The Climate Driven Narrative Of The Prehistory of India

 

These maps are useful in shedding light on the prehistory of India. 

The Harappans

The Gangetic plain is predominantly in the temperate zone which has the highest population density in India and the most agriculturally oriented economy. 

This region had agriculture very early on, probably no later than 4000 BCE and possibly sooner, initially using Fertile Crescent Neolithic crops, via the Caucuses and Iran in its formative era, whose migrating farmers account for a significant share of the genetic roots of of the Indus Valley Civilization (a.k.a. the Harappan civilization a.k.a. the Meluhha). The Harappan civilization later adopted rice as a crop as well, via Austroasiatic migrants from Southeast Asia who gave rise to the Munda languages of India, ca. 2000 BCE.

We know from well dated residues on Harappan pots, by the way, that curry was a Harappan invention that predated the Indo-Aryans and the Munda people.

The prevailing view is that Harappan society was united politically, perhaps in a federation of city-states, and was largely free of war or fortifications, apart from some trade outposts on its frontiers, until it collapsed. It has relatively modern plumbing for the Bronze Age and its cities lack obviously palatial complexes, that one might associate with a more hierarchal society dominated by local kings who simply enriched themselves. 

Harappan society had its own script. The majority view is that this was a proto-script used for accounting and trade purposes, similar to the Vinca script in the Neolithic Balkans and the earliest Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions, but not a full fledged written language.

Harappans had trade connections to Sumeria, where they had a historically attested trade colony, and based on those records, know that the Harappans called themselves the Meluhha. 

Meluḫḫa or Melukhkha (Sumerian: 𒈨𒈛𒄩𒆠 Me-luḫ-ḫaKI) is the Sumerian name of a prominent trading partner of Sumer during the Middle Bronze Age. . . . most scholars associate it with the Indus Valley Civilisation. . . . Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to three important centers with which they traded: Magan, Dilmun, and Meluhha. The Sumerian location of Magan is now accepted to be the area currently encompassing the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Dilmun was a Persian Gulf civilization which traded with Mesopotamian civilizations. The current scholarly consensus is that Dilmun encompassed Bahrain, Failaka Island and the adjacent coast of Eastern Arabia in the Persian Gulf.

The Harappans also had trade (and possibly a sphere of influence) in the adjacent region of Central Asia known as the BMAC (for Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex a.k.a. Oxus culture).

The BMAC culture (ca. 2400 BCE to 1700 BCE with some dispute over the dates on each end of this range) was wedged between the Indo-European Andronovo culture (ca. 2000 BCE to 1150 BCE) and the terminal Harappan/Indo-Aryan transition Cemetery H (ca. 1900 BCE to 1300 BCE), and Painted Gray Ware (ca. 1300 BCE to 300 BCE) cultures. 

The BMAC would have fallen to Indo-European advances before the Indo-Aryans arrived in what remained of the Harappan region, and before the proto-Indo-Iranians arrived in Iran.

The Yaz culture, which had previously been part of the BMAC cultural region, was abruptly replace by an Indo-Iranian early Iron Age culture around 1500 BCE, and is a likely source of the Avestan language and what became the Zoroastrian religion associated with it. The Yaz culture persisted until it was absorbed by the Achaemenid Empire in the 300s BCE.

The Ghaggar-Hakra river f.k.a. the Saraswati River, which features prominently in the Rig Vedas, once coursed through what is now arid Indian steppe along the dashed orange route shown in the map above. Its now mostly dry bed is the home of many Harappan ruins.

But, the Saraswati River dried up around 2000 BCE, as part of a major climate event which made the region more arid that stretched, at a minimum from Egypt to India, and caused the Middle Bronze Age Late Harappan society to collapse.

As explained, for example, in Sujay Rao Mandavilli, "The Demise of the Dravidian, Vedic and Paramunda Indus Hypotheses: A brief explanation as to why these three Hypotheses are no longer tenable" SSRN (August 25, 2020) and the sources cited therein:

Dravidian languages, Sanskrit or Paramunda languages could not have been candidates for the [language of the] Indus Valley Civilization which flourished from 2600 BC to 1900 BC in the North-West of India and Pakistan.

If anything, the evidence that none of these three historical linguistic hypotheses can be supported by the evidence is stronger now than it was twenty-five years ago. 

Like the Paleo-European languages (of which the only survivor is Basque), the Harappan language can probably never be fully reconstructed, even if we can glean some knowledge of it from inscriptions in Harappan script, and from substrate influences in Sanskrit and related languages, and areal influences on the Munda languages.

The Indo-Aryans

The Indo-Aryans, who had wheeled chariots and domesticated horses, and were used to a more arid climate, rushed in to fill the political vacuum. They may have had some farming, or may have ruled subject societies of farmers, but were ancestrally herders.

The Indo-Aryans arrived from Central Asia, ca. 2000 BCE - 1500 BCE, bringing with them Sanskrit, that later diversified into the various Indo-European languages of South Asia. The language of the Indo-Aryans extinguished the Harappan language as anything but a substrate influence on Sanskrit.

Another branch of the same people at about the same time gave rise to the oldest Indo-Iranians and the Mittani Kingdom in Northeast Mesopotamia in mostly what is now Iran. 

We know that Indo-Aryans were the conquerors and not the conquered, because Indo-Aryan genes are more common in higher castes in India, and because these genes have origins (confirmed with ancient DNA) from outside the Indian sub-continent.

The religion of the Indo-Aryan migrants and the Harappan religion mutually influenced each other to produce the early Vedic religion, that would eventually give rise to modern Hinduism. But, given the differences between the Vedic religion and the religions that emerged in other places that the Indo-Europeans conquered, and the Rig Vedic references to things like the Saraswati river societies that were gone or almost gone by the time that the Indo-Aryans arrived, we know that the Indo-Aryan religious tradition and the Harappan religious tradition both influenced the fused religion that emerged from their fused culture.

Genetic evidence tells us that more than one wave of Indo-Aryan migration affected the area of India where Indo-Aryan languages are now spoken.

The Dravidians

The monsoon driven tropical region (in a medium blue on the first map), that makes up most of Southern India, didn't adopt agriculture until the South Indian Neolithic revolution, around 2500 BCE, had significant reliance upon crops domesticated in the African Sahel, and even then, wasn't as optimal for agriculture. The Fertile Crescent package of crops wasn't naturally suited to this climate region and it took many centuries for these crops, under the close guidance of early farmers, to adapt to this tropical monsoon driven climate.

The Dravidian language family probably has its roots in the South Indian Neolithic revolution, probably from one of the South Asian hunter-gatherer population that was one of the first to adopt agriculture, possibly with some linguistic influence from the Africans who brought the Sahel African crops that made this Neolithic Revolution possible.

While the Harappan society had trading posts at the fringe of what was Dravidian India at the time, mostly along the northwest coast of the Deccan peninsula, the Harappans almost surely did not speak a Dravidian language and had only thin trade ties with Dravidian society.

The first wave of Indo-Aryan migration reached the Dravidian society, leaving traces in genetic admixture found in lower amounts in almost everyone in India, even Dravidians. In this initial wave, the fused Vedic religion took hold (although the preference for vegetarianism found among the formerly Harappan regions did not), and all but a small core of this region probably experienced language shift, with their local Dravidian dialects going extinct. The Dravidian society on the eve of the Indo-Aryan arrival was not as technologically advanced as the Harappan one, but also may not have been in as advanced a state of collapse as the Harappan civilization. The climate event that impacted the Harappans so decisively, may not have affected their part of the Deccan peninsula so strongly. 

