Democritus Reformatorium Prehistoric Tribes

Notice traditional fallacies and preconceptions concerning the traditional misleading categories of human races. Clickable terms are red on yellow background.

Ancient Gauls

(from P. Bělíček: The Analytic Survey of European Anthropology, 2018, p. 126)

The Archaeological Disambiguation of Ancient Romance Tribes

The complex of Romance peoples calls for a detailed dissection that might elucidate the anatomy of their inner ethnic factions. The very term ‘Romance’ is a controversial misnomer because its originators were the Roman Marsi, Sabini and Samnites, who descended from the Hallstatt horseback riders of Sarmatian origin. They imported the advanced Iron Age metallurgy to Noricum and spread its use also to southern Italic provinces. After winning privileged position in Latium, they took hold of entire Italy and finally they extended their boundaries to the huge complex of the Roman Empire. Such incredible feats permitted to install the Latin written standard in all provinces and create the false illusion of the compact Romance family. Paradoxically, the Hallstatt newcomers were the last to arrive but the first to claim all casteist privileges. Their administrative power relied on the military skills of Hallstatt ancestors, who imported inventions of horse-riding cavalry from Asiatic steppes to Danubian grasslands. Other advancements included horse-drawn two-wheeled chariots, iron swords and fortified oppida. Their main linguistic contribution consisted in infiltrating IE languages with Sarmatic analytic perfect tenses composed from auxiliaries and participles.

Hallstatt Sarmatids were not populous enough to give the IE language structures a definite Iranian and Uralic stamp, and so they were soon outnumbered by Gallic Celts and Iberian Mediterranids. As a result, in Italic, Gallic and Iberian languages the strong Celtic element prevails over Sarmatic peculiarities. When we abandon the pointless concept of the Romance family, it may be replaced by more suitable terms of Gallo-Romans of Tardigravettian origin. Its complex may however be analysed also as a part of the Epi-Aterian family or Epi-Magdalenian domain. Arguments for the former solution are that Arabic, Iberian and Italic languages group share one category of determination with very similar systems of definite and indefinite articles: French le, la – un, une and Italic il, lo – uno as compared to Arabic al- or el – -n. Articles represented a typical non-IE import of European Bascoid megalith-builders, who shared k-plurals and definite articles in -k with Abkhaz kurgan-builders.

Epi-Aterians. The idea of Epi-Aterian family or Basco-Scottish family is based on the structural unity of West-European megalith cultures, whose patterns were closely associated with the Berber megalithic complex in North Africa. Most archaeologists opine that the occurrence of megalithic constructions was promoted by the spread of a new giant race during the Chalcolithic Copper Age (4500–1500 BC). An earlier dating is however suspected and documented by its exhibits in the Anatolian Mesolithic site Göbekli Tepe (9500 BC) or the Israelite Early Neolithic complex Atlit Yam (7000 BC). Anatolian finds show a fluent continuation in artifacts of Greek Mycenaenan Cyclopes and in the Bronze Age tumuli cultures. They range from Moesia to South Bohemia, Bavaria and the Mosellians complex in North France. Their common denominator is today seen in the tall brachycephalic and large-headed race of Dinarids. Archaeological evidence ballots for two eventualities. One alternative assumes that Tumuli-Grave cultures with cupolar mounds represent a continuation of Mycenaean expansion (1600 BC – 1100 BC) in Anatolia and Greece. It hypothesises that it appeared as a second wave of Cyclopean constructions following after the first wave triggered about 3200 BC. Its numerous offshoots include the Balkan tumulus culture and also the Unětice culture in Central Europe.

Another viewpoint open to disputes speculates that the Chalcolithic megalithic builders may be remote descendants of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician, Solutrean, Aterian, Szeletian people of Mousterian origin. They lived in caves, applied leaf-shaped lance-heads and buried the dead under piles of stones in front of their cave abodes. These cavemen were immiserated hosts of mammoth-hunters who wandered in quest for their herds to Siberia and later also to the New World. Nonetheless, their remains persisted in small numbers also in ancient Eurasian settlements. The revolutionary transition to pastoralism and cattle herding promoted them to higher level and inspired them to a new blooming revival. Such a look at prehistoric events allows us to synthesise diffusion with survival theories. It admits that the Balkan Dinarids were actually Moesids who transplanted genes of Epi-Szeletian ancestors with new Neolithic descendant striving for new reactivation.

