Democritus Reformatorium Prehistoric Tribes

Classic palaeoanthropology wasted much energy on generic terms, it abounded in terms such as Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus that classified hominins as independent genera. Current nomenclature teems unduly with species, it applies a lot of binomial terms as such Homo habilis, H. ergaster and H. floresiences that should be classed as subspecies or varieties. They do not sound much more acceptable as they presuppose that most hominins represented closely related but not interbreedable or intermarriageable species. They are reluctant to acknowledge that in the Lower Palaeolithic all genetic distances were much lesser than now and there existed gene flow between related varieties. A more critical view maintains that most archaic stocks of man were interbreedable racial varieties so that the most appropriate catchwords for palaeoanthropological categories would be Homo habilis ergaster or Home habilis erectus. The best proof of abundant mutual interfertility is the spread of Homo erectus in Southeast Asia that lasted almost two million years and engendered many mixed races (Zwischenrasen) of black equatorial populations with Oldowan industry and (pre)agricultural dispositions.

Species and genera are anthropological formations arisen by processes of adaptive speciation in isolated populations. Their origin resembles the hardening of a flux of hot plasmatic magma springing from volcanoes. It is a fallacy to imagine that the ancestors of man developed in a series of ten incompatible genera of primates. A more likely model depicts their growth as a chain of transitional evolutionary forms where one undifferentiated mainstream advanced forth and left over many sidelong outgrowths that later hardened into firm generic shapes on isolated byways. Besides unilinear monogenesis there were also parallel minor side streams of paragenesis cutting across half-bred species. It means that the earliest members of the genus Homo were interbreedable races and their direct predecessors may have hybridised even with advanced Paranthropinae and Australopithecinae.

Racial varieties do not grow up in a few centuries, their somatic differences are determined by hundred thousand years of adaptation to a definite ecotype and a mode of earning tribal living. They cannot have originated in civilised mixed societies with variegated and diversiform nutrition. Conforming adaptation is possible only in isolated regions with a narrow range of subsistence such as insular Polynesia, whose tribes are entirely dependent on fishing, angling and sailing. The main requirement of speciation are convergent influences of a definite ecotype and local natural sources that can produce amazing stability and perseverance in genetic patterns.

The primary goal of anthropology is to localise the cradlelands of primary races (proto-races), and find out their links to homelands of secondary races (deutero-races). They usually lie along the long-range migratory routes lined by campsites of mixed transient races. The greatest error in anthropology consists in the false conviction that transient races are independent cultivars grown swiftly out of local climatic and geomorphological conditions. In fact, evolution involves genetic perseverance, it adds new mutations but preserves all the previous mutative changes. Mixed hybrids develop genomes of pureblooded ancestors and remain their subclades. There exist only few primary races but infinitely many derived mixed races that have to be decomposed into ancestral genealogic lineages.

The basic primary prototype of human species was the black ulotrichous equatorial race, whose primary seat lay in the tropical rainforests of Africa. More than a half of other ethnic domains are just derived colonies of its plantations. Its heirs in the Near East, Caucasus and South Asia lost original dark pigmentation but found their ideal natural paradise in the (sub)tropical regions of Melanesia, Oceania and Australia. The woolly frizzly hair of African Negrids changed into the wavy and curly hair of Australids and Melanesids. In Fijians it assumed straight texture owing to high Polynesian admixture. On all continents the black ulotrichous equatorial race paved its own way of gradual sapientisation and gracilisation but everywhere it maintained its previous genetic heritage.

The most urgent theoretical requirement of prehistoric studies is to abandon the dogmatic Extinction Theory and replace it by the flexible accounts of Alinei’s Palaeolithic Survival Theory. It argues that the human past is not forever dead but it continues to survive in our blood and chromosomes. Inheritance does not jump wildly by mutations from one genus to another but preserves all previous mutations and engenders new subordinated varieties as its subclades. It presupposes the principle of racial interfertility2 maintained by the so-called ring species (German Rassenkreise)3 admitting temporary mixed mating. Such ring species unite series of early populations, which can primarily interbreed with each other but later they fail to beget crossbreds. After a longer period of adaptive speciation and adding new and new specific mutations they cease to be interfertile races.

Such dilemma befell the genus of Australopithecinae, who acted as an in-between linking open-air hominins with rain-forest hominids. Either they were pulled down into the local or regional gene flow between neighbouring populations or they separated from their mainstream and restored cohabitation with the backward rainforest species. At first they coexisted as interbreedable races but millennia of adaptive isolation made them speciate into a diverse species and genus. Such a model of genetic mating sheds new light on the beginnings of all hominids and hominins. It means that all binomial designations in the genus Homo could live together as interbreedable subspecies or racial varieties, whereas Paranthropinae and Australopithecinae lost contact and underwent regressive mutations due to return to the rainforest thicket.