But in Southern India, the Indo-Aryans were spread thin, were in an eco-region less familiar to them, and less completely dominated the Dravidian society. The core region )probably within the region where Telugu is now spoken) that held out expanded and reconquered almost all of the former Dravidian territory, bringing its sole surviving Dravidian dialect with it (which is why the Dravidian language family seems much younger than one that stretches back to the South Indian Neolithic). But this reconquest never ended up replacing the Vedic religion that had replaced or absorbed its own religion (which may not have been as well-developed as the Harappan religion, and arose in an illiterate society). Unlike Northern India, which had multiple waves of Indo-Aryan migration, no later big wave of Indo-Aryan migration followed the Dravidian reconquest of Southern India.

The geographic range of the Dravidian languages prior to the arrival of the Indo-Aryans was probably wider than it is today, possibly extending to the fringes of the Indus River Valley civilization, as indicated by toponyms in these regions.

But, the North Dravidian languages (Brahui in what is now Pakistan, and the Kurukh-Malto languages of Northeast India), were probably not part of the original Dravidian language range and were the product of much later colonizations (probably around 1000 CE in the case of Brahui, where it was spoken as a result of an elite driven language shift, similar to the one that occurred at about the same time in what is now Hungary, rather than a mass migration of Dravidians to the region). Oral traditions among the Krukh-Malto peoples, at least, assign their origins to Dravidian homelands further south.

Population Replacement In The Columbian Highlands

In Europe, the first farmers of Europe, derived from Western Anatolian farmers, largely replaced Europe's original hunter-gatherers (who actually show continuity between the periods before and immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum), and in turn, received very substantial genetic admixture from late Copper Age/early Bronze Age Indo-Europeans from more or less where Ukraine is today. This diluted both first farmer ancestry, and the already highly diluted European hunter-gather ancestry that was admixed into those first farmer populations. In some places, like Britain, the population replacement of first farmers by Indo-Europeans was nearly complete.

Something similar apparently happened in East and Southeast Asia.

A new study established that the Americas did not break from this pattern, with some of its early agriculturists replacing pre-existing hunter-gatherer populations in a similarly genocidal pattern. If anything, this replacement was even more complete.

Sometime between 4000 BCE and 0 CE, in the Columbian highlands, probably coinciding with a new archaeological culture whose artifacts appear around 1000 BCE to 800 BCE, a millennium after maize cultivation began around 1800 BCE (but possibly before the full blown ceramic culture emerged), a clade of indigenous South American hunter-gatherers (with ancestry dating back to the initial wave of human settlement of South America) were replaced by a different group of indigenous South Americans.

The 1800 BCE date is from A. Gómez, et al., "A Holocene pollen record of vegetation change and human impact from Pantano de Vargas, an intra-Andean basin of Duitama, Colombia." 145 Rev. Palaeobot. Palynol. 143–157 (2007) (full paper available here), and really only definitively points to deforestation and Amaranth cultivation at that point in the highlands of Columbia.

From Wikipedia.

The population that replaced them, which is genetically linked to the speakers of Chibchan languages and probably originated in Central America, has remained the dominant population of the region in genetic continuity with their ancestors since this population replacement occurred, although later populations admixed with them and brought new languages in some parts of the region. 

There is no evidence that anyone from the pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic culture that was replaced in the Columbian highlands survived, or even significantly admixed with surviving populations.

The new agriculturalist culture did not really come into its own archaeologically until 1000 BCE to 800 BCE, so we can't know for sure if the replacement took place suddenly (although the lack of admixture between the new and old populations suggests that it did) or more gradually, or how long after maize cultivation, a thousand years earlier than this culture's pots appeared, the population replacement happened. 

Conservatively, it happened in some short time period between 1800 BCE and 800 BCE (about 3,000 to 4,000 years after it happened in Europe). Realistically, it probably happened on the later side of that time range when other components of the emerging farmer culture, like pottery and possibly other key domesticated plants and/or animals, joined with improved maize cultivation to give rise to a technologically dominant new culture.

The introduction and discussion sections of a new study released May 28, 2025 in the journal Scientific Advances by Kim-Louise Krettek, et al., explain that:

Genetic studies on ancient and present-day Indigenous populations have substantially contributed to the understanding of the settlement of the Americas. Those studies revealed that the population ancestral to non-Arctic Native Americans derives from a genetic admixture between ancient East Asian and Siberian groups somewhere in North-East Asia before 20,000 years before the present (yr B.P.). Around 16,000 yr B.P., after its arrival in North America, this genetic ancestry split into two lineages known as northern Native American and southern Native American. While northern Native American ancestry is largely confined to ancient and current populations of North America, the southern Native American lineage expanded further south and constitutes the main ancestry component of ancient and present-day Indigenous South Americans. 

Southern Native American ancestry diversified within North America into at least three sublineages, i.e., one related to the Clovis-associated Anzick-1 individual from western Montana (USA), one found in ancient California Channel Islands individuals and the last one representing the main ancestry source of modern-day Central and South Americans.  

Each of these sublineages provided a wave of ancestry into the gene pool of ancient South Americans. Individuals from Chile and Brazil dating back to around 12,000 and 10,000 yr B.P., respectively, were more genetically related to the Anzick-1 genome than individuals from the eastern Southern American coast, Southern Cone and the Andes from 10,000 yr B.P. onward. In addition, the California Channel Islands ancestry was found in the Central Andes by 4200 yr B.P. and became widespread in the region thereafter. However, the exact timing of these population movements into the southern subcontinent remains largely unsolved to date. 

The Isthmo-Colombian area, stretching from the coast of Honduras to the northern Colombian Andes, is critical to understanding the peopling of the Americas. Besides being the land bridge between North and South America, it is at the center of the three major cultural regions of Mesoamerica, Amazonia, and the Andes. At the time of European contact, the region was inhabited by a complex mosaic of human populations, mainly speakers of Chibchan, Chocoan, Carib, and Arawakan languages. 

Among those populations, those who were speakers of Chibchan languages were the most widespread in the region in terms of demography, cultural diversity, and territorial distribution. Chibchan is a language family with multiple, highly distinct branches, many of which are still spoken today in different regions of the Isthmo-Colombian area. The homeland and antiquity of the Proto-Chibchan language and the ancestor of all Chibchan languages remain subjects of debate. High intrafamily variation in terms of lexicon and grammar suggests that the language family is ancient and began diversifying several thousand years ago. The locus of that incipient diversification, however, is still uncertain. Most scholars believe that this protolanguage began to diversify in Lower Central America, where the largest number of these languages is spoken today. However, some evidence suggests that Proto-Chibchan might have originated in South America and then diversified in Central America at a much later date. 

Genetic studies of ancient and present-day Isthmo-Colombian Indigenous populations revealed a distinctive ancestry component primarily associated with speakers of Chibchan languages. However, whereas mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) studies suggested a migration of Chibchan-related ancestry from Central America into Colombia and Venezuela, genome-wide studies favored an opposite, south-to-north population movement. According to the latter model, speakers of Chibchan languages from Central America are not direct descendants of the first settlers in the region but, instead, derive from a more recent back migration from South to Central America. 

