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.

A Short Demographic History Of Portugal

The Iberian Peninsula, located at the southwestern tip of Europe, is a geographically isolated region. Archaeological evidence indicates that this region has been occupied by humans for at least 400,000 years. It subsequently played a crucial role as a refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum. When the climate warmed about 14,000 years ago, people repopulated the European continent during the Mesolithic. The archaeological remains from this period in Portugal are characterized by the presence of numerous shell middens. Between 5700 and 5600 BC, the Neolithic brought a new way of life to the region with the introduction of agriculture and livestock. This development was brought about by human migrations from Anatolia. In particular, the maritime migrations of these groups brought to Portugal the ceramics of the Cardial culture that reached Portugal around 5500 BC. The latest paleogenomic studies have shown the arrival of a new population despite the persistence of a significant Mesolithic component. The improvement of technology and in particular the emergence of metallurgy resulted in more complex social organizations during the Chalcolithic between 3000 and 2000 BC. These societies are characterized by different regional cultures. In the Bronze Age, changes are observed from 2000 BC, characterized by the arrival of a steppe component in the genome of these ancient individuals. The Iron Age begins around 800 BC. The introduction of iron allows for major advances in agricultural methods, but also in warlike practices. The Celts are located in the north, west and center of the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenician trading posts appear in the southwest. The Roman conquest begins in 218 BC. when Portugal was integrated into the Roman Empire. This period saw the development of urbanization. Roman culture and the Latin language spread throughout the country. In the fifth century AD, Germanic tribes arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. The Suebi dominated the northwest until the unification of the peninsula by the Visigoths . At the beginning of the 8th century, Islamic tribes from North Africa invaded the peninsula, subsequently incorporating it into the Umayyad Caliphate . The Catholic reconquest culminated in the creation of the County of Portugal, then with the creation of the Kingdom of Portugal in 1143. In recent years, some paleogenomic studies have made it possible to study demographic movements during the history of the Iberian Peninsula, but only 51 ancient genomes dated before the Visigoth Kingdom have been analyzed in Portugal so far. 

Xavier Roca-Rada and his colleagues have just published a paper entitled:The genetic history of Portugal over the past 5,000 years . They sequenced 68 new ancient genomes from Portugal dated between the Neolithic and the 19th century. The authors added to these data 590 ancient genomes from the Iberian Peninsula previously published[.]

From here.

The demographic history of Portugal is complex and with old and new ancient DNA and lots of written history from a fairly early point, can be corroborated fairly accurately. It is easy to otherwise assume that an absence of evidence means that everything was simple, a lesson to be taken seriously in less well documented contexts.

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.

A Good Reason To Like The Mirror Universe Scenario

 

A mirror universe scenario overcomes this meme. 

Deur's approach (whether or not it modifies general relativity) also solves the conservation of mass-energy issue associated with "dark energy" using the same mechanism that he used to explain dark matter phenomena, and explains the "cosmic coincidence" problem as a bonus prize.

The Mayans Ritually Sacrificed Young Boys, Many Related

The team behind the new study was able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from 64 out of around 100 individuals, whose remains were found scattered in a water chultún — an underground storage chamber discovered in 1967 about 400 meters (437 yards) from the sacred sinkhole in Chichén Itzá.

With radiocarbon dating, the team found that the underground cavern was used for 500 years, although most of the children whose remains the team studied were interred there between AD 800 and 1,000 — during the height of Chichén Itzá’s political power in the region.

All the children were boys, who had been drawn from the local Maya population at that time, according to the DNA analysis, and at least a quarter of them were closely related to at least one other child in the chultún. The group also included two pairs of twins as well as siblings and cousins. Most of the boys were between 3 and 6 years old when they died.

Analysis of variants or isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the bones also suggested that the related children had similar diets. Together, according to the authors, these findings suggested that related male children were likely selected in pairs for ritual sacrifices linked to the chultún.

“It is surprising to me to see family members, given the enormous time breadth of the deposit, which by radiocarbon dates is now confirmed to have been used over a time span of 500 years, during which these bodies slowly accumulated,” said Vera Tiesler, a bioarchaeologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, in an email. She wasn’t involved in the research.

