 | This article'slead sectionmay be too short to adequatelysummarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead toprovide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article.(April 2024) |
| Part ofa series on |
| Indo-European topics |
|---|
 |
Extant Extinct Reconstructed Hypothetical
Grammar Other |
Archaeology Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Bronze Age Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe
South Asia Iron Age Europe Caucasus Central Asia India |
Peoples and societies Bronze Age Iron AgeIndo-Aryans Iranians Nuristanis East Asia Europe Middle Ages Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian |
Religion and mythology |
 Category |
TheCorded Ware culture comprises a broadarchaeological horizon ofEurope betweenc. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the LateNeolithic, through theCopper Age, and ending in the earlyBronze Age.[2] Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from thecontact zone between theYamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture inSouth Eastern Europe, to theRhine in the west and theVolga in the east, occupying parts ofNorthern Europe,Central Europe andEastern Europe.[2][3]Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures,[4][5][6] evolving in parallel with (although under significant influence from) the Yamnaya; while the idea of direct male-line descent between them has not received significant support yet,[7]IBD-sharing between the populations of these two cultures indicates that, at the very least, they came from a recent common ancestor, with aHarvard Magazine article on the find referring to them as "cousins" who were "biologically separated ... by only a few hundred years".[8][9]
The Corded Ware culture is considered to be a likely vector for the spread of many of theIndo-European languages in Europe and Asia.[1][10][11][12]
The termCorded Ware culture (German:Schnurkeramik-Kultur) was first introduced by the German archaeologist Friedrich Klopfleisch in 1883.[13] He named it aftercord-like impressions or ornamentation characteristic of itspottery.[13] The termSingle Grave culture comes from its burial custom, which consisted of inhumation undertumuli in a crouched position with various artifacts.Battle Axe culture, or Boat Axe culture, is named from its characteristic male grave offering, a stone boat-shapedbattle axe.[13]
Corded Ware encompassed most of continental northern Europe from theRhine in the west to theVolga in the east, including most of modern-dayGermany, theNetherlands,Denmark,Poland,Lithuania,Latvia,Estonia,Belarus,Czech Republic,Austria,Hungary,Slovakia,Switzerland, northwesternRomania, northernUkraine, and the European part ofRussia, as well as coastalNorway and the southern portions ofSweden andFinland.[2] In the Late Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age, it encompassed the territory of nearly the entire Balkan Peninsula, where Corded Ware mixed with other steppe elements.[15]
Archaeologists note that Corded Ware was not a "unified culture," as Corded Ware groups inhabiting a vast geographical area from theRhine toVolga seem to have regionally specific subsistence strategies and economies.[2]: 226 There are differences in the material culture and in settlements and society.[2] At the same time, they had several shared elements that are characteristic of all Corded Ware groups, such as their burial practices, pottery with "cord" decoration and unique stone-axes.[2]
The contemporaryBell Beaker culture overlapped with the western extremity of this culture, west of theElbe, and may have contributed to the pan-European spread of that culture. Although a similar social organization and settlement pattern to the Beaker were adopted, the Corded Ware group lacked the new refinements made possible through trade and communication by sea and rivers.[16]
The origins and dispersal of Corded Ware culture is one of the pivotal unresolved issues of theIndo-European Urheimat problem;[17] there is also a stark division between archaeologists regarding the origins of Corded Ware. The Corded Ware culture has long been regarded as Indo-European, with archaeologists seeing an influence from nomadic pastoral societies of the steppes. Alternatively, some archaeologists believed it developed independently in central Europe.[18]