The southernmost region of the Isthmo-Colombian area is the Altiplano Cundiboyacense (hereafter Altiplano). This plateau with an average altitude of 2600 m in the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes was inhabited by ancient hunter-gatherer groups from the Late Pleistocene. During the Early and Middle Holocene phases of the Preceramic period (~11,500 to 4000 yr B.P.), populations on the Altiplano underwent multiple cultural transformations, most notably increased sedentism and a transition from a hunter-gatherer subsistence to the introduction of horticultural practices and forest management. However, it was not until the early Late Holocene, ~3800 yr B.P., that the first clear evidence of maize cultivation appeared. 

During the subsequent Formative period (~3000 to 1000 yr B.P.), a distinct type of pottery emerged on the Altiplano that is referred to as the Herrera ceramic complex, also known in the literature as the Herrera period (2800 to 1200 yr B.P.). It is still highly debated whether Herrera-associated groups on the Altiplano derived from an in situ development of local hunter-gatherers or were a consequence of population dispersals into the region. 

Around 1200 yr B.P., a cultural phase, known as the Muisca period, began on the Altiplano and lasted until the imposition of the Hispanic Colonial regime in the mid-16th century. Most available evidence is suggestive of population continuity with the preceding Herrera period. The Muisca period is characterized by a relatively continuous process of demographic growth, development of agriculture and trade, and social and political complexification. These factors played a considerable role in shaping the Muisca culture and gave rise to the Chibchan-speaking population that dominated the Altiplano until European colonization. 

While several studies have reported mtDNA data from ancient Colombian individuals, genome-wide data from this region are still entirely lacking to date. In this study, we generated mtDNA and genome-wide data of 21 ancient individuals from two areas of the Altiplano (Bogotá plateau and Los Curos). Our data, spanning a time transect between around 6000 and 500 yr B.P., provide an opportunity to explore several key questions: 

(i) Which southern Native American genetic ancestry do Preceramic individuals from the Altiplano derive from? 

(ii) Were the cultural transformations associated with the Herrera and Muisca periods accompanied by migrations and demographic changes? 

(iii) How is the genetic ancestry observed in speakers of Chibchan languages related to that of ancient individuals from the Altiplano? 

(iv) What are the genetic relationships between the generated ancient genomes and the existing genomic data of present-day Indigenous communities from Colombia and neighboring regions?

In this study, we generated genome-wide data from 21 individuals spanning a time transect of almost 6000 years from the Altiplano, which represents the southern edge of the Isthmo-Colombian area. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the population history of this area, a key region in the peopling process of South America. We show that the hunter-gatherer population from the Altiplano dated to around 6000 yr B.P. lack the genetic ancestry related to the Clovis-associated Anzick-1 genome and to ancient California Channel Island individuals, suggesting their affiliation to the southern Native American lineage that became the primary source of ancestry of South Americans by 9000 yr B.P. 

However, unlike ancient genomes from the Andes and the Southern Cone that are associated with the same wave of ancestry, the analyzed Preceramic individuals from Colombia do not share distinct affinity with any ancient or modern-day population from Central and South America studied to date. Colombia_Checua_6000BP can thus be modeled as a previously undescribed distinct lineage deriving from the radiation event that gave rise to multiple populations across South America during its initial settlement. 

The cultural transition between the Preceramic and Herrera periods is associated with a seemingly complete replacement of the local genetic profile. This challenges the model where local hunter-gatherers developed in situ as suggested by morphometric studies and an ancient mtDNA time transect. Instead, our study provides evidence for a major genetic turnover on the Altiplano occurring after 6000 yr B.P. but before 2000 yr B.P. Since the mechanisms and precise temporal scale of this replacement event remain uncertain, we cannot directly associate it with the emergence of maize cultivation ~3800 yr B.P. However, our data do support the archaeological hypothesis that the introduction of pottery associated with the Herrera ceramic complex was mediated through population dispersals. 

Our results show that the incoming genetic ancestry on the Altiplano is related to ancient and present-day populations speaking Chibchan languages from Central America. This can be explained most parsimoniously by Chibchan-related migrations from Lower Central America to South America, rather than back-migration to the isthmus. 

A separate study found evidence for a previously unknown south-to-north expansion of Chibchan-related ancestry from Lower Central America into the Mayan territories of Belize by 5600 yr B.P. Therefore, rather than modeling Central American populations associated with Chibchan languages as deriving from a mixture between North and South American ancestries, these results are consistent with an origin of Chibchan-related ancestries in Lower Central America, followed by bidirectional gene flow toward both Meso- and South America. This model of an original “Chibchan homeland” in Central America is supported not only by mtDNA studies on present-day populations who speak Chibchan languages but also from linguistic observations, indicating that the isthmus region exhibits the highest diversity within this language family. 

From an archaeological perspective, the Chibchan-related ancestry is first identified in 2000-year-old individuals associated with Herrera ceramics. In addition, previously sequenced Ceramic-associated individuals from Venezuela dated to 2400 yr B.P. also showed a high affinity to Central American populations speaking Chibchan languages. Despite the similar ancestry pattern and temporal frame, the two populations do not appear to form a simple sister group. This could be in line with linguistic evidence that suggests multiple, distinct Chibchan language expansions into South America, but additional studies will be necessary to further clarify this issue. 

After the arrival of the Chibchan-related ancestry, which completely reshaped the genetic landscape of the region, we find evidence of a long period of genetic continuity in the genetic profile of the local populations for over 1500 years (from at least 2000 to 500 yr B.P.). The stability in genetic ancestry encompasses the end of the Herrera period and the beginning of the Muisca period. This points to a scenario in which populations speaking languages from the Chibchan lineage would have settled the Altiplano before the emergence of traits normally associated with the Muisca culture, and it shows that this cultural transition took place without a substantial migration from regions with a distinct genetic ancestry composition. In addition, such a genetic continuity extends through different cultural phases within the Muisca period and persists until the Spanish colonization. Colonial linguistic documentation established that Muisca people spoke a now extinct Chibchan language. Our findings not only confirm their genetic link with speakers of Chibchan languages from Central America but also suggest that ancestral Chibchan languages, possibly basal to the Magdalenic branch that gave rise to the documented Muisca language, might have already been spoken on the Altiplano during the pre-Muisca Herrera period. 

While the representation of Indigenous populations in our dataset is certainly not exhaustive, the observed spatial pattern in the genetic affinity of post-2000 yr B.P. ancient Colombians with present-day Indigenous populations raises questions regarding the uneven distribution of populations speaking Chibchan languages across the Isthmo-Colombian area at the time of the Hispanic colonization, also referred to as a Chibchan “archipelago”. 

One possible explanation is that this distribution resulted from separate dispersals from Central America to different locations of northern South America rather than a single expansion wave, as suggested by the internal branching pattern of the Chibchan language family. However, it is also possible that the initial spread was more widespread and got later fragmented by post-Chibchan migration and admixture events. The observation that Chibchan-affiliated populations from northern Colombia have a significantly reduced genetic affinity to post-2000–yr B.P. ancient Colombians than to Lower Central Americans supports the role of population admixture in shaping the genetic diversity of northern South America.

Also, while the earlier South American hunter-gatherer clade that went extinct probably dated to the founding wave of the modern humans in South America, they did not have notable Australasian or Melanesian ancestry, disfavoring the existence of a dramatically genetically distinct founding population of the Americas that preceded the main founding wave of modern humans and has Australasian or Melanesian genetic affinities that ancient.

Ancient UP Agriculture

Drone based LIDAR has made a major new find in North America:

A new study has found that a thickly forested sliver of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the most complete ancient agricultural location in the eastern United States. The Sixty Islands archaeological site is recognized as the ancestral home of the Menominee Nation. Known to the members of the tribe as Anaem Omot (Dog’s Belly), the area is a destination of pilgrimage, where remains of the settlement date to as far back as 8,000 B.C.

