The Origins of Palaeolithic
Gracile Neanderthalers
The bearers of the Mousterian culture are
identified unambiguously with the classic Neanderthals called Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
Since their first skulls were excavated in Gibraltar and at Neanderthal near Düsseldorf in 1856, palaeoanthropologists
have conducted disputes about whether they have survived in modern races or
died out as an extinct offshoot. An
unbiased consideration was harmed by
comparison to more gracile varieties of Homo sapiens sapiens
whose gentler physiognomy doomed
the rugged Neanderthals to extinction. Their low foreheads and prominent
eyebrow ridges fostered erroneous prejudices about their low mental capacity and
made scholars judge them as an extinct regressive side-branch of man. They
tended to emphasise their regressive features, prominent eyebrow arcs, low
foreheads and receding chins but omitted their progressive traits, larger
cranial capacity, stronger arms and great achievements in technology.
Traditional approaches insist on the dogma of unilinear
sapientisation and concentrate on Homo sapiens sapiens from Palestine without noticing his hybrid nature and derived origin. Recent studies
(Day and Stringer 1982) trace his first sapient predecessors back to a single
source, centre and place, to his original seats in east Africa about 120,000
years ago. They count with his early appearance at Omo
I in Ethiopia and Border Cave in Swaziland (from 120,000 to
100,000 BC). They assume that from east Africa he moved to Palestine where his finds
were excavated in Mugharet es-Skhūl
and Jebel Qafzeh (92,000
BC). This cave man showed a prominent chin, a rounded occiput
and a reduced torus supraorbitalis.
He represented Early Moderns followed soon by Late Moderns (Nelson, Jurmain 1988: 558) who invaded Europe between 50,000
and 30,000 BC. This theory is confusing because the Palestinian
settlements correspond to the Natufian culture of Levalloiso-Mousterian stamp and their inhabitants should
be a mixed population of Early and Classic Neanderthals. Their assumed
travels to Europe refer to the colonisation
of Aurignacian cultures of Epi-Levalloisian
descent. It radiated from their Caspian homeland but in Palestine it got an
infusion of Neanderthal blood from surrounding Mousterian populations. Their gracile countenance made anthropologists perceive these
hybrid tribes undeservedly as ‘mythical sapientisators’
of the world.
The primary goal of palaeoanthropology
is not to deal with recent hybridisation but to explain the prehistoric
evolution from primary pure races. Its focus should be on a contrastive
analysis distinguishing human races corresponding to the bearers of
Mousterian, Levalloisian and Micoquian cultures. The
first preliminary step taken usually distinguishes the Levalloisians
as the Progressive or Early Neanderthals from Mousterians as Classic or Late Neanderthals. The second necessary step
presupposes distinguishing various generations of Mousterian colonists into
four temporal horizons:
Neanderthal A Levalloisians:
Homo sapiens aniensis (Sergii
1935)
Neanderthal B
Mousterians: Homo s. neanderthalensis (King 1864)
Neanderthal I Clactonians: Swanscombe man, Choukoutien man
Homo steinheimensis (Berckhemer 1935)
Neanderthal II Tayacians: Fontéchevade man, Ehringsdorf man
Neanderthal III Mousterians: La Chapelle aux Saints,
Le Moustier
Neanderthal IV
Solutreans:
Solutré skeletons.
The comparative analysis of Neanderthals must count with general
tendency to brachycephalisation that is due to mixing with Lapponoid races
remarkable for prominent brachycephaly. The Mongoloids are generally believed
to exhibit higher brachycephaly than most Negroid races but their skull
indices range from mesocephaly typical of Tungids to moderate brachycephaly
common to the Armenoid Mongolids with aquiline noses. Accordingly, the
Mousterian skull indices rank higher than those of most Magdalenian and Aurignacian
finds: Dordogne man 65.7, Brünn 68.2, Cro-Magnon 72.4, Galley Hill
63.4 (G. Schwalbe – E. Fischer; V. P. Alekseyev – I. I. Goxman). We assume that the original average of Mousterian skulls did not
exceed the skull index 77.8 measured in Neanderthals from Teshik-Tash while
Progressive Neanderthals of Levalloisian origin may be calibrated at less
than 72 but owing to the subsequent brachycephalisation they rose to higher
values observed among modern Mongolids and Tungids. A remarkable feature was
their high, angled and prominent nose (M. H. Wolpoff; H. Nelson – R. Jurmain), reminiscent of modern aquiline varieties.
In order to avoid confusion, we should
give up labelling Neanderthals as various genera and species (Sinanthropus, Homo
neanderthalensis) of extinct primates and treat
them as racial varieties of man apt of mutual interbreeding. Inconvenient
terms of palaeoanthropology should be dropped and
replaced by those of archaeology (Mousterians, Solutreans) so as to unify their taxonomy.