The Corded Ware culture was once presumed to be theUrheimat of theProto-Indo-Europeans based on their possession of thehorse andwheeled vehicles, apparent warlike propensities, wide area of distribution and rapid intrusive expansion at the assumed time of the dispersal ofIndo-European languages.[17] Today this specific idea has lost currency, as thesteppe hypothesis is currently the most widely accepted proposal to explain the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages.[18]
Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the people of the Corded Ware culture share significant levels of ancestry with Yamnaya as a consequence of a "massive migration" from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and the people of both cultures may be directly descended from a genetically similar pre-Yamnaya population.[6][10]
Kristiansen et al. (2017) theorise that the Corded Ware culture originated from male Yamnaya pastoralists who migrated northward and mated with women from farming communities.[19][a] However,Barry Cunliffe has criticized the theory that the Corded Ware populations were descended from a mass migration of Yamnaya males, noting that the available Corded Ware samples do not carrypaternal haplogroups observed in Yamnaya male specimens.[20] This view is shared byLeo Klejn, who maintains that "the Yamnaya cannot be the source of the Corded Ware cultures", as the Corded Ware paternal haplogroups are unrelated to those found in Yamnaya specimens.[21][22][b] Similarly, Guus Kroonen et al. (2022), had argued that the Corded Ware populations may have originated from a Yamnaya-related population, rather than the Yamnaya themself, stating that "this may support a scenario of linguistic continuity of local non-mobile herders in the Lower Dnieper region and their genetic persistence after their integration into the successive and expansive Yamnaya horizon".[23]
In 2023, Kristiansen et al. argued that the lack of Yamnaya-relatedhaplogroups in Corded Ware populations indicates that they cannot have been direct male-line descendants of the Yamnaya, as the Corded Ware culture samples were primarily from haplogroupR1a.[7] These authors proposed that the Corded Ware culture evolved in parallel with (although under significant influence from) the Yamnaya, with direct male-line descent between them. However, Papac et al. (2023) revealed the presence of the most commonly sampled Corded Ware haplogroup in the Yamnaya,[6] and Lazaridis et al. (2024) showed the presence of the most commonly sampled Yamnaya haplogroup in the Corded Ware.[24]
._V._I._Klochko_(2023).png)
Archaeologists Furholt and Heyd continue to emphasize the differences both between and within the material cultures of these two groups, as well as emphasizing the problems of oversimplifying these long-term social processes.[26][27]
TheMiddle Dnieper culture forms a bridge between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture. From the Middle Dnieper culture the Corded Ware culture spread both west and east. The eastward migration gave rise to theFatyanova culture which had a formative influence on theAbashevo culture, which in turn contributed to theproto-Indo-IranianSintashta culture.[3] Its wide area of distribution indicates rapid expansion at the assumed time of the dispersal of the core (excluding Anatolian and Tocharian)Indo-European languages. In a number of regions Corded Ware appears to herald a new culture and physical type.[17] On most of the immense, continental expanse that it covered, the culture was clearly intrusive, and therefore represents one of the most impressive and revolutionary cultural changes attested by archaeology.[16]
Early Corded Waremetallurgy is thought to have developed from the earlier copper metallurgy of theCucuteni-Trypillia culture (extending from Romania, Moldova and Ukraine) with some additionalEastern Mediterranean influences.[28][25]
In favour of the view that the culture developed independently was that Corded Ware coincides considerably with the earlier north-central EuropeanFunnelbeaker culture (TRB). According to Gimbutas, the Corded Ware culture was preceded by theGlobular Amphora culture (3400–2800 BC), which she regarded to be an Indo-European culture. The Globular Amphora culture stretched from central Europe to the Baltic sea, and emerged from the Funnelbeaker culture.[29]
According to controversial radiocarbon dates, Corded Ware ceramic forms in single graves develop earlier in the area that is now Poland than in western and southern Central Europe.[30] The earliest radiocarbon dates for Corded Ware indeed come fromKujawy andLesser Poland in central and southern Poland and point to the period around 3000 BC.
