carry tubs of water on their heads.

These ethnic cultures propagated by eastward setting out on Oldowan, Acheulean, Abbevillian or Micoquian migrations that spread the art of manufacturing various types of choppers and hand-axes. One of their branches colonised the southern margins of Arabia and elaborated an innovative design of Acheulean hand-axes. Two of their offshoots headed for colder boreal regions in the north and turned into Acheulean Caucasoids (South Asia) and Europoid Nordids (North Europe). In the course of almost 500 000 years spent in the cold northern climate they underwent depigmentation and separated as tribes with lighter skin, hair and eyes. Both lineages preserved the older patterns of African collective longhouses but diverged a lot from their ancestry because they were exposed to a long-lasting infiltration of eastern Altaic cultures. The Danubian Europids adapted the Bantu rectangular houses with 2-slope roofs while Scandinavian Nordids reshaped them into Frisian sand-dune wurts and terps. In due course of time the eastern Caucasoid hosts evolved their own style with flat roofs. Whereas the Caucasoid arid-area agriculturalists took to producing double-axes, the Europoid littoral preagri-culturalists worked out battle-axes of boat-shaped type (Bootäxte). An isolated group of Sino-Negrids in China developed a special type of shoulder axes (Schulterbeile).

A similar evolutionary account may be sketched for the Altaic Mongolids. Reliable dates for their prehistory are missing but a lot can be deduced indirectly by comparing their archaeological cultures. Asiatic Mongolids may be divided into big-game hunters and fishermen with additional small-game hunting subsistence. Altaic hunters probably descended from the Mousterian mammoth hunters butchering giant mammals with long lances provided with leaf-shaped (lanceolithic) heads. The faction of Altaic nomadic fishermen evolved into the progeny of Levalloisian Neanderthalers specialised in making long pointed leptolithic flake-tools determined for spearheads harpooning fish. Their descendants were the Aurignacians with long prismatic knives. Another group separated as the microlithic family with tiny microlithic flakes set into arrows and wooden hafts (Magdalenians, Maglemosians, Azilians, Tardenoisians). Aurignacians can be identified as Tungids of Combe Capelle type, the latter seem to betray members of the Turanid family of Turcoid provenance. Both offshoots tend to display a conspicuous predominance of the blood group B. The big-game hunters of the megalithic extraction, who comprise Basques, Berbers, Abkhaz, Scythians and Ugrians, made an exception. Owing to contamination they exhibit the blood group O with the negative Rh factor. What they preserved as their specialty, was the Y-DNA haplogroup Q and the mtDNA haplotype X. If Mousterians and Levalloisians grew out of common ancestry, the four-stock model may shrink into a mere tripartition.

Most Lapponoid and Pygmoid races abound in the blood group A and bear strong resemblance to the Annamite short-sized ethnovariety that fathers also Negritos and Tasmanians. The Austronesian dark-skinned Negritos with cremation burials, semidugouts and lean-to shelters probably arose due to a huge colonisation from Annam to the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia.1 Its most remarkable milestone was detected at the Australian site Lake Mungo (62,000 BC). One stream of colonists headed for southern Asia and imported Sino-Tibetan isolating syntax with multi-tonal melodic prosody also to western Africa. Their cultural imprint is felt definitely in the Ewe-Igbo family and the Chadic tribes Bolewa and Vandala. African Pygmies’ and Bushmen’s languages exhibit compatible phonological and morphological tendencies but add sucking clicks and implosive consonants, which are very rare in Austronesia. Clicks have been evidenced only in the Australian tribal native tongue Damin. This suggests a plausible hypothesis that the African Pygmy and Bushmen ethnovarieties may have been the primary homeland of all dwarfish peoples in the world.2

A numerous population of Lapponoid tribesmen settled down in the Indian subcontinent and gave local autochthons the stamp of incinerating cultures. Their cremations took place on funeral pyres in the accompaniment of widows, who were burnt lying beside their husbands. Their impact is discernible also in the Andronovo cremation culture (15,000 BC) excavated in Kazakhstan and South Russia. About 33,000 BP Eurasia was flooded by the Gravettian culture of semidugout lean-to huts and ivory Venuses that were reminiscent of Bushmen women with long breasts and fat buttocks. The Gravettian people manufactured backed knives spread from their epicentre in Libya and the Galla region of Somalia. The Lapponoid populations in Europe (Lapplanders and Slavs) flourished in the heydays of the Lusatian culture (13,000 BC) and may be due to the subsequent inflow of Andronovo people from the east. However, the fraternal tribes of western relatives (Alpines, Gaels, Gauls and also Albanians) abound in too many Africanism, so their languages structures presuppose a long stay in North and Central Africa.

Extract from P. Bělíček:: The Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties Prague 2018,

p. 23-25

1 Past Worlds. The Times Atlas of Archeology. Harper Collins Publishers 1988, Czech transl. Zaniklé světy. Praha: Basset, 1985, p. 90.

2 H. Traunmüller: Clicks and the idea of a human protolanguage. Phonum 9, 2003, 1-4.

1 Past Worlds. The Times Atlas of Archeology. Harper Collins Publishers 1988, Czech transl. Zaniklé světy. Praha: Basset, 1985, p. 90.

2 H. Traunmüller: Clicks and the idea of a human protolanguage. Phonum 9, 2003, 1-4.