While the study authors believe this finding reveals the only known burial of sacrificed male children, Tiesler said that the ancient Maya ritual calendar was complex, likely with different “victim profiles” for different religious occasions throughout the year and time cycles.

From CNN discussing the following paper:

The ancient city of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico, was one of the largest and most influential Maya settlements during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (AD 600–1000) and it remains one of the most intensively studied archaeological sites in Mesoamerica. However, many questions about the social and cultural use of its ceremonial spaces, as well as its population’s genetic ties to other Mesoamerican groups, remain unanswered. 

Here we present genome-wide data obtained from 64 subadult individuals dating to around AD 500–900 that were found in a subterranean mass burial near the Sacred Cenote (sinkhole) in the ceremonial centre of Chichén Itzá. 

Genetic analyses showed that all analysed individuals were male and several individuals were closely related, including two pairs of monozygotic twins. Twins feature prominently in Mayan and broader Mesoamerican mythology, where they embody qualities of duality among deities and heroes, but until now they had not been identified in ancient Mayan mortuary contexts. 

Genetic comparison to present-day people in the region shows genetic continuity with the ancient inhabitants of Chichén Itzá, except at certain genetic loci related to human immunity, including the human leukocyte antigen complex, suggesting signals of adaptation due to infectious diseases introduced to the region during the colonial period.

Rodrigo Barquera, et al., "Ancient genomes reveal insights into ritual life at Chichén Itzá" Nature (June 12, 2024) (open access).

The discussion in the paper of the possible religious beliefs associated with the sacrifices or of the 16th century Spanish accounts of the practice (some of which, like the gender of the sacrifice victims, is provable wrong), is intriguing. See also the Dresden Codex which has origins at the same Mayan site:

The Dresden Codex is a Maya book, which was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century. However, in September 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico, previously known as the Grolier Codex, is, in fact, older by about a century. The codex was rediscovered in the city of Dresden, Germany, hence the book's present name. It is located in the museum of the Saxon State Library. The codex contains information relating to astronomical and astrological tables, religious references, seasons of the earth, and illness and medicine. It also includes information about conjunctions of planets and moons. . . . 

The Dresden Codex is described by historian J. Eric S. Thompson as writings of the indigenous people of the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. Maya historians Peter J. Schmidt, Mercedes de la Garza, and Enrique Nalda confirm this. Thompson further narrows the probable origin of the Dresden Codex to the area of Chichen Itza, because certain picture symbols in the codex are only found on monuments in that location. He also argues that the astronomical tables would support this as the place of origin. Thompson claims that the people of the Yucatán Peninsula were known to have done such studies around 1200 A.D. Thompson also notes the similar ceramic designs in the Chichen Itza area which are known to have ceased in the early thirteenth century. British historian Clive Ruggles suggests, based on the analyses of several scholars, that the Dresden Codex is a copy and was originally written between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Thompson narrows the date closer to 1200 to 1250. Maya archaeologist Linton Satterthwaite puts the date when it was made as no later than 1345.

A natural response to these human sacrifices is to ask "why" and to put it in the context of some narrative, which can be done only incompletely.

Japan's Sun God

I saw a reference to the story of Amaterasu being lured out of her cave and looked up the story. 

Japan's Shinto religion is often described as animistic, rather than polytheistic, and it does have many small gods (kami). But the story of Amaterasu has strong echos of the Greek gods, with odd births and amoral gods. I had been unaware that the story including siblings having children together, a moderately unusual theme in legends. As the reference below notes, it is also one of the only religions with a female sun god and a male moon god.

Of course, the existing Japanese royal family is one of the oldest still extant royal dynasties on Earth, and the only one of which I am aware that claims divine ancestry.

Amaterasu, (Japanese: “Great Divinity Illuminating Heaven”), the celestial sun goddess from whom the Japanese imperial family claims descent, and an important Shintō deity. 

She was born from the left eye of her father, Izanagi, who bestowed upon her a necklace of jewels and placed her in charge of Takamagahara (“High Celestial Plain”), the abode of all the kami. 

One of her brothers, the storm god Susanoo, was sent to rule the sea plain. Before going, Susanoo went to take leave of his sister. As an act of good faith, they produced children together, she by chewing and spitting out pieces of the sword he gave her, and he by doing the same with her jewels. Susanoo then began to behave very rudely—he broke down the divisions in the rice fields, defiled his sister’s dwelling place, and finally threw a flayed horse into her weaving hall. Indignant, Amaterasu withdrew in protest into a cave, and darkness fell upon the world.