However, subsequent review has challenged this perspective, instead pointing out that the wide variation in dating of the Corded Ware, especially the dating of the culture's beginning, is based on individual outlier graves, is not particularly in line with other archaeological data and runs afoul of plateaus in theradiocarbon calibration curve; in the one case where the dating can be clarified with dendrochronology, in Switzerland, Corded Ware is found for only a short period from 2750 BC to 2400 BC.[31] Furthermore, because the short period in Switzerland seems to represent examples of artifacts from all the major sub-periods of the Corded Ware culture elsewhere, some researchers conclude that Corded Ware appeared more or less simultaneously throughout North Central Europe approximately in the early 29th century BC (around 2900 BC), in a number of "centers" which subsequently formed their own local networks.[2]: 297 Carbon-14 dating of the remaining central European regions shows that Corded Ware appeared after 2880 BC.[32] According to this theory, it spread to theLüneburg Heath and then further to the North European Plain, Rhineland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Baltic region and Russia to Moscow, where the culture met with the pastoralists considered indigenous to the steppes.[16]
TheMiddle Dnieper culture is a formative early expression of the Corded Ware culture.[3] It has very scant remains, but occupies the easiest route into Central and Northern Europe from the steppe.
TheMiddle Dnieper culture and the Eastern Baltic Corded Ware culture gave rise to theFatyanovo–Balanovo culture on the upper Volga,[3] which in turn contributed to theAbashevo culture, a predecessor of theproto-Indo-IranianSintashta culture.
The Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture may have been a culture with an Indo-Europeansuperstratum over a Uralicsubstratum,[citation needed] and may account for some of the linguistic borrowings identified in theIndo-Uralic thesis. However, according to Häkkinen, the Uralic–Indo-European contacts only start in the Corded Ware period and the Uralic expansion into the Upper Volga region postdates it. Häkkinen accepts Fatyanovo-Balanovo as an early Indo-European culture, but maintains that their substratum (identified with theVolosovo culture) was neither Uralic nor Indo-European.[33]
The prototypal Corded Ware culture, GermanSchnurkeramikkultur, is found in Central Europe, mainly Germany and Poland, and refers to the characteristic pottery of the era: twisted cord was impressed into the wet clay to create various decorative patterns and motifs. It is known mostly from its burials, and both sexes received the characteristic cord-decorated pottery. Whether made of flax or hemp, they hadrope.
Single Grave term refers to a series of late Neolithic communities of the 3rd millennium BC living in southernScandinavia,Northern Germany, and theLow Countries that share the practice of single burial, the deceased usually being accompanied by a battle-axe, amber beads, and pottery vessels.[35]
The termSingle Grave culture was first introduced by the Danish archaeologist Andreas Peter Madsen in the late 1800s. He found Single Graves to be quite different from the already known dolmens, long barrows and passage graves.[36] In 1898, archaeologist Sophus Müller was first to present a migration-hypothesis stating that previously known dolmens, long barrows, passage graves and newly discovered single graves may represent two completely different groups of people, stating "Single graves are traces of new, from the south coming tribes".[37]
The cultural emphasis on drinking equipment already characteristic of the early indigenousFunnelbeaker culture, synthesized with newly arrived Corded Ware traditions. Especially in the west (Scandinavia and northern Germany), the drinking vessels have a protruding foot and define the Protruding-Foot Beaker culture (PFB) as a subset of the Single Grave culture.[38] TheBeaker culture has been proposed to derive from this specific branch of the Corded Ware culture.[citation needed]
At Zeewijk in the Netherlands the remains of a large rectangular building measuring 22 m by 5.5–7 m, have been excavated. The building may have had a ritual or ceremonial function.[34][39]
The Danish-Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe culture, or theBoat Axe culture, appearedc. 2800 BC and is known from about 3,000 graves fromScania toUppland andTrøndelag. The "battle-axes" were primarily a status object. There are strong continuities in stone craft traditions, and very little evidence of any type of full-scale migration, least of all a violent one. The old ways were discontinued as the corresponding cultures on the continent changed, and the farmers living in Scandinavia took part in a few of those changes since they belonged to the same network. Settlements on small, separate farmsteads without any defensive protection is also a strong argument against the people living there being aggressors.
