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A free preview episode of Radio North Sea International is now available on Survive the Jive podcast. There is no more potent, holy and enduring symbol of Western man, than the barrow! It links the Iliad, Beowulf, the sagas, the Celts, Germans, Scythians and slavs! 6000 years of excellence!
Swedes gather at the ancient barrows of Gamla Uppsala while the Valborg fire burns behind them
VIDEO: May day traditions in Cornwall and Devon
May Day and Easter have Pagan origins
VIDEO: Pagan May Ritual in North Devon: The Earl of Rone
Tories threaten May day (2011)
VIDEO: 1953 May rites in Padstow
‘Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages’ by McColl et al 2024 uses a novel method looking at IBD sharing to identify a previously unknown sub-population within Scandinavia’s Corded Ware culture which it calls “East Scandinavian”.
This population is alleged to have formed around 2000 BC which is 800 years after Corded Ware folk first entered Scandinavia. It is distinct from earlier Corded Ware populations in the region, and contemporary Corded Ware people in Denmark and Norway, because instead of just WHG admixture it has additional EHG admixture from a source their model predicts to come from Latvia/Lithuania.
The authors suggest a possible migration across the Baltic sea to explain this East Scandi group despite there being no evidence for this in the archaeological record. They point out that the “timing coincides with the introduction of a new, Late Neolithic sheep breed to Scandinavia. It also coincides with the spread of a new burial rite of gallery graves in south Sweden, the Danish islands and Norway, a new house type, the first durative bronze networks, as well as with the end of an east-west divide in Scandinavia between 4050 and 3650 BP. (2050 BC- 1650 BC)” Yet none of these new arrivals they list necessarily came from across the Baltic sea.
The feasibility of a mass migration of a people across the Baltic at this period in history is questionable. Sea crossings from the South are far more plausible or even land routes via the Arctic North. Figure 4.A shows the geographical distribution of individual samples belonging to the 3 Scandinavian Clusters they identified existing prior to 800 BC, after which they merged. They say there is a strong correspondence between the clusters and specific haplogroups as follows:
The third map of this so-called “Eastern Scandi” group shows mainly samples from the South though, and the I1 haplogroup distribution is not demonstrated to have come from the “East”, in fact it appears from this data to have come from the south. We already have an I1 sample from North Germany dating to 3300 BC, older than these samples, so by tying this newly identified group to the I1 haplogroup, they have brought into question their own claim that it has a Baltic origin. This will only be settled with the discovery of an I1 sample in a Corded ware context dating to around 2700 BC.
They admit that it is now necessary to confirm “the proposed Bronze Age source of the East Scandinavians along the Baltic coast.” My own view is that the elevated EHG ancestry in this East Scandi group may incorrectly have been identified as Latvian in origin due merely to a sampling bias, and lack of SHG samples. The elevated EHG in Sweden seems more plausible to be local and the I1 is most likely to have entered Scandinavia from the South, not across the Baltic. The reliability of their IBD method depends on the reference samples used.
While I question their conclusions about the origin of this East Scandi group, I am more convinced by their suggestion that it was responsible for the spread of the ancestor of what became Palaeo-Germanic language in the period between 1050 BC - 500 BC when it borrowed from Celtic and into Finno-Saamic. They show that after 2000 BC the East Scandi group expanded into Denmark and Norway. The mixing of East Scandi with South Scandi is dated between 1700 BC-1400 BC which spans both Nordic Bronze age 1 and 2 and directly precedes the construction of the famous Kivik tomb in Scania around 1400 BC.
This mixing event formed the Iron Age Scandinavian genetic profile such that by the Iron Age Jutland can be entirely modelled with the admixed Danish Bronze age source, while Iron Age Norway and the Danish Isles also have additional East Scandi admixture on top of the initial Bronze Age mixing, showing further migrations of these intrepid East Scandis. They say this admixed Iron Age Southern Scandinavian group is “central to understanding the Germanic dispersal” and I agree. We can trace the spread of IA South Scandi ancestry into Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. The findings about Germanic expansion in the historical period are very interesting too.