The Neanderthal skulls differ from Palaeo-Negroid finds clearly in low foreheads and long
faces. The Rhodesian man from
Broken Hill and Saldanha had a high face, strong
eyebrow arcs and receding chins and mandibles. The Neanderthal man from
Broken Hill was originally dated to 100,000 BP but this dating must be
shifted to a later horizon. The Saldanha man comes
from finds in the Makapansgat cave in Transvaal. An upper jaw of
a 9-year-old Neanderthal baby was excavated at Tanger
in Morocco. A part of a
lower mandible was found at Dire-Dawa in Ethiopia. The modern
Hottentots and Masais display a clearly Mongoloid
type of physiognomy with high cheekbones, long face and even some traces of epicanthus. They fight their foes with leaf-shaped
lances though they abandoned the technique of retouching and make them from
metal now.
Rhodesian
man may be closely related to Steinheim man (from
250,000 to 200,000 BC), who probably imported Mousterian-type Tayacian artifacts to Europe and deserves to be greeted as a forerunner of Mousterian
Neanderthals. The Steinheim skull was
mutilated in the same way as that of Peking man’s, which may be interpreted as an
indirect token of their cannibalist practices. On
the other hand, Swanscombe man as a probable
protagonist of the Clactonian culture may be linked
to the Levalloisian tradition propagated by a more gracile
Homo sapiens. Their finds are, however, associated with much Acheulean industry due to mixing. The Mousterian
tradition continued later into the Solutrean (from
22,000 to 18,000 BC) and Clovis and Folsom leaf-shape cultures (12,000 BC) in America. The only way that allows anthropology to avoid
confusion consists in replacing misleading labels by genetic lineages such as
Mousterian I-V, Levalloisian I-VI.
Uralic, Sarmatic and Asiatic Siberian Languages
Uralic languages are generally classified
as members of one Finno-Ugric or Uralo-Ugric Sprachbund. Finns should be excluded from this
unity because their name Finland is derived from Vinnaland ‘land of Wends’ and its
alternative nickname Suomi refers to Saami people. Both designations are applied to short-sized
brachycephalous Lapponoids,
who were incompatible with Siberian tall and robust megafauna-hunters.
Their purebred forefathers were only Siberian mammoth-hunters who sought their
substitutes in the New World. After their extinction they
were compelled to chase the moose and reindeer or adopt their raising and herding.
In the Neolithic they emerged in two independent groups denotable as Estono-Mordvins and Mansi-Ugrians.
The former roved the tundra zone of northern Siberia as the Combed
Ware complex affiliated to the Narva culture (4200 BC) in Estonia. They must have come
into existence as the western offshoot of the Chulmun/Jeulmun
Comb Ware (8000 BC) that won predominance in Korea and Mongolia.
The
common forebear of Estono-Mordvins and Mansi-Ugrians were Palaeo-Siberians
living in the northeast corner of continental Asia. The Palaeo-Siberian languages (Eskimo, Kerek,
Koryak, Chukchee, Nivkh, Kamchadal) look like their
original prototype uniting Mordvin collective t-plurals
and Ugric distinctive k-plurals. Their pair functions as a category of number
also in the tongues of the Khoekhoe cattle-breeders
in the arid areas of Namibia. The earliest appearance
of Ugric languages seems to be conserved marvellously in the Algonquin and
Quechua language family in America. On the
other hand, the majority of Estono-Mordvin tribes remained in the hunting-grounds of
the Siberian tundra and underwent gradual assimilation to Turanic
and Tungusic nations.
The
most impressive trait of Estono-Mordvin tongues remains
hidden in the Uralic agglutinative locative case systems with special morphological
suffixes for essives, illatives,
allatives, elatives and concomitatives.
Their residues were preserved also in the Iranian dialect known as Ossetic. The group of Ossetian,
Yazgulami, Sarikoli, Ishkashmi, Rushani, Vakhi and Yaghnobi languages seems to be associated with Sarmatic horse-breeders in southern Russia. The ancient
Greeks and Romans referred to Uralic tribes as Sauromatae
and nicknamed the Baltic Sea as
Mare Sarmaticum. The central group of Uralic tribes
was concentrated around Merya and Muroma as moose-hunters and hippophagoi
‘horse-eaters’, while their kinsmen settled in the steppe grasslands south of
the Urals as became notable as Sarmatians. They developed
advanced ferrolithic cultures using two-wheeled and
four-wheeled chariots drawn by horses. The admirable mobility of their squads
armed with iron cuirasses, swords and arrows enabled them to conquer large areas
in the Danube Basin as Hallstattian warriors. Their precursors were the Sumerian
donkey-breeders, Amorite horseback riders, Arabic camel-keepers and Tibetan yak-herders.
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isers
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The Glottalic Sound-Repertory of Palaeo-Scythic
Languages
The third type of phonology was
attributable to megalith-builders speaking glottalic
languages. Their vocalism and consonantism
consisted from glottalised sounds. Glottalic consonants do not rely on pulmonic
airstream, they are created by the closure of the
glottis that opens a passage from the larynx to the vocal and nasal cavity
(Table 7). Such a system distinguished two types of non-pulmonic
glottalic phonemes, explosive tense ejective
consonants and their lax implosive counterparts. Ejectives are defined as voiceless consonants pronounced with
a glottalic egressive
airstream. They are ‘produced with complete
glottal closure and an egressive airstream following the glottal and oral releases’. On the other hand, implosive consonants represent a group
of stops delivered with ‘a
mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism’. These phonemes
are very common in languages spoken by tall robust large-headed brachycephalic mummifiers and
mound-builders.