About 3000 battle axes have been found, in sites distributed over all of Scandinavia, but they are sparse inNorrland and northern Norway. Less than 100 settlements are known, and their remains are negligible as they are located on continually used farmland, and have consequently been plowed away.Einar Østmo reports sites inside theArctic Circle in theLofoten, and as far north as the present city ofTromsø.
The Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe culture was based on the same agricultural practices as the previous Funnelbeaker culture, but the appearance of metal changed the social system. This is marked by the fact that the Funnelbeaker culture had collectivemegalithic graves with a great deal of sacrifices to the graves, but the Battle Axe culture has individual graves with individual sacrifices.
A new aspect was given to the culture in 1993, when adeath house in Turinge, inSödermanland, was excavated. Along the once heavily timbered walls were found the remains of about twenty clay vessels, six work axes and a battle axe, which all came from the last period of the culture. There were also the cremated remains of at least six people. This is the earliest find ofcremation in Scandinavia and it shows close contacts with Central Europe.
In the context of the entry of Germanic into the region, Einar Østmo emphasizes that the Atlantic and North Sea coastal regions of Scandinavia, and the circum-Baltic areas were united by a vigorous maritime economy, permitting a far wider geographical spread and a closer cultural unity than interior continental cultures could attain. He points to the widely disseminated number of rock carvings assigned to this era, which display "thousands" of ships. To seafaring cultures like this one, the sea is a highway and not a divider.[40]
The Finnish Battle Axe culture was a mixed cattle-breeder andhunter-gatherer culture, and one of the few in this horizon to provide rich finds from settlements.
There are very few discovered settlements, which led to the traditional view of this culture as exclusively nomadic pastoralists, similar to that of theYamnaya culture, and the reconstructed culture of the Indo-Europeans as inferred fromphilology.
However, this view was modified, as some evidence of sedentary farming emerged. Traces ofemmer,common wheat andbarley were found at a Corded Ware site atBronocice in south-eastPoland. Wheeled vehicles (presumably drawn by oxen) are in evidence, a continuation from the Funnelbeaker culture era.[17][42]
Cows' milk was used systematically from 3400 BC onwards in the northernAlpine foreland.Sheep were kept more frequently in the western part ofSwitzerland due to the stronger Mediterranean influence. Changes in slaughter age and animal size are possibly evidence for sheep being kept for their wool at Corded Ware sites in this region.[43]
Burial occurred inflat graves or below smalltumuli in a flexed position; on the continent males lay on their right side, females on the left, with the faces of both oriented to the south. However, in Sweden and also parts of northern Poland the graves were oriented north-south, men lay on their left side and women on the right side - both facing east. Originally, there was probably a wooden construction, since the graves are often positioned in a line. This is in contrast with practices in Denmark where the dead were buried below small mounds with a vertical stratigraphy: the oldest below the ground, the second above this grave, and occasionally even a third burial above those. Other types of burials are the niche-graves of Poland.Grave goods for men typically included a stonebattle axe. Pottery in the shape of beakers and other types are the most common burial gifts, generally speaking. These were often decorated with cord, sometimes with incisions and other types of impressions. Other grave goods also included wagons and sacrificed animals.
The approximately contemporaryBeaker culture had similar burial traditions, and together they covered most of Western and Central Europe. TheBeaker culture originated around 2800 BC in theIberian Peninsula and subsequently extended into Central Europe, where it partly coexisted with the Corded Ware region.