Located along a two-mile stretch of the Menominee River, Sixty Islands is defined by its cold temperatures, poor soil quality and short growing season. Although the land has long been considered unsuitable for farming, an academic paper published on Thursday in the journal Science revealed that the Menominee’s forbears cultivated vast fields of corn and potentially other crops there.

From the New York Times.

I'll update if time permits after reading the full paper.

Alexander The Great's "Fish Eaters"

Sailing thence they sailed without stop all night andday, and after a voyage of eleven hundred stades they got past the country of the Fish-eaters, where they had been much distressed by want of food. They did not moor near shore, for there was a long line of surf, but at anchor, in the open. The length of the voyage along the coast of the Fish-eaters is a little above ten thousand stades. 

These Fish-eaters live on fish; and hence their name; only a few of them fish, for only a few have proper boats and have any skill in the art of catching fish; but for the most part it is the receding tide which provides their catch. 

Some have made nets also for this kind of fishing; most of them about two stades in length. They make the nets from the bark of the date-palm, twisting the bark like twine. And when the sea recedes and the earth is left, where the earth remains dry it has no fish, as a rule; but where there are hollows, some of the water remains, and in this a large number of fish, mostly small, but some large ones too. They throw their nets over these and so catch them. 

They eat them raw, just as they take them from the water, that is, the more tender kinds; the larger ones, which are tougher, they dry in the sun till they are quite sere and then pound them and make a flour and bread of them; others even make cakes of this flour. Even their flocks are fed on the fish, dried; for the country has no meadows and produces no grass. 

They collect also in many places crabs and oysters and shell-fish. There are natural salts in the country; from these they make oil. Those of them who inhabit the desert parts of their country, treeless as it is and with no cultivated parts, find all their sustenance in the fishing but a few of them sow part of their district, using the corn as a relish to the fish, for the fish form their bread. 

The richest among them have built huts; they collect the bones of any large fish which the sea casts up, and use them in place of beams. Doors they make from any flat bones which they can pick up. But the greater part of them, and the poorer sort, have huts made from the fishes' backbones.

Arrian, Indica, 29 via this Wikipedia article.

Note that the word translated as "corn" is a reference to the original European plant with that name, and not to New World Maize that which came to be known by the name of the original European plant, which only arrived 1800 years later than this account.

Agriculture Phonetically Changed Human Languages

Agriculture changes the teeth of the first farmers and that changes what they could pronounce, which changed how their languages sounded. 

The shift to processed foods following the spread of agriculture led to less wear on human teeth, altering jaw growth and making slight overbites common in adults. This anatomical change facilitated the pronunciation of labiodental sounds like “f” and “v,” which contributed to language diversification in Europe and Asia around 4,000 years ago. Linguist Balthasar Bickel, in a 2019 Science paper, linked these phonetic developments to changes like the Proto-Indo-European patēr evolving into Old English faeder about 1,500 years ago. This research suggests that cultural shifts can influence human biology in ways that affect language, an idea supported by evolutionary morphologist Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel, who was not involved in the study.

From the Archaeologist page on Facebook discussing 

Damián E Blasi, Steven Moran, Scott R Moisik, Paul Widmer, Dan Dediu, Balthasar Bickel, "Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration" 363 (6432) Science eaav3218 (March 15, 2019). 

The abstract and related prefatory material in the source article are as follows:

The first fricatives 

In 1985, the linguist Charles Hockett proposed that the use of teeth and jaws as tools in hunter-gatherer populations makes consonants produced with lower lip and upper teeth (“f” and “v” sounds) hard to produce. He thus conjectured that these sounds were a recent innovation in human language. Blasi et al. combined paleoanthropology, speech sciences, historical linguistics, and methods from evolutionary biology to provide evidence for a Neolithic global change in the sound systems of the world's languages. Spoken languages have thus been shaped by changes in the human bite configuration owing to changes in dietary and behavioral practices since the Neolithic.

Structured Abstract 

INTRODUCTION 

Human speech manifests itself in spectacular diversity, ranging from ubiquitous sounds such as “m” and “a” to the rare click consonants in some languages of southern Africa. This range is generally thought to have been fixed by biological constraints since at least the emergence of Homo sapiens. At the same time, the abundance of each sound in the languages of the world is commonly taken to depend on how easy the sound is to produce, perceive, and learn. This dependency is also regarded as fixed at the species level. 

RATIONALE 

Given this dependency, we expect that any change in the human apparatus for production, perception, or learning affects the probability—or even the range—of the sounds that languages have. Paleoanthropological evidence suggests that the production apparatus has undergone a fundamental change of just this kind since the Neolithic. Although humans generally start out with vertical and horizontal overlap in their bite configuration (overbite and overjet, respectively), masticatory exertion in the Paleolithic gave rise to an edge-to-edge bite after adolescence. Preservation of overbite and overjet began to persist long into adulthood only with the softer diets that started to become prevalent in the wake of agriculture and intensified food processing. We hypothesize that this post-Neolithic decline of edge-to-edge bite enabled the innovation and spread of a new class of speech sounds that is now present in nearly half of the world’s languages: labiodentals, produced by positioning the lower lip against the upper teeth, such as in “f” or “v.” 

RESULTS 

Biomechanical models of the speech apparatus show that labiodentals incur about 30% less muscular effort in the overbite and overjet configuration than in the edge-to-edge bite configuration. This difference is not present in similar articulations that place the upper lip, instead of the teeth, against the lower lip (as in bilabial “m,” “w,” or “p”). Our models also show that the overbite and overjet configuration reduces the incidental tooth/lip distance in bilabial articulations to 24 to 70% of their original values, inviting accidental production of labiodentals. The joint effect of a decrease in muscular effort and an increase in accidental production predicts a higher probability of labiodentals in the language of populations where overbite and overjet persist into adulthood. When the persistence of overbite and overjet in a population is approximated by the prevalence of agriculturally produced food, we find that societies described as hunter-gatherers indeed have, on average, only about one-fourth the number of labiodentals exhibited by food-producing societies, after controlling for spatial and phylogenetic correlation. When the persistence is approximated by the increase in food-processing technology over the history of one well-researched language family, Indo-European, we likewise observe a steady increase of the reconstructed probability of labiodental sounds, from a median estimate of about 3% in the proto-language (6000 to 8000 years ago) to a presence of 76% in extant languages. 

CONCLUSION 

Our findings reveal that the transition from prehistoric foragers to contemporary societies has had an impact on the human speech apparatus, and therefore on our species’ main mode of communication and social differentiation: spoken language.

Atri's Eclipse

This paper on ancient astronomy is relevant to dating the Rig Veda itself, and by association, the timing of the Indo-Aryan migration to India. 

The dates that are proposed are very early compared to estimates of the timing of the Rig Veda from other sources, which could reflect an oral tradition from either the pre-existing Indo-Iranian (which is associated with the the early Andronovo culture of ca. 2000 BCE) or Harappan cultures. 

It could reflect misanalysis by the authors of the "legendary history" described in the Rig Veda, which could correspond to knowledge of the existence of solar ellipses and a fictional invention with religiously or symbolically important dates (at a time when nobody could confirm the account), and not to a particular actual solar ellipse in India with the timing relative to the equinoxes described.

The earliest written reference in Indian astronomy to a total solar eclipse is in the Rig Veda where Rishi Atri is said to have demolished the asura Swarbhanu to liberate the Sun from a total solar eclipse. 