The other 800 myriads of gods conferred on how to lure the sun goddess out. They collected cocks, whose crowing precedes the dawn, and hung a mirror and jewels on a sakaki tree in front of the cave. The goddess Amenouzume (q.v.) began a dance on an upturned tub, partially disrobing herself, which so delighted the assembled gods that they roared with laughter. Amaterasu became curious how the gods could make merry while the world was plunged into darkness and was told that outside the cave there was a deity more illustrious than she. She peeped out, saw her reflection in the mirror, heard the cocks crow, and was thus drawn out from the cave. The kami then quickly threw a shimenawa, or sacred rope of rice straw, before the entrance to prevent her return to hiding.

Amaterasu’s chief place of worship is the Grand Shrine of Ise, the foremost Shintō shrine in Japan. She is manifested there in a mirror that is one of the three Imperial Treasures of Japan (the other two being a jeweled necklace and a sword). The genders of Amaterasu and her brother the moon god Tsukiyomi no Mikato are remarkable exceptions in worldwide mythology of the sun and the moon. See also Ukemochi no Kami.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica. Simple English Wikipedia's retelling of the story is here.

Fun fact: The most energetic particle in a cosmic ray ever seen by astronomers has been named after Amaterasu.

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.

Y-DNA E22 In China

The Y-DNA E-V22 clade has an interesting distribution that even includes a dozen sampled individual in China. One of the nice things about uniparental historical genetics is that it naturally invites efforts to construct an eminently understandable narrative that explains it.

Also bonus points for the use of the term "brother lineage" to describe Y-DNA clades.

[T]he phylogeny of E-V22, at least based on the samples uploaded to yFull, reveals the following:

* The E-V22 haplogroup appears to be roughly 11,800 years old, with a “TMRCA,” or time to most-recent common ancestor, of 8,200 “ybp,” or years-before-present.

* While there are many deep and relatively old sublineages whose members have diverse geographical origins, there does appear to be a general pattern of E-V22 prevalence in/among the following regions and populations: the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf; diverse Jewish and related populations (including Bukharian, Ashkenazi, an apparent Moroccan Jewish, Italki, and Ashkenazi branch, the Samaritans [note: this lineage is apparently that of the Samaritan priestly class], and others); the Saho people, a Cushitic-speaking ethnic group of Eritrea and Ethiopia; and other groups such as Egyptians, Levantine Arabs, Sicilians, and at least one Caucasian-Iranian lineage. (There are Northwestern European exemplars, too.)

* Perhaps surprisingly, there are no fewer than twelve reported samples on yFull with origins in the present-day People’s Republic of China, including a well-developed lineage of Chinese men who report their origins as Dungan, Manchu, Mongol, and in Liaoning [i.e., the gateway to Manchuria], and who share a common paternal-line ancestor who lived about 600 years ago, right around the tail-end of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. (Note their Czech "brother lineage," with a TMRCA of 5,700 years-before present.) Zooming out a bit farther back on the overall E-V22 phylogeny, three more Chinese samples emerge who are nested within different lineages altogether: a self-described “Mandarin Chinese” isolate lineage with Shandong origins that has a TMRCA of 4,100 years-before-present; a Chinese sample with Mongolian origins who shares a common Armenian paternal-line ancestor as of 4,500 years ago, and who has even more remote Irish and British (exotic for E-V22!) paternal-line cousins; and a rather old Henan-based lineage with a Saudi cousin as of 6,200 years ago, and diverse brother lineages with Nablusi, Moroccan Jewish, and Khorasani Turkish origins, among others (including an apparent ancient Longobard sample unearthed in Hungary).