In April 2011, it was reported that an untypical Corded Ware burial had been discovered in a suburb ofPrague.[44] The remains, believed to be male, were orientated in the same way as women's burials and were not accompanied by any gender-specific grave goods. Based on this, and the importance usually attached to funeral rites by people from this period, the archaeologists suggested that this was unlikely to be accidental, and conclude that it was likely that this individual "was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual",[44] while media reports heralded the discovery of the world's first "gay caveman".[45] Archaeologists and biological anthropologists criticised media coverage as sensationalist. "If this burial represents a transgendered [sic] individual (as well it could), that doesn't necessarily mean the person had a 'different sexual orientation' and certainly doesn't mean that he would have considered himself (or that his culture would have considered him) 'homosexual,'" anthropologist Kristina Killgrove commented.[46] Other items of criticism were that someone buried in the Copper Age was not a "caveman" and that identifying the sex of skeletal remains is difficult and inexact.[46] Turek notes that there are several examples of Corded Ware graves containing older biological males with typically female grave goods and body orientation. He suggests that "aged men may have decided to 'retire' as women for symbolic and practical reasons."[47] A detailed account of the burial has not yet appeared in scientific literature.
%2c_Landesmuseum_f%25C3%25BCr_Vorgeschichte%2c_Schnurkeramikkultur.jpg)
_Das_Urst%25C3%25BCck_befindet_sich_in_Berlin.jpg)
![Copper lunulae from Belarus. Middle Dnieper culture[48]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3a%25D0%2594%25D1%258B%25D1%258F%25D0%25B4%25D1%258D%25D0%25BC%25D0%25B0._%25D0%2591%25D1%2580%25D0%25BE%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B2%25D1%258B_%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B5%25D0%25BA.jpg)
![Decorated hammer-axe from Lusice, Moravia[49]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aNHM_-_Lusice_Prunkbeil_1.jpg)
!['Allunda Moose' ceremonial axe, Sweden, c. 2500 BC[50]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aAlunda%25C3%25A4lgen_123172_HST.jpg)
![Gold spiral ornament[51]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aGold_spiral_ornament_1.png)
The Corded Ware culture may have played a central role in the spread of theIndo-European languages in Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages.[52][53] It had often been suggested that the CWC represented thegeolinguistic core of the Indo-European languages subsequent to the divergence of first theAnatolian andTocharian languages and later a group ancestral to theIndo-Iranian,Greek,Armenian,Illyrian and/orThracian languages; such models implied the CWC spoke a language ancestral to the Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic languages.[54] According to Mallory (1999), the Corded Ware culture may have been "the common prehistoric ancestor of the later Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and possibly some of the Indo-European languages of Italy."[54] Mallory (1999) also suggests that Corded Ware could not have been the sole source for Greek, Illyrian, Thracian and East Italic, which may be derived from Southeast Europe.[54] Mallory (2013) proposes that the Beaker culture was associated with a European branch of Indo-European dialects, termed "North-West Indo-European", spreading northwards from the Alpine regions and ancestral to not only Celtic but equally Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic.[55]
According to Anthony (2007), the Corded Ware horizon may have introduced Germanic, Baltic and Slavic into northern Europe.[56] According to Anthony, the Pre-Germanic dialects may have developed in theUsatove culture inSouth Eastern Europe encompassing parts ofRomania,Moldova and Ukraine between c. 3100 and 2800 BC, and spread with the Corded Ware culture.[57] Between 3100 and 2800/2600 BC, a real folk migration of Proto-Indo-European speakers from the Yamnaya culture took place into the Danube Valley,[58] which eventually reached as far as Hungary,[59] where pre-Celtic and pre-Italic may have developed.[56] Slavic and Baltic developed at the middleDniepr (present-day Ukraine).[60]
Haak et al. (2015) envision a migration from the Yamnaya culture into Germany.[61] Allentoft et al. (2015) envision a migration from the Yamnaya culture towards north-western Europe via Central Europe, and towards the Baltic area and the eastern periphery of the Corded Ware culture via the territory of present-day Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.[1]