The Rig Veda describes the occurrence of the eclipse, how the Sun suddenly disappeared in the daytime under the spell of the Asura. The people and gods were scared but the Great Sage Atri saved the Sun and restored his full glory. While discussing the eclipse, Tilak refers to the eclipse as having occurred when the Vernal Equinox was in Orion and three days before the Autumnal Equinox. 

Based on these data, we identify Atris eclipse as the one that occurred on 22 October 4202 BC or on 19 October 3811 BC.

Mayank Vahia, Misturu Soma, "An examination of "Atri's Eclipse" as described in the Rig Veda" arXiv:2407.19733 (July 29, 2024). This is a post-print of 26 (2) Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 405-410 (2023).

The introduction in the body text notes that:

The Rig Veda is one of the oldest known documents. It dates from 1500 BC, when its contents were assimilated and formalised on the basis of traditions of different schools of thought. It was essentially a summary of various religious ideas and philosophies, as well as their image of the world and its working as understood at that time. It comprises a set of 10 books associated with 10 different groups of priests who assimilated different aspects of the prevailing belief systems (see Dalal, 2014; Donigar, 1984). The writing style in the Rig Veda is highly poetic and abstract, and sometimes it is difficult to understand. It also requires some experience in order to interpret it.

While the Rig Veda dates from 1500 BC, there is a significant amount of evidence that it incorporates memories of events that were much further back in time. For example, it discusses events when the Vernal Equinox was in Orion, which occurred around 4500 BC, while the final reference to the Vernal Equinox in the Rig Veda relates to its being in the Pleiades, which happened in 2230 BC.

There are various other astronomical references in the Rig Veda, and one of these refers to a solar eclipse, which is the subject of this paper.

For the sake of argument, assuming that the Rig Veda is indeed referring to real historical events when it talks about where the equinoxes are (and that the means of determining which constellation is associated with an equinox), it could also help determine which part of of the hybrid culture that produced Hinduism in India, i.e. the Indo-Iranian tradition or the Harappan tradition, is the predominant source for the Rig Veda.

The dates suggested for Atri's Eclipse coincide roughly with the time at which the Proto-Indo-European language emerged. But this seems like a better fit to more sedentary and agricultural early Indus Valley civilization (the strict sense IVC dates to 3300 BCE, but agricultural societies in continuity with it were present there from 6500 BCE), which would have been expected to have better astronomy in that time frame. The more pastoral initial Proto-Indo-European society would be expected to have less advanced astronomy at that time. So, the Rig Veda could recount Harappan oral traditions (it had some writing, but the Harappan script was probably not a full written language) translated from the Harappan language into Sanskrit.

Another hint could be derived from comparing the Avesta, in the Avestan language, with the Rig Veda, written in Sanskrit. Where something is present in both, like the drug soma, it is likely to derive from a shared Indo-Iranian tradition. Where  something is only found in the Rig Veda with no parallel in the Avesta it is more likely to have Harappan origins. But, the Avesta was compiled much later than the Rig Veda so a great deal of the Indo-Iranian tradition might have been lost or deliberately omitted by Zoroaster (who by tradition is its author) at that point in the 500s BCE. The oldest part of the Avesta, the 17 hymns called the Gathas written in Old Avestan comprise only about 6,000 words in 238 stanzas and have linguistic and cultural similarities to the Rig Veda, which has 1,028 hymns with 10,600 verses.

The Rig Veda and the historic religion of the Indo-Europeans were both polytheistic, while Zoroastrianism is usually characterized as dualistic. We know, however, that significant parts of what became the Hindu religious tradition deviated for the common Indo-European source of the religious traditions of the Norse, the Greeks, and the Romans, for example, and also have no source in Egyptian mythology. These deviations are plausibly attributed to Harappan sources.

The Wikipedia article on the Rig Veda is suggestive of a more Indo-Iranian than Harappan society, and states that:

The Rigveda offers no direct evidence of social or political systems in the Vedic era, whether ordinary or elite. Only hints such as cattle raising and horse racing are discernible, and the text offers very general ideas about the ancient Indian society. There is no evidence, state Jamison and Brereton, of any elaborate, pervasive or structured caste system. Social stratification seems embryonic, then and later a social ideal rather than a social reality.  

The society was semi-nomadic and pastoral with evidence of agriculture since hymns mention plow and celebrate agricultural divinities. There was division of labor and a complementary relationship between kings and poet-priests but no discussion of a relative status of social classes.  

Women in the Rigveda appear disproportionately as speakers in dialogue hymns, both as mythical or divine Indrani, Apsaras Urvasi, or Yami, as well as Apāla Ātreyī (RV 8.91), Godhā (RV 10.134.6), Ghoṣā Kākṣīvatī (RV 10.39.40), Romaśā (RV 1.126.7), Lopāmudrā (RV 1.179.1–2), Viśvavārā Ātreyī (RV 5.28), Śacī Paulomī (RV 10.159), Śaśvatī Āṅgirasī (RV 8.1.34). The women of the Rigveda are quite outspoken and appear more sexually confident than men, in the text. Elaborate and aesthetic hymns on wedding suggest rites of passage had developed during the Rigvedic period. There is little evidence of dowry and no evidence of sati in it or related Vedic texts.

The Rigvedic hymns mention rice and porridge, in hymns such as 8.83, 8.70, 8.77 and 1.61 in some versions of the text; however, there is no discussion of rice cultivation.  

The term áyas (metal) occurs in the Rigveda, but it is unclear which metal it was. Iron is not mentioned in Rigveda, something scholars have used to help date Rigveda to have been composed before 1000 BCE. Hymn 5.63 mentions "metal cloaked in gold", suggesting that metalworking had progressed in the Vedic culture.

Some of the names of gods and goddesses found in the Rigveda are found amongst other belief systems based on Proto-Indo-European religion, while most of the words used share common roots with words from other Indo-European languages. However, about 300 words in the Rigveda are neither Indo-Aryan nor Indo-European, states the Sanskrit and Vedic literature scholar Frits Staal. Of these 300, many – such as kapardin, kumara, kumari, kikata – come from Munda or proto-Munda languages found in the eastern and northeastern (Assamese) region of India, with roots in Austroasiatic languages. The others in the list of 300 – such as mleccha and nir – have Dravidian roots found in the southern region of India, or are of Tibeto-Burman origins. A few non-Indo-European words in the Rigveda – such as for camel, mustard and donkey – belong to a possibly lost Central Asian language. The linguistic sharing provides clear indications, states Michael Witzel, that the people who spoke Rigvedic Sanskrit already knew and interacted with Munda and Dravidian speakers.

Witzel, however, was late to recognize that there was a distinct Harappan language which was neither Munda nor Dravidian.

As an aside, the Harappans did trade with the Sumerians who had a full written language and not just a set of symbols like the Harappan and Vinca scripts. Neither the Sumerian written language, nor the entire concept of it, however, seems to have been borrowed by the Harappans. Perhaps this was because Sumerian writing was largely confined to a small class of priest-clerks and perhaps some aristocrats, and perhaps because Sumerian-Harappan trade was thin and the Harappan maritime merchants may not have been all that influential in Harappan society. The Harappan script seems to have been used largely by merchants.

The Black Plague Swept Northern Europe Ca. 3400 BCE

We've been aware of the population collapse that hit Northern Europe around 5400 years ago (around 3400 BCE) for a long time, for example, in the article below from 2013. 