Mario Alinei’s Palaeolithic Survival theories have breathed new life into diffusionist thought and make it possible to link prehistoric ancestors with modern survivors. They consider links between Aterians (30,000 BC), Basques and Berbers, who developed similar leaf-shaped lance-heads and funeral architecture with round dome-shaped mounds. Leaf-shaped points were cultivated also by Solutrean horse-hunters (18,000 BC) and flourished also in Lincombian, Ranisian and Jerzmanowician sites (43,000 BC) in North Europe. Bronze Age metallurgy was a new invention but megalith constructions were a new derivate of earlier pile-burials common in Transvaal and Namibia. They provided big-game hunters with permanent postmortal stone shelters for tribal chieftains and high dignitaries. Their burial tombs persisted for long ages while their commoners had to do with poor miserable beehive huts from straw and after death they slumbered in simple pile-tombs from stones.

The predecessors of western megalith-builders may have colonised their Atlantic sites in waves of several prehistoric colonisations:

* Aterian (c. 145,000 BP – 30,000 BP) was a Middle Stone Age industry jutting out of North Africa to Iberia. It was characterised by leaf-shaped bifaces and tanged, pedunculated points.

* Mousterians (70,000 BP) represented a Neanderthal culture extending from western France to its centre in the Pyrenees and occupied sites scattered along the southeast coastlines of Spain. They produced bifacially-worked leaf-shaped tools, retouched lance-heads and racloir scrapers.

* Châtelperronian (44,500 – 36,000 BP) was formed by a Mousteroid culture of denticulate tools that were situated in Catalonia and the Cantabrian region in northern Iberia.

* Solutrean (22,000 BP), a culture of horse hunters with leaf-shaped and pressure-flaked industry. It was located in western France and from here it ran out to the Pyrenees and coastlines of southeast Spain.

* The advent of the La Hoguette megalithic culture (4900 BC) in Brittany.

* The Andalusian Neolithic (c. 4800 BC) introduced the first dolmen tombs in southeast Iberia.

* The Chalcolithic Almerian culture (3600 BC) with megalith constructions that were lining the eastern coasts of Spain as far as the Pyrenees and influenced also the Balearic Islands.

* The Los Millares culture (2900 BC) developed a higher stage of the Almerian tradition of megalith-building architecture as its direct descendant. It prided on large concentric cupola-shaped mounds.

* The VNSP or Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro culture (2700 BC) exhibited the mainstream of Iberian megalithic cultures importing the typical castro type of fortified oppida. Its architecture gave preference to circular roundhouses with round walls roofed by conical wooden construction.

* The nuraghe (Sardininia, 1900 BC) and talaiot (Menorca, Mallorca, c. 1200 BC) continued the West-European megalithic tradition of Scottish broch castles and cairn-burials.

Map 2. The probable descendants of the Beaker Folk in the Ancient Roman ethnonymy (from P. Bělíček: The Analytic Survey of European Anthropology, 2018, p. 121)

Megalith mounds have to be considered as a higher stage of simple pile-burials and straw beehive huts in the period when Scythoid chieftains began to subdue neighbouring tribes and acquire greater social influence. They spread from Andalusia to Brittany and later also to North Germany. At that time North Europe was occupied by the Funnel Beaker culture (Trichterbecherkultur, 4000-3300) BC) without megalithic constructions. After their arrival from the south the typical beaker pottery was infiltrated by amphorae produced by megalithic builders. A sound judgment recommends us to attribute funnel beakers to Gothoids and amphorae to megalith-building Scythoids.

Campignian Littoralids. The first Gothids with the Y-haplogroup I1 came to Iberia with the Beaker Folk culture (c. 2900 BC). They were remarkable for campaniform, bell-shaped drinking vessels. Their original birthplace was in the Netherlands and had much to do with the Franco-Swabian lineage of European axe-tool makers. Around 2800–2700 BC a prominent centre of Beaker Folk culture appeared in Portugal and along the Tagus valley. Both sites seem to have had predecessors in the Mesolithic shellfish-eaters, who lived on seaside dunes as beachcombers and left behind heaps of kitchen shell midden. In France they formed the technocomplex of the Campignian culture (10,000 BC) that jutted out to Denmark in assemblages of kjökkenmöddinger. The same date is ascribed also to the Muge Culture (10,000 BC), its Portuguese variant in the Tagus valley.

(Extract from P. Bělíček: The Analytic Survey of European Anthropology, 2018, p. 118-126)