The Paragenetic Model of Evolution

The paragenetic model of prehistory presupposes that most hominins and hominids lived in relative interbreeding and their genetic distances were much nearer than now. What we denote as detached genera and species were actually interfertile genetic races, strains, lineages, crosses and hybrids that later lost mutual interfertility owing to isolation in different hominoid populations. It is not plausible that they developed by large jumps from one genus to another, they must have maintained and preserved their genetic pool through progressive evolutionary metamorphoses. Many categories of genus and species were only generations, so the extant binomial and trinomial anthropological classification should adopt a special term for transient generations. All strains underwent parallel processes of hominisation, gracilisation and sapientisation by means of radical revolutions and longer stages of conservative inertia. Hominins split off hominids and hominoids as a special genetic stream competing with alternative strains of Paranthropines and Australopithecines. Participation in different population strains caused intraspecial differentiation. In the following evolutionary series the symbol means digression while the arrow → implies genetic continuity. It does not mean direct mother-daugher inheritance but a complex statistic process with many digressions splitting off the dominant mainstream. The following series are chief statistic mainstreams that suggest that the Palaeolithic Urrassen had different ancestors but converged to one of predominant Neolithic racial varieties.

Tall robust dolichocephalous herbivores with marked crista sagittalis

Gigantopithecus (9 mya) → Ouranopithecus (9 mya) ( Gorillas (9 mya)) → Paranthropus aethiopicus (2.5 mya) ( Paranthropus robustus (2 mya)) → Australopithecus garhi (2.5 mya) → Australopithecus sediba (1.8 mya) → Homo gautengensis (1.8 mya) → Homo erectus (1.8 mya) → Oldowans (1.8 mya).

Slender piscivores with tall and leptoprosopic flattish faces:

Proconsul africanus (23 mya) → Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5 mya) → Australopithecus afarensis (3.9–2.9 mya) → Homo habilis (2.1–1.5 mya) → Homo rudolfensis (2–1.5 mya) → Levalloisians (0.5 mya).

Tall brachycephalous carnivores and big-game hunters with narrow aquiline noses

Australopithecus anamensis (4.5 mya) → Laetoli man → Homo heidebergensis → Homo rhodensis (0.5 mya) ( Saldanha man) → Homo neanderthalensis → Mousterians.

Shortsized brachycephalous omnivores:

Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 mya) → Ardipithecus kadabba ( Pan paniscus (Bonobo)) → Australo-pithecus afarensis (3.9 mya) → Homo habilis → Sanids → Pygmids ( Homo floresiensis) → Sinids.

Table 1. The Ethnogenesis of Human Tribes

The Phylogenetic Trees of Human Stocks

Our Palaeolithic ancestors will remain doubtable mythical chimaeras until they are identified with real living races surviving to our days. Table 8 outlines the quadripartition of four basic human stocks and elucidates their rough evolutionary branching along the axis of time. Its genealogical graph outlines probable successive bifurcation but cannot specify very precise chronology in thousands of years. Its scheme suggests that axe-tool cultures gradually split into four robust tall races with dolichocephalous skulls and the blood group O. Their inner subclasses corresponded to several well-known archaeological cultures of Oldowan chopping-tool makers and Acheulean hand-axe manufacturers. Their colonists pursued the equatorial line of the tropical rainforests, and even though their Caucasoid and Nordic progeny diverged to colder northern regions, they all remained faithful to herbivorous nutrition. Their stocks developed from plant-gathering cultures with hand-choppers, ate corn seeds and vegetal roots and showed inclination to preagriculturalist or agriculturalist economy.

Table 8 sketches a model of the probable phylogeny of human cultures that counts with four principal independent lineages of development. They divide prehistoric cultures into equatorial stocks with hand-axes, Altaic tribes with flake-tool industry and Lapponoid ethnic groups with cremation rites. The first phylum gave rise to the hand-axe cultures of agriculturalists and gatherers of vegetal plant crops that fell into the branches of Negrids, Melanesids and Australoids. They formed cultures of robust tall-statured dolichocephalous herbivores (robust plant-eaters) of the black equatorial race.

The main stream of Oldowan colonists headed eastward for the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. Their line of evolution was most probably represented by Australo-Negrids (Melanesians and Australids), who were remarkable for using pebble-stone choppers. Their long-forgotten Bantu brothers later overcame limitation of Oldowan industry and invented more accomplished Lupemban and Sangoan hand-axes. In all areas their wanderings were lined with plant-gathering subsistence, fringed grass-apron clothing, matriarchal orders and tribal marital endogamy. Their women even now go out barebreasted and carry tubs of water on their heads.

These ethnic cultures propagated by eastward setting out on Oldowan, Acheulean, Abbevillian or Micoquian migrations that spread the art of manufacturing various types of choppers and hand-axes. One of their branches colonised the southern margins of Arabia and elaborated an innovative design of Acheulean hand-axes. Two of their offshoots headed for colder boreal regions in the north and turned into Acheulean Caucasoids (South Asia) and Europoid Nordids (North Europe). In the course of almost 500 000 years spent in the cold northern climate they underwent depigmentation and separated as tribes with lighter skin, hair and eyes. Both lineages preserved the older patterns of African collective longhouses but diverged a lot from their ancestry because they were exposed to a long-lasting infiltration of eastern Altaic cultures. The Danubian Europids adapted the Bantu rectangular houses with 2-slope roofs while Scandinavian Nordids reshaped them into Frisian sand-dune wurts and terps. In due course of time the eastern Caucasoid hosts evolved their own style with flat roofs. Whereas the Caucasoid arid-area agriculturalists took to producing double-axes, the Europoid littoral preagri-culturalists worked out battle-axes of boat-shaped type (Bootäxte). An isolated group of Sino-Negrids in China developed a special type of shoulder axes (Schulterbeile).