But new evidence points to the black plague as a major contributing cause. Climate and exhaustion of soils with primitive Neolithic agricultural methods have also been suggested as causes. Of course, causes can interact and aren't mutually exclusive. For example, people can be much more vulnerable to pandemics during period of famine caused by poor agricultural practices and climate events.

Following its initial arrival in SE Europe 8,500 years ago agriculture spread throughout the continent, changing food production and consumption patterns and increasing population densities. 

Here we show that, in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations. We demonstrate that summed calibrated radiocarbon date distributions and simulation can be used to test the significance of these demographic booms and busts in the context of uncertainty in the radiocarbon date calibration curve and archaeological sampling. 

We report these results for Central and Northwest Europe between 8,000 and 4,000 cal. BP and investigate the relationship between these patterns and climate. However, we find no evidence to support a relationship. Our results thus suggest that the demographic patterns may have arisen from endogenous causes, although this remains speculative.

Stephen Shennan, "Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe" 4 Nature Communications 2486 (October 1, 2013).

The new paper is:

In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline. However, the cause of this so-called Neolithic decline is still debated. Some argue for an agricultural crisis resulting in the decline, others for the spread of an early form of plague. 

Here we use population-scale ancient genomics to infer ancestry, social structure and pathogen infection in 108 Scandinavian Neolithic individuals from eight megalithic graves and a stone cist. 

We find that the Neolithic plague was widespread, detected in at least 17% of the sampled population and across large geographical distances. We demonstrate that the disease spread within the Neolithic community in three distinct infection events within a period of around 120 years. 

Variant graph-based pan-genomics shows that the Neolithic plague genomes retained ancestral genomic variation present in Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, including virulence factors associated with disease outcomes. 

In addition, we reconstruct four multigeneration pedigrees, the largest of which consists of 38 individuals spanning six generations, showing a patrilineal social organization. 

Lastly, we document direct genomic evidence for Neolithic female exogamy in a woman buried in a different megalithic tomb than her brothers. 

Taken together, our findings provide a detailed reconstruction of plague spread within a large patrilineal kinship group and identify multiple plague infections in a population dated to the beginning of the Neolithic decline.

Frederik Valeur Seersholm, "Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers" Nature (July 10, 2024).

olume

Early Neolithic Arabia

 

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have excavated eight ancient "standing stone circles" that they say were used as homes. About 345 of these structures were identified through aerial surveys across the Harrat 'Uwayrid, a lava field near the city of AlUla in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the team reported July 2 in the journal Levant. The circles range from 13 to 26 feet (4 to 8 meters) in diameter and have at least one standing stone at the center. The circles date back around 7,000 years and have the remains of stone walls and at least one doorway. They would have had roofs made of either stone or organic materials, the team wrote. . . . 

Around 7,000 years ago, the environment in northern Saudi Arabia was much wetter than it is today, but farming had not yet come into use. "There's no evidence of farming domesticated species of plants like wheat and barley, but gathering wild plants likely took place, and perhaps manipulating the landscape to increase the likelihood and yield of wild species," McMahon said.

When these standing stone circles were in use, another form of stone structure, known today as a mustatil (Arabic for "rectangle"), was being built as well. Excavations at the mustatils suggest they had a ritual purpose that may have included the sacrifice of cattle. The contemporaneous use of the mustatils and standing stone circles indicates that it is "likely that these two megalithic structure types are aspects of a single cultural entity," the team wrote.

Gary Rollefson, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Whitman College and San Diego State University who was not involved in the research but has conducted extensive archaeological work in the region, said he thinks the people who built the standing stone circles and mustatils are descended from people who lived in Jordan and Syria about 500 years earlier.

He told Live Science that the architecture of the standing stone circles is similar to that of structures found in Jordan dating to about 500 years earlier, and the people who built the structures in Jordan also herded sheep, goats and cattle. The migration may have been spurred by an increase in population brought about by new hunting technologies, such as the "kite," a series of stone walls used to force wild animals into a kill zone. These hunting advances dramatically increased the supply of food, which, in turn, led to an increase in the human population in the Jordan/Syria area.

"They were building up a large population in eastern Jordan and [parts of] Syria," Rollefson said, and they needed to find new hunting grounds, which would have led them to gradually go south, into what is now Saudi Arabia.

Via Live Science.

The paper indicates that there were post-Neolithic early herders, rather than primarily being hunter-gatherers.

The paper and its abstract are as follows:

Recent archaeological investigations in AlUla County have provided the first detailed chrono-cultural evidence for long-term Neolithic domestic occupation in this archaeologically unknown region of north-west Arabia. 

This paper presents the preliminary findings drawn from multi-scalar datasets collected through extensive aerial and ground surveys, and the excavations of ‘monumental’ architectural installations, named in this study as ‘Standing Stone Circles’. These structures were individual dwellings, constructed in concentrations of varying numbers with associated domestic installations, such as hearths. The Standing Stone Cicle sites presented in this paper demonstrate a scale of Neolithic occupation not previously recognized in Saudi Arabia. These structures provide evidence of ongoing occupation throughout the 6th and 5th millennia BCE, concurrent with a general florescence of human activity across north-west Arabia. The faunal remains indicate a mixed subsistence economy, dominated by domesticates but supplemented by wild species. 

Broader considerations of the Neolithic economy, and models of pastoralism and mobility, are made possible on the basis of this, and the associated assemblages of stone artefacts and small finds. The data provided in this article offers a general picture of the Neolithic period in AlUla, addressing the significant geographical and temporal gaps within the archaeological knowledge of north-west Arabia. The identification of diagnostic Late Neolithic Levantine projectile point types, in conjunction with architectural parallels with the Levant, provides further insight into the origins of neolithization in north-west Arabia.

Jane McMahon, et al., "New evidence for Neolithic occupation in north-west Arabia: Standing Stone Circles on the Harrat ‘Uwayrid'" Levant (July 2, 2024) (open access).

The First Farmers Of Cyprus Were Mostly Anatolian

Neolithic Cyprus was settled from Turkey, not Greece, by a sister population to the first farmers of Europe, very early in the Fertile Crescent derived Neolithic era. 

Archaeological evidence supports sporadic seafaring visits to the Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus by Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers over 12,000 years ago, followed by permanent settlements during the early Neolithic. The geographical origins of these early seafarers have so far remained elusive. 

By systematically analysing all available genomes from the late Pleistocene to early Holocene Near East (c. 14,000–7000 cal BCE), we provide a comprehensive overview of the genetic landscape of the early Neolithic Fertile Crescent and Anatolia and infer the likely origins of three recently published genomes from Kissonerga-Mylouthkia (Cypriot Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, c. 7600–6800 cal BCE). These appear to derive roughly 80% of their ancestry from Aceramic Neolithic Central Anatolians residing in or near the Konya plain, and the remainder from a genetically basal Levantine population. 

Based on genome-wide weighted ancestry covariance analysis, we infer that this admixture event took place roughly between 14,000 and 10,000 BCE, coinciding with the transition from the Cypriot late Epipaleolithic to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA). Additionally, we identify strong genetic affinities between the examined Cypro-LPPNB individuals and later northwestern Anatolians and the earliest European Neolithic farmers. 

Our results inform archaeological evidence on prehistoric demographic processes in the Eastern Mediterranean, providing important insights into early seafaring, maritime connections, and insular settlement.

Alexandros Heraclides, et al., "Palaeogenomic insights into the origins of early settlers on the island of Cyprus" 14 Scientific Reports 9632 (April 26, 2024) (open access).

