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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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