Democritus Reformatorium Prehistoric Tribes

The Y-DNA Haplogroups I of European Gothids

Clickable terms are red on the yellow background

Map 1. The European Mesolithic Spread of Pre-Europids with Littoral Shell Midden

Map 2. The Migration Sites of Macrolithic Pre-Europids with Littoral Shell Midden

The Micoquians and Macrolithic Pre-Europids as Ancestors of Indo-Europeans

The linguistic past of Europe and Eurasia has been mapped by a series of plausible genealogic hypotheses that take into account Darwinist evolutionism but adhere to numerous residues of dogmatic preconceptions that inherited several fallacies of biblical integralism. Its errors consist in hangovers of divergent monogenism and blindness to phenomena of migratory diffusionism and convergent assimilation. Such diseases infected Schleicher’s Stammbaumtheorie but encapsulated also in principles of Nostratic studies. They all confess a false belief that there existed a single progenitor Adam, who fathered the progeny of all present nationalities in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and America. This conviction is contradicted by many archaeological migrations but linguistic dogmatics fends them off by explaining them as diverse styles of fashion worn by the same ethnic population.

Nostratic. Holger Pedersen’s ‘Nostratic hypothesis’ assumed that European peasants belonged to the same ethnic group of our Nostratic kinsmen (from Latin nostrates ‘fellow countrymen’) as Altaic herdsmen and Semitic goat-keepers. V. M. Illič-Svityč extended this family by adding Georgian Kartvelians and Dravidians in India. A similar idea was proposed by Joseph Greenberg’s theory of Euro-Asiatic1 conceived as a proto-language spoken by forbears of the white race. As an afterthought it implied the existence of a Vostratic antipode2, the Ursprache of the black race. In final consequences it led to Alfredo Trombetti and his idea of lingua primigenia or protolingua mondiale.3 It was supported by preconceptions of monogenetism revived also by Sergei Starostin’s hypothesis of Borean spoken by boreal languages. Promising results were outlined especially by Merritt Ruhlen and his tables of the primigenial proto-human cognates.4

The underlying rudimentary idea was derived from Cuvier’s old classification of the white, yellow, black and red race. This popular taxonomy was based on superficial secondary traits because skin colour can change in the course of several tens of millennia. In fact, such presumptive ‘continental races’ are as intermingled as linguistic macrofamilies. Skeletal paleoanthropology relies on much more durable osteal features that preserve genetic tendencies for more than one hundred thousand years. All hybrid racial, ethnic and linguistic families have to be sorted into pure elementary components. Their labels justly denominate the dominant superstratum but wrongfully unite it with alien adstrata of heterogeneous origin.

Nordids. Most important criteria of genetic reconstruction are found in the morphology of skulls, craniofacial traits, nasal indices and femorotibial ratios. Rare skeletal digs may be inspissated by taking into account more abundant evidence of archaeological excavations. The anthropological dichotomy of dolichocephalous and mesocephalous races shows a high coincidence with the division between equatorial axe-tool assemblages and boreal flake-tool cultures. African, Caucasoid, European, Melanesian and Amerindian farmers all belong to the ethnic group with tall, robust and muscular constitution, dolichocephalous skulls, ABO blood type O, herbivorous, granivorous and graminivorous subsistence and chopping-tool industry. Their earliest ancestors exhibited the dark complexion of Afroid, Australoid and Melanesian equatorial races but when their hosts moved to northern Eurasia they underwent gradual depigmentation. When we compare indices of skin colour, hair colour and eye colour in the populations of European Nordids and arctic Eskimos and Lapps, it becomes clear that Nordic depigmentation required a long-term period of several hundred thousand years. This implies that Indo-European unity cannot have come into existence in two millennia of ethnic evolution but must have germinated for very long ages. Table 11 shows that Indo-European language families must have come into being by intermingling several heterogeneous races and archaeological cultures that fused their ethnic, racial and linguistic heritage into one illusory unique shape.