Some comments about early pottery

Pottery appears to have been an East Asian innovation, that arose prior to farming and herding in sedentary fishing based communities like the Jomon and people with similar lifestyles in what is now China and Korea, that gradually migrated to the West across North Asia, mostly arriving in West Asia and Europe after herding and farming had been developed there.

Also, it is worth noting that Western anthropologists use the term "Neolithic" to refer to the commencement of widespread use of domesticated plants and animals, while Soviet and post-Soviet anthropologists use the term "Neolithic" to refer to the commencement of widespread use of pottery.

Old News: The Spread Of The Neolithic Revolution In Europe

This map from 2006 has largely withstood the test of time. 

Some key observations that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked:

* The initial Fertile Crescent Neolithic saw different crops and animals domesticated by genetically distinct modern human populations in different places across the Fertile Crescent. The Neolithic Revolution only expanded once the domesticated plants and animals found at various locations within the Fertile Crescent were consolidated into a single combined package of domesticates. 

* The European Neolithic revolution shared a common origin from Western Anatolia, to the Acreamic Neolithic in Crete, to Thessalia in Greece, to the rest of Greece and the Balkans, before forking off into Mediterranean and terrestrial European branches. The Fertile Crescent Neolithic package added some secondary domesticates in the process of this shared early expansion.

* The Western Mediterranean Neolithic (a.k.a. Cardial Pottery), was several centuries earlier than the early LBK (a.k.a. Linear Pottery) Neolithic in central Europe.

* The LBK Neolithic in central Europe started off in only the best land for farming, mostly along major rivers, and then expanded later into arable, but less optimal farming land.

* There was a mass migration of herders derived from the Mediterranean Neolithic the migrated along a narrow stretch of land, roughly in Eastern France, from Southern France towards central Europe at about the same time as the early LBK.

* As late as 4900 BCE large swaths of Europe had still not experienced the Neolithic Revolution and were still inhabited by European hunter-gatherers whose ancestors had migrated to Europe in the Mesolithic era.

* The Neolithic Revolution in Egypt, West Asia, and the Indus River Valley, were derived from the Fertile Crescent Neolithic Revolution as well, but are not shown on the map below.  These Neolithic expansions also picked up some secondary domesticated plants and animals along the way, like the donkey which was domesticated in Egypt. In Egypt, the Neolithic Revolution increased the population density in the Nile Basin by roughly a hundred-fold.

Source: Detlef Gronenborn, "Ancient DNA from the First European Farmers in 7500-Year-Old Neolithic Sites", 312 Science (June 30, 2006).

Ritual Human Sacrifices In Neolithic Europe

There are about twenty known instances across Neolithic Europe of women being ritually sacrificed in an astrologically aligned grave together with grindstones which were often destroyed after a harvest. Due to the difficulty of finding and properly classifying these sites, the authors acknowledge that 20 cases is an underestimate even among European remains recovered by archaeologists. This was done by dropping them in a pit which was either a repurposed grain storage pit or was designed to mimic one, alive with their throats tied to their ankles so that they eventually strangle themselves, a painful means of death still employed by the Italian mafia in modern times. While involuntary, it this is often seen as a form of symbolic suicide.

The earliest known instance of this practice, in Italy, predates agriculture, but all of the other instances of this practice in Europe arise in the context of the culture of the first farmers of Europe, prior to the metal ages or the migration of Indo-Europeans into the regions where it occurred. This practice may have been adopted by the first farmers of Europe from the European hunter-gathers whom they took perhaps a thousand years of co-existence in any one place to largely replace.

"Retainer sacrifice", often involving slaves or concubines, is well-attested from prehistoric times into the end of the pre-Christian era in Indo-European peoples. But the precise Neolithic human sacrifice associated with the harvest described in the new paper below does not appear to have carried over into the Indo-European metal age period in Europe. Indo-European religious practices superseded those of the first farmers of Europe.

The hunter-gather example, depicted in ancient artwork (shown in a figure below) that was not accompanied by remains, involved two sacrificed men and an excited group including several people wearing bird masks. The later sites include:

20 individuals (nine men, seven women, and four children) from 16 tombs or pits at 14 archaeological sites. The oldest sites (5400 to 4800 BCE) are from the Brno-Bohunice from Linear Pottery culture or linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture in the Czech Republic. The most recent (4000 to 3500 BCE) are the three individuals found at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux in the Rhône Valley and one in Catalonia.

The numbers in brackets refer to the site numbers on the map. Blue dagger, male; red dagger, female; black dagger, undetermined; dagger in box, immature. PAL, Italian Paleolithic culture; LBK, Linearbandkeramik or linear pottery culture; VBQ I, square-mouthed vase culture (first phase); Münchs., Münchshofen culture; BG, Bischeim-Gatersleben transition; SF, Sepulcros de Fosa; Ch, Chassey culture. . . . B.P., before the present.

There were at least three distinct religious and burial cultures at the time in Europe, and this practice was restricted to first farmers of Europe with a pit tomb burial tradition. This practice was not shared by contemporaneous megalithic first farmers, like those associated with Stonehenge, or with contemporaneous first farmer cultures that buried people under large slabs in the Alps.

19th century European folklore describes similar practices attributed to the deep past, generally involving young women.

In an example initially discovered in 1985, that is the touchstone of a new paper just fully analyzing the find now, where three women's bodies were found, two younger women were ritually sacrificed (one with pieces of a broken grindstone on her back), and one woman who died in her fifties and was placed in the pit at the same time was interred in a covering in a non-sacrificial manner with a vase serving as a form of grave goods who would have been the only body visible from above. In the case of the two women who were sacrificed:

(D) Detailed view of the individual (woman 3) in a prone position with a box-shaped stone on the left half of her remains (white square). The upside-down grindstone fragment next to the box-shaped stone covers the head of the individual lying underneath (white circle). The scale displays 50 cm

fragments of grindstone were forcefully inserted during the positioning of the women, thus blocking the two bodies. . . . they could no longer move, and breathing became very difficult. . . . In such a position, death occurs relatively quickly, even if the victims were not drugged or beaten. The prone position induces inadequate ventilation and a decrease in the blood volume pumped by the heart, which can lead to pulseless electrical activity arrest and/or cardiac arrest by asystole. This diagnosis, formerly known as positional asphyxia, could now be better defined as “prone restraint cardiac arrest.” . . . cervical compression is an aggravating factor, as is obstruction of the nose and mouth. The . . . position of the lower limbs of woman 3 . . . suggests a potential case of homicidal ligature strangulation. . . . the woman would have been on her abdomen with a ligature attached to her ankles and neck. The fact that the woman was obstructed by grindstones and the overhang of the storage pit, coupled with . . . a tie connecting her ankles to her neck, supports the hypothesis of a deposit while she was still alive. 

The sacrificial pits would have been under an oval shaped structure made of perishable materials at the time of the sacrifice.

The paper and its abstract are as follows:

In the Rhône Valley’s Middle Neolithic gathering site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (France), the positioning of two females within a structure aligned with the solstices is atypical. Their placement (back and prone) under the overhang of a silo in front of a third in a central position suggests a ritualized form of homicidal ligature strangulation. The first occurrence dates back to the Mesolithic, and it is from the Early Neolithic of Central Europe that the practice expands, becoming a sacrificial rite associated with an agricultural context in the Middle Neolithic. Examining 20 cases from 14 sites spanning nearly two millennia from Eastern Europe to Catalonia reveals the evolution of this ritual murder practice.