According toGimbutas' original theory, the process of "Indo-Europeanization" of Corded Ware (and, later, the rest of Europe) was essentially a cultural transformation, not a genetic one.[62] The Yamnaya migration from Eastern to Central and Western Europe is understood by Gimbutas as a military victory, resulting in the Yamnaya imposing a new administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups.[63][c][d]
David Anthony (2007), in his "revised Steppe hypothesis",[64] proposes that the spread of the Indo-European languages probably did not happen through "chain-type folk migrations," but by the introduction of these languages by ritual and political elites, which were emulated by large groups of people,[65] a process which he calls "elite recruitment".[66][e] Yet, in supplementary information to Haak et al. (2015), Anthony, together with Lazaridis, Haak, Patterson, and Reich, note that the mass migration of Yamnaya people to northern Europe shows that "the Steppe hypothesis does not require elite dominance to have transmitted Indo-European languages into Europe. Instead, our results show that the languages could have been introduced simply by strength of numbers: via major migration in which both sexes participated."[67][f]
Linguist Guus Kroonen points out that speakers of Indo-European languages encountered existing populations in Europe that spoke unrelated, non-Indo-European languages when they migrated further intoEurope from the Yamnaya culture's steppe zone at the margin of Europe.[68] He focuses on both the effects on Indo-European languages that resulted from this contact and investigation of the pre-existing languages. Relatively little is known about the Pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape of Europe, except forBasque, as the "Indo-Europeanization" of Europe caused a massive and largely unrecorded linguistic extinction event, most likely throughlanguage shift.[69] Kroonen's 2015[69] study claims to show that Pre-Indo-European speech contains a clear Neolithic signature emanating from theAegean language family and thus patterns with the prehistoric migration of Europe's first farming populations.[69]: 10
Marija Gimbutas, as part of her theory, had already inferred that the Corded Ware culture's intrusion into Scandinavia formed a synthesis with the indigenous people of the Funnelbeaker culture, giving birth to the Proto-Germanic language.[62] According toEdgar Polomé, 30% of thenon-Indo-European substratum found in the modern German language derives from non-Indo-European-speakers ofFunnelbeaker culture, indigenous to southern Scandinavia.[70] She claimed that when Yamnaya Indo-European speakers came into contact with the indigenous peoples during the 3rd millennium BC, they came to dominate the local populations yet parts of the indigenouslexicon persisted in the formation ofProto-Germanic, thus giving Proto-Germanic the status of being an "Indo-Europeanized" language.[71] However, more recent linguists[citation needed] have substantially reduced the number of roots claimed to be uniquely Germanic, and more recent treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis, giving little reason to consider Germanic anything but a typical Indo-European dialect with at most minor substrate influence.
 | This sectionmay contain an excessive amount of intricatedetail that may only interest a particular audience. Please help byspinning off orrelocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail that may be againstWikipedia's inclusion policy.(April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Haak et al. (2015) found that a large proportion of the ancestry of the Corded Ware culture's population is similar to that of theYamnaya culture, tracing the Corded Ware culture's origins to a "massive migration" of the Yamnaya or an earlier (pre-Yamnaya) population from the steppes 4,500 years ago.[10] The DNA of late Neolithic Corded Ware skeletons found in Germany was found to be around 75% similar to DNA from individuals of the Yamnaya culture.[10] Yet, Haak et al. (2015) warned:[10]
We caution that the sampled Yamnaya individuals from Samara might not be directly ancestral to Corded Ware individuals from Germany. It is possible that a more western Yamnaya population, or an earlier (pre-Yamnaya) steppe population may have migrated into central Europe, and future work may uncover more missing links in the chain of transmission ofsteppe ancestry.