Micoquians. Traditional ethnology and comparative linguistics assume that most ethnic families arose from a prehistoric ancestral unity by the process of divergent bifurcation into smaller sections. The white-skinned race of Nordids has probably descended from an early offshoot of the black equatorial chopping-tool race exposed to contacts with Clactonian and Levalloisian flake-tool cultures from Asia. Its earliest predecessors were robust vegetarians with Oldowan pebblestone chopping tools or Acheulean hand-axes. The first wave of European colonists was probably identical to Homo antecessor/mauretanicus (Spain) or Homo cepranensis (Italy), while Homo heidelbergensis seems to have been akin to Clactonian or Tayacian ancestors of Neanderthals. The lineage of hand-axe cultures passed from Acheulean heritage to Micoquian industry and reached a mature age in the Bootäxte of the Corded Ware. The Macrolithic tools of Campignian, Danubian, Frisian, Scandinavian and Franco-Swabian tribes probably stemmed from elongated hand-axes of the Micoquian tradition, while the Ubaidian and Elamitoid Gigantolithic sprang from the Acheulo-Yabroudian patterns of the Middle East. The Micoquian plant-gathering axe-tool populations must have acted as uniters of Indo-European ancestors into one ethnic conglutination. They produced long heavy axes that developed into macrolitic tools of Mesolithic Pre-Europids.

Macrolithic Pre-Europids. The term of Pre-Europids (Pre-Europidi, called also Woodland Silvids and Appalachians) was invented by the Italian anthropologist Renato Biasutti, who applied it to tall dolichocephalous races inhabiting northeast corners of North America. They built long mounds that served as collective subterranean abodes for large family clans and represented a winter-time variant of Gothic summer-time overground longhouses. The Russian archaeologists tend to designate their cultures in northern boreal Europe as Macrolithic industry owing to knapping large double-axe tools used for cutting wood and boat-shaped battle-axes for intertribal warfare.

Pre-Europids as Progenitors of Gothonic Nations with IJK Y-haplogroups

Campignians. The most telling illustration of Pre-Europids was discovered in the Japanese Jomonians (16,000 BP), who combined cord-marked pottery with littoral beachcombing, gathering shellfish seafood and pre-agricultural subsistence consisting in horticulture and the hoe-cultivation of millet. Their genetic heritage looked translucent in the Gê or Jê macro-family in the eastern coasts of South America, who assumed a typical Sinoid look with nose-plugs, coin-piercing and brief-shorn haircuts. Both ethnic groups excelled in amassing waste dumps of shell midden. Their European kinsmen remarkable for seaside shell midden were dated back to the sixth millennium and given different names. In 1886 the French archaeologist F. Salmon recommended to call their digs ‘Campignian culture’ according to finds at Campigny in the maritime area of the Seine River.1 Similar excavations were found in Denmark and described as køkkenmøddinger ‘kitchen midden’. The Spanish explorers referred to their heaps as conceros.

Plausible solutions of the Indo-European unity seek its core in the dominant Nordic superstratum accompanied by several heterogeneous subdominant substrata and subsidiary adstrata. The dominant role has to be ascribed without doubts to manufacturers of the Linear Ware, Funnelbeaker Culture, Corded Ware and Bell-Beaker pottery. They were hardly identical to the IE subfamilies, their close interrelation suggests typological affiliation ruling among various members of the ‘Gothonic family’. Its concept was put forward by the Danish anthropologist Gudmund Schütte. He formulated a plausible theory of one Gothonic proto-nation that might have formed the backbone of Indo-European nations.1 He was an adherent of working methods of structural typology assuming that “homogeneous matter should always be presented in homogeneous columns under precisely the same headings and in the same order”. His conclusions were derived from linguistic parallels but reconstructed prehistoric travels from Ptolemy’s maps.2