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Glottalic languages
Baskids, Ugrids, Scythids
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Lappic lingual
phonology
Lappids, Alpinids, Pygmids
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Sanid lingual phonemes
African
Sanids
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Murmured
breathy phonemes
Hindus
and Sinids
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reduced
mixed vowel ǝ
reduced
central vowels ǝ ɜ a
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3-level
or 4-level vocalism:
closed
high, mid, open low
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reduced
mixed vowel ǝ
vowels: i e a o u
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short
vowels: i e a o u
long
vowels: ī ā ū
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no
nasal vowels
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nasal
vowel: ã õ ũ, aⁿ eⁿ uⁿ
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opposition
of oral
and
nasal vowels
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nasal vowels: ã ĩ ũ
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advanced
tongue root
harmony
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no
vowel synharmony
nasal
harmony?
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no
vowel harmony
nasal
harmony?
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nasal anusvāra harmonisation
aṁ iṁ uṁ or
ã ĩ ũ
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pharyngeal vowels iˤ eˤ aˤ
oˤ uˤ
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no
pharyngeal vowels
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breathy iʱ eʱ aʱ
oʱ uʱ
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no
pharyngeal vowels
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tense
ejectives: p’ t’ k’
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palatals:
by dy gy
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palatals:
by dy gy
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aspirated
ph dh kh
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lax
implosives: ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ɠ̊
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sibilant
s-affricates
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clicks:
ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ
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murmured
breathy bh dh gh
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uvular
consonants: q χ
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no uvulars
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no uvulars
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glottal h
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assibilated
affricates sp st sk
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s-affricates:
ts dz tʃ ʤ
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ts dz tʃ
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s-affricates: ʒ dʒ dʒʱ
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velarised aspirates:
pγ tγ kγ
qγ
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satemised velars
ky: >
s, gy > z
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velarised aspirates:
pγ tγ kγ
qγ
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plosives:
p t k b d
murmured
series
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trill
r
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palatal
fricative ř
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murmured
breathy flap rh
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borrowed tonal systems
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tone, melody, pitch
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tone, pitch accent
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tone, pitch accent
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Table
7. The glottalic and
lingual phonology
The Grammatical System of Basco-Scythic and Uralo-Sarmatic Languages
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Article-oriented
nominalisation
Bascoids with articles
and
category
of determination
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Case-oriented
morphology
Altaic
Turcoids with
agglutinating
language structures
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Case-oriented
morphology
Siberian
Tungids with
agglutinating
language structures
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suffixing
agglutination
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suffixing
agglutination
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suffixing
agglutination
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no
gender categories
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no
gender categories
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no
gender categories
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category
of determination
indefinite
and definite articles
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no
articles
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no
articles
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ergative
constructions with absolutive, oblique and
ergative case
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locative
subcategorisation of
cases
into essives and allatives
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nominative
vs. accusative con-
structions with locative
cases
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plural
and dual number: -k -t
Bascoid: distinctive
k-plurals
Uraloid collective
t-plurals
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number:
singular –
plural
Turcoid r-plurals
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number:
singular –
plural
Tungusoid l-plurals
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possession:
possessive prefixes
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possession:
possessive suffixes
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possession:
possessive suffixes
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cases:
prefixing case markers
ergative
– absolutive
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cases:
suffixing case markers
nominative
- accusative
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cases:
suffixing case markers
nominative
– accusative
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word
order: OVS, SOV
adjective
attributes: NA
nominal
attributes: GN
numeral
attribution: NumN
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word
order: SOV
adjective
attributes: AN
nominal
attributes: GN
numeral
attribution NumN
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word
order: SOV
adjective
attributes: AN (NA)
nominal
attributes: GN
numeral
attribution NumN
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adjunctions:
prepositions
conjuctions: prejunctions
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adjunctions:
postpositions
conjuctions: postjunctions
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adjunctions:
prepositions,
conjuctions: prejunctions
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analytic semipredication with
gerunds, infinitives
and participles
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semipredication with gerunds, infinitives and participles
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analytic semipredication with
gerunds, infinitives and participles
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stress: accent
on initial syllables
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accent on
ultimate syllables
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accent on penultimate
syllables
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versification:
alliterative
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prosody:
rhyming consonance
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parallelistic
consonance
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Table 9. The morphology
of Asiatic races with flake-tool industry
The centre point of Asiatic language
families lies in the categories of case, determination, state and possession.
Table 9 proposes a typological classification of Non-Indo-European language
structures that encapsulated from without into their lexical substance. The
left column sums Abkhaz, Scythoid,
Ugroid language types into the Bascoid
family of article-oriented dialects. Their family is usually counted as a
member of the Altaic Sprachbund although it
diverges as an independent subtype.
(from
P. Bělíček: The Analytic Survey of European Anthropology, Prague 2018, p.
35-42)
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