The same study estimated a 40–54% ancestral contribution of so-called "steppe ancestry" in the DNA of modern Central & Northern Europeans, and a 20–32% contribution in modern Southern Europeans, excludingSardinians (7.1% or less), and to a lesser extentSicilians (11.6% or less).[10][72][73] Haak et al. (2015) further found thatautosomal DNA tests indicate that westward migration from the steppes was responsible for the introduction of a component of ancestry referred to as "Ancient North Eurasian" admixture into western Europe.[10] "Ancient North Eurasian" is the name given in genetic literature to a component that represents descent from the people of theMal'ta-Buret' culture[10] or a populationclosely related to them.[10] The "Ancient North Eurasian" genetic component is visible in tests of the Yamnaya people[10] as well as modern-day Europeans, but not of Western or Central Europeans predating the Corded Ware culture.[74]
Heyd (2017) has cautioned to be careful with drawing too strong conclusions from those genetic similarities between Corded Ware and Yamnaya, noting the small number of samples; the late dates of the Esperstadt graves, which could also have undergone Bell Beaker admixture; the presence of Yamnaya ancestry in western Europe before the Danube expansion; and the risks of extrapolating "the results from a handful of individual burials to whole ethnically interpreted populations."[76] Heyd confirms the close connection between Corded Ware and Yamnaya, but also states that "neither a one-to-one translation from Yamnaya to CWC, nor even the 75:25 ratio as claimed (Haaket al. 2015:211) fits the archaeological record."[76]
In the early 3rd millennium BC, the Corded Ware culture appeared in Northern Europe. Genetic studies suggest thatFunnelbeaker women ofEuropean Neolithic farmer ancestry were incorporated into the Corded Ware culture through intermixing with incoming Corded Ware males of Yamnaya ancestry.[77] Saag et al. (2017) found that the people of the Corded Ware culture in the eastern Baltic carried "Steppe ancestry on the male side" and "some European early farmer genetic ancestry on the female side".[78]
An archaeogenetic study focusing on late Neolithic and Bronze Age individuals fromBohemia,Papac et al. (2021), which includes Haak and Heyd as co-authors, suggests that the early Corded Ware culture was a "polyethnic" society characterized by genetic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, resulting from the agglomeration of people of theGlobular Amphora culture andYamnaya-related migrants, who had highly differentiated genetic profiles, a different material culture, and probably spoke different languages. One hundred percent of the Bohemian Corded Ware samples found without steppe-derived ancestry were female, indicating that this genetic diversity was a result of Corded Ware males marrying and assimilating local Globular Amphora females. Later Corded Ware individuals of Central Europe were less differentiated genetically. This study also detected ancestry similar to Latvia Middle Neolithic ("Latvia_MN-like"), or Ukraine Neolithic in early Corded Ware individuals, suggesting either a northeast European Eneolithic forest steppe contribution to early CW, partially supported by archaeology, or alternatively a contribution from a hypothetical steppe population carrying this ancestry, which the authors consider less likely. This ancestry made up 5–15% of the early Corded Ware ancestry, depending on the model used.[6]
According to Malmström et al. (2019), neither R1a nor R1b-M269 have been reported amongNeolithic populations ofcentral andwestern Europe, although they were common among earlier hunter gatherers ofEastern Europe.[77] Haak et al. note that their results suggest that these haplogroups "spread into Europe from the East after 3,000 BC."[10]
The majority of CWC-men carriedhaplogroup R1a-M417, the remaining onesR1b andI2a.[77] Note that, although related to the Corded Ware population, Yamnaya males mainly carried R1b-Z2103, while R1b-bearing Corded Ware males had R1b-L51, suggesting that Corded Ware culture males cannot be directly patrilineally descended from Yamnaya individuals.[g] Yet, Linderholm et al. (2020) found seven CW males which were narrowed down to either R1b-M269 or R-L11,[79] while Allentoft et al. (2015) report two CW males with R1b,[1] and Furtwängler et al. (2020) report three CW males with R1b.[80] According to Sjögren et al. (2020), R1b-M269 "is the major lineage associated with the arrival of Steppe ancestry in western Europe after 2500 BC[E]."[81]