In our opinion shell-midden cultures bring testimony of an early differentiation of Gothonic nations making axe-tool instruments. Their haplogroup I1-M253 pertains to Gotho-Frisians with the Corded Ware pottery and also to the Franco-Swabian Bell-Beaker Folk, whose ancestors were excavated in the Iberian Peninsula as the Asturian culture (9280 BP) and the Portuguese Mugem complex (8200 BP). The haplogroup I2-M438 exhibited high distribution in Central Europe, the Danubian River Basin and the Balkans. Their remote relatives were Elamite Caucasoids with haplogroups J1 and J2. Current population genetics is convinced that I1, I2 and J1 with J2 descended from common Acheulean forefathers bearing the Y-haplogroup IJ. This veritable presupposition is associated with a less persuasive conviction that their common grandfather was the Y-haplogroup IJK. Haplogroups I and J are undoubtedly associated with K. K-M526 is relatively wide-spread in Europe but it is the most common chromosome in Southeast Asia. The situation looks as if the Pre-Europids imported the early patterns of the Corded Ware from Scandinavia to the Jomonian sites in Japan and India but then they underwent a transmutation from I1 to K-M526. The typical bearers of the K-haplotype were the Lapita cultures that swept the Pacific Ocean from Malaysia, Micronesia and Melanesia as far as Polynesia. Reasonable considerations should restrict themselves to distinguishing Pre-Europids as Pan-Gothids and leave the peripheral migrants to the east as Syn-Gothids split into the Finnish, Prussian and Balkan stream (Table 11).

Pan-Gothids	Campignian Littoralids, Danubian Europids, Scandinavian Nordids, Franco-Swabian Littoralids
Endo-Gothids	Goths/Jutes, Frisians, Angles, Saxons
Syn-Gothids	Northern Finnish stream, central Prussian stream, southern Balkan stream
Finnish stream	Hiittinen, Hiettanen, Gydan, Okhotsk, Hokaido, Haida
Prussian stream	Prussian, Yotvingian, Permiac, Udmurt, Kitai,
Balkan stream	Getes, Khotan, Khotanese, Gotho-Tocharians, Masagetes, Brahmans, Khattriyas

Table 11. The systematic classification of Gothoid phratries and tribes

Traditional concepts of European tribes insist on a sort of holistic isolationism that identifies tribes with nations cast like ingots in the mould of medieval monarchies. A more sophisticated view divides Gothids into phratries (Jutes, Frisians, Angles, Saxons) denoted as Endo-Gothids, and lineages of migration streams designated as Syn-Gothids. Streams jut out of the cradleland of the tribal diaspora like tentacles of an octopus or branches of a genealogic tree growing out of one trunk. The entire genealogic tree might be referred to as a union of Pan-Gothids (Table 11).

The common Gothonic starting-point may be found in the farmers of the Danubian Linear Ware (5500–4500 BC), who seem to have coincided with the Y-DNA haplogroup I2-M423 in Central Europe. The Funnelbeaker or Trichterbecher culture (c. 4300 BC – 2800 BC) occupied seats that were later seized by colonists of the Bootaxt people with the Corded Ware (2900 BC – circa 2350). They also showed inclinations to agriculture although their earliest excavated sites depict them as littoral sand-dune dwellers, who built characteristic Gothic wurts or Frisian terps surrounded by shell midden. Their ancestry may be traced back to the earlier past of the Campignian shell midden complex (cca 10 000 BC)3 and the Portuguese Muge culture.4 The former term was originally coined by C. Schuchhardt but now it is neglected as less common. Its use however proves requisite for sheltering early migrations of the Corded Ware in North Asia. Numerous shell dump heaps were characteristic of the Japanese Jomon culture (16 000 BP) with cord-marked pottery. They were created by beachcombing littoralists gathering mussel shell on seaside beaches. Their original Y-DNA haplogroup must be of I1-M253 type corresponding to the blood group O and tall dolichocephalous stature. The area of the Portuguese Muge culture is sometimes interpreted as a possible starting point of the Bell-Beaker folk (2900 – 1800 BC). Its southern promontories pursued Atlantic coastlines as far as the Gulf of Guinea, Angola and South Africa.

The Indo-European anthropological variety calls for reviving several long-forgotten terms for Campignian, Abbevillian and Chellean cultures. The Campignian origins link the Corded Nordics and their boat-shaped battle-axes (Bootäxte and Streitäxte)5 with prehistoric axe-tool cultures based on choppers, hand-axes and axe-tools industry. They must be coordinated and synchronised with Acheuleans because typological comparisons of their anthropology and archaeology prove close interrelations with Anatolian and Iranian Neolithic farmers of the Afghan type. As is well-known, Colin Renfrew advanced theories about the origins of Danubian agriculture from Anatolian farmers. Their common features are endogamous marriages, sacred marital games hieros gamos, quantitative prosody and rich vocalic quantity with the cardinal a-i-u triangle vocalism, the SVO word order and similar ethnonyms and tribal structure. Moreover, they are linked by common descent from Acheulean roots and the Y-DNA haplogroup IJK. Their principal difference concerns domestic architecture: Danubian peasantry inhabited collective quadrangular longhouse on riverside dunes, whereas Anatolian and Persian farmers dwelt in multi-cellular flat-roofed labyrinth houses out of dry clay bricks and pisé on tell-mounds.