Bertrand Ludes, et al., "A ritual murder shaped the Early and Middle Neolithic across Central and Southern Europe" 10(15) Scientific Advances (April 10, 2024) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl3374

The introduction to the paper provides useful context:

The topic of human sacrifice, its significance in understanding human societies, and its archaeological study are subjects of active debate and interest. The debate around this issue has sparked lively discussions across various fields, including the humanities, as well as social and ecological sciences. In the context of the Neolithic period in Europe, scholars have been particularly intrigued by the concept of human sacrifice. The prevailing archaeological interpretation of human sacrifice during this era, influenced by the social control hypothesis, often sees it as a form of retainer sacrifice, where officiants killed enslaved people, servants, relatives, wives, concubines, or others to accompany their masters, social superiors, or relatives into the afterlife. An alternative viewpoint suggests that human sacrifice might have played a role in ideological integration within agrarian societies rather than being solely a feature of hierarchical societies. Moreover, there has long been suspicion of agricultural rituals predominantly involving female participants during the European Neolithic. One of the earliest signs of agrarian rites could be in the ritual destruction of grindstones––a symbol of agriculture and harvest—which is a tradition that may have been especially widespread in the Mediterranean region; in other sites, the remains of fauna are notable, with notable sacrifices of dogs and bovids. We should note that human sacrifice to obtain abundant harvests is not an exceptional occurrence in farming societies and is particularly well documented for specific historical periods. In some well-documented cases, the breakdown by sex and age of the individuals sacrificed shows that, depending on the case, they could have been children, young women, or even adults. In Europe, particularly in Central Europe, there were still abundant traces of such sacrifices (especially of young women) in folklore in the 19th century, and this was the source of one of the most famous writings by J. G. Frazer, one of the fathers of religious anthropology. 

The principal challenge in archeology, especially in prehistory where written records are absent, is distinguishing ritual sacrifice from other forms of ritualized violence. To investigate formal sacrifice, defined as the killing of humans for ritual purposes, researchers seek recurrent patterns of behavior that deviate from the norm and that archeologists can hypothesize as sacrificial. The examination of “deviant burials”, i.e., those that differ from conventional burial practices for a specific population, along with methods of execution becomes essential. Several criteria for exploring the hypothesis of human sacrifices have been established, including indicators of violent death, unusual body positions or burial patterns, multiple concurrent burials, hierarchically related body placements, the inclusion of individuals with or instead of offerings, the distinctive arrangement of individuals, and demographic irregularities. The challenge lies in determining the threshold for classifying a burial as atypical, similar to identifying instances of violent death when no obvious signs of lethal trauma are present on skeletal remains. The postulation of human sacrifice emerges when human remains exhibit indicators of a violent demise and appear within contexts deviating from established patterns typical of interred bodies. These contexts encompass scenarios in which an individual subjected to violence is not laid to rest within the confines of a conventional burial site, and their treatment differs from the customary rites accorded to the deceased. Archaeological records most robustly support sacrificial practices when a substantial dataset exhibits a recurring constellation of distinct characteristics. Moreover, when we observe a recurring pattern of several diagnostic traits over centuries, and when there is an absence of individuals accompanied by prestige objects, the hypotheses developed favor ritual sacrifices more than retainer sacrifices. 

Within the Rhône Valley at the end of the Middle Neolithic period—in this region, the Middle Neolithic is between 4250 and 3600/3500 Before Common Era (BCE)—expansive sites spanning several hectares are arranged in a distinct pattern of land use and management. These sites exhibit a wealth of features, including numerous silos, numerous broken grindstones, ceramics sourced from distances spanning several tens of kilometers, animal remains indicative of communal meals, instances of animal sacrifices, and graves containing individuals found in configurations reminiscent of silos or resembling such structures. While the notion of abandoned villages has been proposed for similar sites in proximity to the Mediterranean, the discovery at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, where two women were found in an unconventional placement beneath the overhang of a storage pit, positioned in front of a third body (a woman) in a central location, suggests a ritualized form of asphyxiation that may even imply a method of homicidal ligature strangulation. Given that the silo containing these bodies is part of an architectural orientation toward solstices, we lean toward the hypothesis that these sites, at a certain juncture in their history, functioned as collective gathering places where food security and the agricultural cycle were venerated, particularly through the practice of human sacrifices. 

Homicidal ligature strangulation involves a ritualized form of ligature strangulation, characterized by its cruelty, in which, in its classical way, the victim, in a prone position, is bound at the throat and ankles with a rope. Self-strangulation becomes inevitable due to the forced position of the legs. Currently, this torture, known as incaprettamento, is associated with the Italian Mafia and is sometimes used to punish persons perceived as traitors. In various circumstances, killing people with homicidal ligature strangulation has been interpreted as a form of symbolic suicide, as it is the individual who, by strangling themselves, causes their death. The earliest recorded instance of homicidal ligature strangulation dates back to the Italian Mesolithic era, possibly suggesting a highly ancient origin within ceremonial sites (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Mesolithic rock art scene from the Addaura Cave.

According to J. Guilaine, this scene features eleven humans and a deer, which, given its position, is most likely deceased (sacrificed?). Nine of the humans are standing (in gray); several of them are adorned with bird-like beak faces, resembling masks, and they all appear highly animated. The artist aimed to convey a sense of general excitement. They encircle two central humans (highlighted by us in black), in a prone position. They lie on their abdomens with their legs folded beneath them; one has their arms hanging, while the other has them folded behind their neck. There is a rope stretched between their ankles and neck. Male genitalia in the two figures are very clearly depicted, as if erect, and the figure underneath is shown with their tongue hanging out; these two signs are found in cases of strangulation or hanging.

Considering the observation of the Rhône Valley and the Mesolithic case, we have investigated, as a basis for research and insights into the socio-religious structuring of a segment of the European Neolithic, similar cases on the Ancient (5500 to 4900 BCE) and Middle Neolithic periods (4250 to 3600/3550 BCE) in Central and Western Europe. This study examines 20 cases spanning nearly 2000 years from Eastern Europe to Catalonia. These cases originated from archaeological sites on alluvial plains, either on major rivers (Danube, Oder, Rhine, Pô) or on coastal rivers on the Mediterranean coast with a distribution quite different from that of the megalithic sites of the same period. In these regions, funeral sites are mostly represented by repurposed storage pits or pits dug like silos or ritual silos, where archeologists found one or more individuals or isolated bones. The deposit of human remains in circular pits was widespread throughout the Carpathian Basin, the Rhine Valley, the Rhône Valley, southern France, southwestern France, Emilia, Italy, and the coast of Catalonia. In these sites, while some skeletons are in a flexed position—a standard position for this period—others are placed in atypical positions or buried unconventionally, which does not conform to the overall pattern. If, in some cases, deaths by stabbing or arrowheads have sometimes been described and if sometimes, researchers interpret these atypical positions as if the individuals had been unceremoniously thrown into the pits, in most cases, the cause of death is unknown, even if one hypothesizes that these individuals in atypical positions are cases of retainer sacrifice. These documented cases underscore the possible development of sacrificial practices in various regions and contexts. Particularly noteworthy are instances of homicidal ligature strangulation found in ritual sites during the Neolithic period. These sites often included storage pits used for burials, occasionally accompanied by sacrificial offerings, broken grindstones, and isolated human remains. This investigation contributes valuable insights into the intricate nature of human sacrifice and ritualized violence during the European Neolithic, questioning established interpretations and highlighting the importance of thorough archaeological analysis for a nuanced understanding of these practices.