Papac et al. (2021) argue that the differences in Y-DNA between early CW and Yamnaya males suggest that the Yamnaya culture did not have a direct role in the origins and expansion of the Corded Ware culture.[6] They found that a majority of early Corded Ware males in Bohemia belonged to R1b-L151, while R1a lineages became predominant over time.[6] The study detected a reduction in male haplogroup diversity over time, reducing from five different lineages in early CW to a single dominant lineage, R1a-M417(xZ645), in late CW. The authors suggest that males of this haplogroup had around 15% more surviving offspring per generation compared to other males, which may have been caused by "selection, social structure, or influx of nonlocal R1a-M417(xZ645) lineages."[6] The sample included one individual ancestral to haplogroup R1b-P312, which is the most common male lineage found in individuals of theBell Beaker culture.[6]
An overview of reported CW Y-DNA haplogroups:
A 2015 study by Allentoft et al. inNature found the people of the Corded Ware culture to be genetically similar to theBeaker culture, theÚnětice culture and theNordic Bronze Age.[h] People of the Nordic Bronze Age and Corded Ware show the highestlactose tolerance among Bronze Age Europeans.[i]
The study also found a close genetic relationship between the Corded Ware culture and theSintashta culture, suggesting that the Sintashta culture emerged as a result of an eastward expansion of Corded Ware peoples. The Sintashta culture is in turn closely genetically related to theAndronovo culture, by which it was succeeded.[j] Many cultural similarities between the Sintashta/Andronovo culture, the Nordic Bronze Age and the people of theRigveda have been detected.[k]
Narasimhan et al. (2019) found theSintashta culture, thePotapovka culture, theAndronovo culture and theSrubnaya culture to be closely related to the Corded Ware culture.[l][m] These cultures were found to harbor mixed ancestry from theYamnaya culture and peoples of theMiddle Neolithic of Central Europe.[12] The genetic data suggested that these cultures were ultimately derived of a remigration of Central European peoples withsteppe ancestry back into the steppe.[n]
| Chalcolithic Eneolithic, Aeneolithic, or Copper Age |
|---|
| ↑Stone Age ↑Neolithic |
By region Africa (2600 BC–1600 AD) West Asia (6000–3500 BC) Europe (5500–2200 BC)
Central Asia (3700–1700 BC) South Asia (4300–1800 BC)
China (5000–2900 BC) Mesoamerica (6500–1000 BC) |
Related topics |
| ↓Bronze Age ↓Iron Age |
How exactly the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware are linked to the emergence and expansion of the Yamnaya horizon remains unclear. However, the Y chromosome record of both groups indicates that Corded Ware cannot be derived directly from the Yamnaya or late eastern farming groups sampled thus far, and is therefore likely to constitute a parallel development in the forest steppe and temperate forest zones of Eastern Europe. Even in Central Europe, the formation of the earliest regional Corded Ware identities was the result of local and regional social practices that resulted in the typical Corded Ware rite of passage.
As mentioned, the presence of R1b1 in Bell Beaker burials is, however, attributed by Haak et al. (2015) to Yamnaya influence – disconcertingly for the model as a whole, all of the Yamnaya sampled to date have MSY R1b1a lineages rather than the R1a that might have been predicted. However we note that this is a deep branching R1b lineage very different from he majority of those seen in Western Europe today, and more commonly seen in Eastern Europe .... Despite the spectacular volume of new genome-wide data brought into play recently, especially by Haak and colleagues, there has inevitably been some targeting of the evidence on the basis of particular hypotheses and any conclusions should be held as provisional for the present. We should be wary of inferring a 'mass migration' on the basis of the evidence so far.
Thus, in the second half of IV – beginning of III millennium BC, in the Right-bank Ukraine, based on local Eneolithic metallurgy of the East-Carpathian type of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture and the Western Balkan (Vincha culture) and the Eastern Mediterranian (the cultural affiliation is unknown) technological traditions brought in due to migrations and trading contacts, the Carpathian-Volyn center of the "willow leaf" metallurgy of the Corded Ware cultures (Klochko & Klochko 2013) was formed, with its unique set of kinds and types of metal products and the tradition of use of relatively pure copper along with As-bronze, Sn-bronze and Sn + As-bronze.
the structure's location in the periphery of the settlement as well as its extraordinary size and regular shape, suggest that it was probably not a standard dwelling, and presumably neither a barn. Perhaps the building had a ritual or ceremonial function.