Races are genetically prior to tribes, language families and nations and so it impossible to speculate that the tall dolichocephalous Nordids split into tall brachycephalous Dinarids, shorter mesocephalous Mediterranids and short-sized stocky brachycephalous Alpines within a few centuries. Haplogenetic comparisons prove that these ethnic components must have infiltrated into Europe of late as allochthonous newcomers. The lexical integrity of Indo-European must be due to Gothonic peasantry and millennia of geographical cohabitation while phonological differences mirror additions of strong adstrata of later newcomers. The most populous hosts of newcomers were wandering with the diffusion of Lusatian Urnfielders (1300 BC) and Gravettian Alpines (26 000 BC) famed for their graceful ivory and ceramic Venuses. They exhibited the typical Lappoid and Pygmoid physiognomy with long hanging cylindrical breast, round brachycephalous heads and curly hair. Other typical features imply matronism, broad fat hips and thighs, steatopygia and lordosis. Owing to incineration and cremation burial rites, their osteal skeletons remains are irrecoverably lost. There exist exceptional unburnt finds of their brachycephalous Furfooz skulls left over in mass graves after head executions and battles.

Some layers were due to early prehistoric populations of Levalloisians and Aurignacians living as nomadic fishers on the shores of lakes. Map 8 demonstrates remains of lacustrine settlements pertaining to Pelasgoid and Tungusoid lake-dwellers. Their racial component is perceptible in Greek Pelasgians, the French Chassey-Lagozza-Cortaillod group, Karelian lake-dwellers and Hyperboreans of the Ladogan racial variety. Much more populous superstratum is formed the later floodtide of immigrant importing Magdalenian, Maglemosian, Azilian, Beuronian and Tardenoisian cultures. Their northern Maglemosian stream consisted of bog-people (Y-DNA haplogroup R1a) with sack-shaped textile vessels that later turned into pottery with pointed bottoms. Their southern kinsmen were nomadic fishers, reindeer hunters and later also herders of ovicaprids. They lived in natural or artificial rock-hewn caves attributable to Iberians, Eburones, Eburovices and the Irish Hiberni (legendary cliff-dwellers fomoire). Their Y-DNA haplogroup was R1b accompanied by mtDNA haplogroups H1 and H3. Tacit classified Germans as a tribal block of tribes called Irminones or Herminones1. Ptolemy mentioned their brotherly kin of Κίμβροι or Cimbri2 and Plinius wrote about their relatives Teutones3.

Extract from P. Bělíček: The Analytic Survey of European Anthropology. Prague 2018, pp. 45-49

1 Joseph Greenberg: Indo-European and its Closest Relatives. The Eurasiatic Language Family. Stanford University, 2000.

2 B. Lukács: Nostratic or Vostratic? 2004; http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/LAKA.htm.

3 Alfredo Trombetti: L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: L. Beltrami, 1905.

4 Merritt Ruhlen: The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. New York: John Wiley & Sons 1996, p. 103.

1 Nougier, L.-R.: Les Civilisations campigniennes en Europe occidentale. Le Mans, 1950.

1 Gudmund Schütte: Our Forefathers: The Gothonic Nations: Volume 1: A Manual of the Ethnography of the Gothic, German, Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian and Scandinavian People I-II, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1929-1933.

2 Gudmund Schütte: Ptolemy's maps of northern Europe : a reconstruction of the prototypes. Royal Danish Geo-graphical Society, 1917.

3 C. Blake Whelan: Studies in the Significance of the Irish Stone Age: The Campignian Question. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature. Vol. 42 (1934/1935), pp. 121-143.

4 C. Schuchhardt: Das technische Element in den Anfängen der Kunst. Prähist. Zeits., I, 37.

5 N. Aberg: Die nordischen Bootaxte. Praehistorische Zeitschrift IX. Berlin & New York, 1917.