|
|
The Levalloisian
culture is usually
understood as a convenient name for a definite type of Palaeolithic
technology of processing flakes. It derives its name from finds excavated at Levallois-Perret near Paris whose age is
estimated at 250,000 BC. Its flakes were
made of well-chosen flint pebble-stones hit by a bone implement
at a steep angle. The idea was to give well-prepared flakes sharp edges that
need no secondary retouching. It prepared blocks of flint by one carefully prepared blow and made long
scars of’ flakes with a Levalloisian bone punch struck with a
hammer-stone. The block of flint was carefully prepared on a wooden platform
for precisely directed blows. This technique did not require secondary
trimming or retouch. Flaking long triangular or prismatic chips turned
the pebble into a cylindrical tortoise-core with polygon edges. The basic use
of flakes was to cut meat and scrape fat from skins. While the cylindrical
types served as hide-scrapers and skinning-knives, the thin prismatic pieces
with a sharp point could be used also as primitive spearheads.
The
concept of Levalloisian flake
working ceased to be used for a well-defined group of finds in central France and gradually degenerated into a convenient term
for stone-working technique. Although its use ranged from France to India and East Africa, archaeologists refuse to associate it with a
definite population or a stock of mankind. Their
thought is restricted by stereotypes of Francocentrism
that indulges in the chronology of French finds without considering their
propagation all over the world. They forget that the Mousterian and the
Levalloisian flake-tool tradition must have witnessed the division of
Mongoloid races of Asia into their two
major branches, the Ural-Mongolian big-game hunters and the Turco-Tungus small-game hunting fishermen.
The differentiation of Levalloisian technology into small microliths
and prismatic flakes must be interpreted as its division into Turkoid cliff-dwellers and Tungusoid lake-dwellers.
The Levalloisian technique of flake
working must be a valid term for a large stock of mankind
because its tradition lasted several hundred thousand years and spread to all
continents. Its origins must be sought in central Asia because the earliest finds come from Dara-i Kur in Afghanistan. The long narrow
blades of Levalloisian type were dug up also in the Narmada River Basin and on Potwar Plateau lying in its close neighbourhood (Fagan 1996: 50-52). The Soan culture that flourished in Pakistan and East Punjab mixed
chopping-tools with Levalloisian flakes. In the Pre-Soan or Early Soan
most flake tools were of Clactonian type. The Late Soan B contained typical Levalloisian
parallel-sided flakes with a plain striking platform at a high angle to the
flake surface (Wooley, Hawkes
1962: 167-8). Okladnikov and Larichev discovered Levalloisian flakes also in the Lower Palaeolithic of Mongolia and northwest China. The sites at Otson-Mant
and Ikh-Bogdo exhibited pebble stone choppers with
blades and discoid flakes of Levalloisian design (Tcheboksarov 1966: 41).
The Levalloisian tradition survived to
the Upper
Palaeolithic in southern Siberia and Russia. It was cultivated by the Upper
Palaeolithic settlements on the Upper Don, the Lower Desna and Byelo-Russia. The Volga-Oka culture used very traditional Levalloisian industry
without any denticulation. It was a typical culture of riverside fishermen with settlements rimming banks of rivers. In the Middle Kama basin
there were no geometric microliths, only prismatic
knives (Avdusin 1977: 41). In Siberia some archaic Upper Palaolithic scrapers of
Levalloisian variety were found on the river Angara. Lots of archaic
Levalloisian flake tools were excavated in Ust’-Belaya.
(from Pavel Bělíček: Prehistric Dialects II, Prague 2004, pp. 576-577)
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.
|
|
Phratries
|
Tungus/Danaids (Diana – bear) – Del(ph)ians (Pythia – dolphin) – Pelasgians (Apollo, Lycaeon –
wolf) – Latins
(Leto – swan)
|
|
Ecotype
|
lakeside and
riverside nomadic fishing, streets of rows of post-houses or
stilt-dwellings facing the waterside area, columnal
architecture on shores
|
|
Nutrition
|
nomadic fishing, catching sweet-water fish, hunting antelopes,
breeding goats and sheep, eating oak acorns, planting cherry trees
|
|
Dwellings
|
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
|
|
Cult
|
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
|
|
Burials
|
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
|
|
Weapons
|
Levalloisian leptolithic knives, Aurignacian prismatic knives, long cutting weapons and
sabres, armour with feather head-bands
|
|
Visage
|
long black hair,
whitish pale complexion, graceful stature, slender leptosomous constitution common to Mediterranids,
beautiful face
|
|
Clothing
|
Turkish kaftan tied by a belt round the waist, drinking rhytons and chalices out of horns stuck behind the
belt, head-bands
|
|
DNA
|
ABO group B, Y
DNA C1-C5, possibly Y DNA F/T, mtDNA C
|
|
Poetry
|
auletic monodies to the flute, elegiac distichs with parallelisms
|
|
Language
|
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
|
Table 24. The cultural
paradigm of Tungids and Pelasgids
Lake-Dwellers with Tepee Tents
and Conical Roundhouses
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
|
|