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| Arvid Fougstedt 1936 |
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Through comparative mythology we can reconstruct the earliest Indo-European beliefs about the cosmos and the afterlife as far as 6000 years back. but Indo-European religion has many features in common with Siberian and Native American religions. These three groups all share common ancestry from an ice-age population called Ancient North Eurasians, so we can even reconstruct cosmological beliefs of a Siberian people 20,000 years ago! This film helps you to understand the most ancient and fundamental pagan beliefs concerning death, the underworld and reincarnation.
Readings contributed by voice actor D. W. Draffin of 'Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages' on YouTube
Research information relating to *Kolyéh₂ from John of Crecganford on YouTube
Once more, before I move on
and set my sights ahead,
in loneliness I lift my hands up to you,
you to whom I flee,
to whom I, in the deepmost depth of my heart,
solemnly consecrated altars
so that ever
your voice may summon me again.
Deeply graved into those altars
glows the phrase: To The Unknown God.
I am his, although I have, until now,
also lingered amid the unholy mob;
I am his—and I feel the snares
that pull me down in the struggle and,
if I would flee,
compel me yet into his service.
I want to know you, Unknown One,
Who reaches deep into my soul,
Who roams through my life like a storm—
You Unfathomable One, akin to me!
I want to know you, even serve you.
1. Then even non-existence was not there, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the space beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic fluid, in depths unfathomed?
2. Then there was neither death nor immortality
nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.
3. At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined cosmic water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of knowledge.
4. In the beginning desire descended on it -
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is, is kin to that which is not.
5. And they have stretched their cord across the void,
and know what was above, and what below.
Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse.
6. But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
"As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship — and this is what I am going to proclaim to you."
"Did the angel really appear to Mary or was it a daemon? We cannot say.
Was Jesus really a god or was he possessed by a daemon? It cannot be known.
Is YHWH the only god or is he lying? Maybe even He himself doesn’t know for sure.”
“The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.”Evidently the anecdote is provided by Bede as an example of a pagan feeling hopeless with the uncertainty of pagan beliefs, and thus wanting something more solid in the form of Christian doctrine. However, this story is intended to impress pagans and encourage them to convert and is part of a conversion narrative, therefore we should expect to see in it tropes that would be recognised by pagans. For that reason I believe that Bede has used a well known pagan poetic metaphor about the uncertainty of life, not only after death, but before birth! I have covered in my videos how Germanic and Celtic pagans believed in a form of reincarnation so the fate of the “soul” prior to birth was also a concerning question for them.
"Human life lasts only 50 years, compare it with the life of Geten (a form of Buddhist paradise, where one day lasts years of our world), it is truly a dream and an illusion. Life, once given, cannot last forever”
I've been waiting for some concrete DNA evidence about where modern horses came from since I interviewed Alan Outram three years ago and he hinted that it was soon to be published. He indicated that Sintashta horses might end up being more important than Yamnaya ones, and now that the new paper, to which he contributed, has finally been published, I can see why.
Botai may have been first to corral horses for milking but they didn't ride them.
Yamnaya kept horses for milking too but we cannot see if they were ridden (However Trautmann et al 2023 shows Yamnaya did ride them)
Wilkin et al (2021) looking at milk proteins in pottery agrees with this new paper regarding "a potential epicentre for horse domestication in the Pontic–Caspian steppe by the third millennium BC" = Yamnaya.
Librado et al (2021) points to Volga-Don region (aka Yamnaya EUROPE) as the homeland of modern domestic horses
Sintashta horses (DOM2) were superior for riding (stronger backs) and replaced earlier ones from 2200 BC
Sintashta horses (DOM2) had genetic continuity with earlier Yamnaya /Repin ones (TURG) and Steppe Maykop (Aygurskii), and Poltavka (Sosnovka) - specifically two late Yamnaya specimens from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC
Yamnaya horses had some relation, but not much, to Botai horses
The Tarpan and modern Przewalski’s horses do not descend from the same ancestral population as modern domestic horses
Modern horses were domesticated in Europe but the paper calls it West Eurasia - possibly as a deliberate, politically motivated obfuscation
The ancestors of Sintashta horses came from the steppe East of the Dnieper and West of the Volga-Don region - ie: firmly within European Yamnaya territory during the late fourth and early third millennia BC
Corded Ware horses were not the same as Yamnaya/Sintashta horses
Earlier LBK and other Neolithic horses in Denmark, Poland, Czechia and Hungary had some affinity with Yamnaya/Sintashta horses - the geneflow seems to have been via Thrace
Corded Ware expansion into Europe was not accompanied by horses but rather they adopted local horses as they migrated (not clear if they were ridden)
Replacement of other horse lineages in Europe and Asia by Sintashta ones was accompanied by spread of both equestrianism and (a bit later) light two wheeled war chariots
The spread of Sintashta horses into the middle east was likely accompanied by the spread of a specialised class of Sintashta descended horse trainers like the Mitanni.