It is possible to speculate endlessly about the historical migrations that led to E-V22’s present-day distribution, both in China and elsewhere. Yet I note that the Dungan-Manchu-Mongol-Liaoning branch shares as a brother lineage the Caucasian-Iranian group consisting of three samples with respective Talysh, Persian, and Georgian-Azerbaijani origins. Does this nearly 8,000-year-old Irano-Chinese lineage (with a Czech exemplar nested within them) reflect a more recent Silk Road-era migration eastward, or does the Chinese branch have altogether different, more ancient origins? More fodder for speculation: there is an ancient Xiongnu E-V22 sample among the data underlying a study from just last year entitled “Genetic population structure of the Xiongnu Empire at imperial and local scales.” Perhaps the sequencing of more ancient DNA will one day give us the complete historical migratory picture, but the phylogeny of this lineage does seem to point in a westerly direction.

From Language Log. 

Aztec Human Sacrifice

"For the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony."

From Wikipedia.

Recall that this city had a population of 200,000 non-prisoner residents, which while huge for the time, is only about three times greater than the number of people sacrificed.

Which Came First? Canals Or Cities

Irrigation canals arose so long before cities did that these canals and the agriculture that they are a testament to, couldn't have been the reason that cities came to be. So, maybe religion and not agriculture is the key factor.

The latest data from Ancient Mesopotamian city of Girsu shows that agriculture built around system of irrigation canals existed for a 1000 years before the first city was built.

From the Old European Culture blog. 

The excerpt below is from the body text of the linked article (an educated layman's level publication, not a scientific journal):

Rey and his team used new technologies to understand the development of the city, flying drones over the vast, 250-hectare site. The images they gathered show the extent to which the irrigation system was embedded throughout the city and its surrounds.

Heavy rainfall, a product of climate change, also washed away the top layer of the soil, making the outlines even more apparent. 

Working with archaeologists from five universities in Iraq, led by Jaafar Jotheri of Al Qadisiyah, the British Museum team dug out shells and other material from the bottom level of the canals to be carbon-dated. The results were startling: the canals seem to have been dug in the fifth millennium BC. .

“The big surprise is that the largest irrigation canals date to the prehistory of Mesopotamia. That means they are much, much older than the birth of the city, by about 1,000 years," says Rey. "Traditionally, what you read is that development in Mesopotamia begins at the end of the fourth millennium, around 3300 BC. That’s when there was an important transition from pre-urban to urban and the invention of writing.

"But the canals that we have dated recently sets the date back to the fifth millennium, which means that irrigation is not the key, the spark that triggered the urban construction and the invention of writing. And that's a really important discovery.”

Before, archeologists believed that once the ancient Sumerians learnt to irrigate their crops, they were able to move from subsistence farming to the social and religious hierarchy that the elaborate temples of Girsu attest to.

But the Girsu Project’s discoveries, which Rey has written up for a paper that has passed peer review but which is still to be published, show that the Sumerians were living with well-watered plains for a full millennium before they began to build the temple complexes.

What changed? What moved the needle towards a more complex society?

Rey speculates that the shift was unrelated to the environment but rather owed to the pattern of thinking of those living in Girsu: an ideological transformation. Temples and administrative buildings allowed the powers ascribed to the gods to reside in one site, which was embedded into a larger social and political structure.

“It was a domestication of the power of the gods,” Rey says, in an adaptation of the phrase usually used for Sumerian development of the domestication of water.

The Long Term Impacts Of Islamic Occupation In Iberia

This paper makes that case that developing a merchant class in the Middle Ages was critical to the development of literacy and self-government, and that Islamic rule discouraged this from happening for different lengths of time in different parts of Iberia (basically on a north to south gradient).

We use a unique dataset on Muslim domination between 711-1492 and literacy in 1860 for about 7500 municipalities to study the long-run impact of Islam on human-capital in historical Spain. 

Reduced-form estimates show a large and robust negative relationship between length of Muslim rule and literacy. 

We argue that, contrary to local arrangements set up by Christians, Islamic institutions discouraged the rise of the merchant class, blocking local forms of self-government and thereby persistently hindering demand for education. Indeed, results show that a longer Muslim domination in Spain is negatively related to the share of merchants, whereas neither later episodes of trade nor differences in jurisdictions and different stages of the Reconquista affect our main results. Consistent with our interpretation, panel estimates show that cities under Muslim rule missed-out on the critical juncture to establish self-government institutions.

Francesco Cinnirella, Alieza Naghavi, and Giovanni Prarolo, "Islam and human capital in historical Spain" 28 Journal of Economic Growth 225-257 (January 3, 2023).