A similar evolutionary account may be sketched for the Altaic Mongolids. Reliable dates for their prehistory are missing but a lot can be deduced indirectly by comparing their archaeological cultures. Asiatic Mongolids may be divided into big-game hunters and fishermen with additional small-game hunting subsistence. Altaic hunters probably descended from the Mousterian mammoth hunters butchering giant mammals with long lances provided with leaf-shaped (lanceolithic) heads. The faction of Altaic nomadic fishermen evolved into the progeny of Levalloisian Neanderthalers specialised in making long pointed leptolithic flake-tools determined for spearheads harpooning fish. Their descendants were the Aurignacians with long prismatic knives. Another group separated as the microlithic family with tiny microlithic flakes set into arrows and wooden hafts (Magdalenians, Maglemosians, Azilians, Tardenoisians). Aurignacians can be identified as Tungids of Combe Capelle type, the latter seem to betray members of the Turanid family of Turcoid provenance. Both offshoots tend to display a conspicuous predominance of the blood group B. The big-game hunters of the megalithic extraction, who comprise Basques, Berbers, Abkhaz, Scythians and Ugrians, made an exception. Owing to contamination they exhibit the blood group O with the negative Rh factor. What they preserved as their specialty, was the Y-DNA haplogroup Q and the mtDNA haplotype X. If Mousterians and Levalloisians grew out of common ancestry, the four-stock model may shrink into a mere tripartition.

Most Lapponoid and Pygmoid races abound in the blood group A and bear strong resemblance to the Annamite short-sized ethnovariety that fathers also Negritos and Tasmanians. The Austronesian dark-skinned Negritos with cremation burials, semidugouts and lean-to shelters probably arose due to a huge colonisation from Annam to the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia.1 Its most remarkable milestone was detected at the Australian site Lake Mungo (62,000 BC). One stream of colonists headed for southern Asia and imported Sino-Tibetan isolating syntax with multi-tonal melodic prosody also to western Africa. Their cultural imprint is felt definitely in the Ewe-Igbo family and the Chadic tribes Bolewa and Vandala. African Pygmies’ and Bushmen’s languages exhibit compatible phonological and morphological tendencies but add sucking clicks and implosive consonants, which are very rare in Austronesia. Clicks have been evidenced only in the Australian tribal native tongue Damin. This suggests a plausible hypothesis that the African Pygmy and Bushmen ethnovarieties may have been the primary homeland of all dwarfish peoples in the world.2

A numerous population of Lapponoid tribesmen settled down in the Indian subcontinent and gave local autochthons the stamp of incinerating cultures. Their cremations took place on funeral pyres in the accompaniment of widows, who were burnt lying beside their husbands. Their impact is discernible also in the Andronovo cremation culture (15,000 BC) excavated in Kazakhstan and South Russia. About 33,000 BP Eurasia was flooded by the Gravettian culture of semidugout lean-to huts and ivory Venuses that were reminiscent of Bushmen women with long breasts and fat buttocks. The Gravettian people manufactured backed knives spread from their epicentre in Libya and the Galla region of Somalia. The Lapponoid populations in Europe (Lapplanders and Slavs) flourished in the heydays of the Lusatian culture (13,000 BC) and may be due to the subsequent inflow of Andronovo people from the east. However, the fraternal tribes of western relatives (Alpines, Gaels, Gauls and also Albanians) abound in too many Africanism, so their languages structures presuppose a long stay in North and Central Africa.

Extract from P. Bělíček:: The Synthetic Classification of Human Phenotypes and Varieties Prague 2018,

p. 23-25

2 J. D. Peck, A. Janitz, L. B. Craig: Ethnic and racial differences in the prevalence of infertility. American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 106, 3, 2016, p. 8.

3 Bernhard Rensch: Über die Bedeutung des Prinzips geographischer Rassenkreise. Berlin 1932.

1 Past Worlds. The Times Atlas of Archeology. Harper Collins Publishers 1988, Czech transl. Zaniklé světy. Praha: Basset, 1985, p. 90.

2 H. Traunmüller: Clicks and the idea of a human protolanguage. Phonum 9, 2003, 1-4.

1 Past Worlds. The Times Atlas of Archeology. Harper Collins Publishers 1988, Czech transl. Zaniklé světy. Praha: Basset, 1985, p. 90.

2 H. Traunmüller: Clicks and the idea of a human protolanguage. Phonum 9, 2003, 1-4.