New genetic data on Tarim mummies disproves my claim that early Tarim mummies were Iranic. It also shows the likely origin of Tocharian languages is in the Dzungarian Basin just north of Tarim rather than Tarim itself. Tarim mummies date from 2000 BC to AD 200 yet this sample only looks at the very oldest of those. Even older samples (3000–2800 BC) in the new study are from the Dzungarian Basin and these samples appear to be Afanasievo derived and therefore are likely the source of Tocharian languages, and if so then the language moved South into Tarim from them, but the early mummies from Tarim itself, at least the 13 in this study which date from 2100–1700 BC, do NOT appear to be Tocharians or even, as I speculated in my video las year, Iranic speaking Aryans, rather an isolated refugia of ice-age like people predominantly descended from Ancient North Eurasians and West Siberian Hunter-Gatherers (WSHG themselves were 72.5% ANE, 7.5% West European Hunter-Gatherer, and 20% Ancient East Asian).
We can't say what language these Siberian mammoth hunters turned lizard-eaters of Tarim spoke (not an Indo-European one though), although we know the genes associated with Tocharian and Iranic speakers both entered the Tarim basin region later on. Interesting that the mummies appear to be European in phenotype despite not descending from Indo-European bronze age steppe peoples who are autosomally like modern Europeans. As the paper says:
“The Tarim mummies’ so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool,”
So they look physically European because they have ANE DNA. This also answers the question of why some Ainu people from Japan, and some ancient native American skeletons like Kennewick man, look like Europeans; They all have ANE DNA and ANE were obviously Europoid.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/51/9f/519fea8a-a215-48fe-ba09-fae09a0bb3e3/kennewick-hero.jpg "kennewick man")
This also explains why the material culture of early Tarim people resembles that of Siberian peoples. Take the idols for example:
You find faces similar to this everywhere you find WSHG/ANE ancestry in Siberia and Central Asia. The Mansi, Kalash and Ket all make figurines in similar trends to this day.
It is important to remember that these new samples from Tarim represent only the first 400 years of that burial tradition which lasted a further 1900 years! Without samples from those following long 19 centuries we cannot say for sure when the WSHG people disappeared but I highly suspect that later Tarim mummies like Cherchen man (see below), who died c. 1000 BC, in all probability do have steppe admixture and could well be Iranic or Tocharian speakers.
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| Chercen man depicted by Andrew Whyte |
Tocharian and Iranic speakers of steppe descent entered the Tarim basin from different routes at different times, but the original inhabitants were these ANE descended Siberian people and they mixed with the incoming Indo-Europeans. So I still think that Cherchen man and the Yanghai cannabis shaman were both Indo-European people.
So what do we know about the people of this Siberian ANE-rich refugia?
Their race underwent a bottleneck and formed over 9000 years ago
They were homogenous population scattered in the Tarim desert, rarely mixing with neighbours
They adopted pastoralist lifestyle from neighbouring steppe peoples
They consumed dairy products like kefir but were lactose intolerant
They farmed animals - likely due to Afanasievo influence
They were not European but they looked European due to ANE ancestry
They had genes associated with dark skin in SLC24A5 and SLC45A5 like East asians do
We don’t know what language they originally spoke
They likely adopted Tocharian and Iranic languages after mixing with their Afanasievo neighbours of the Dzungarian basin to the North who were related to Yamnaya, and Andronovo neighbours to the West who were Aryans. This occurred sometime after 1700 BC
They buried their dead with ephedra twigs like later BMAC and Iranic cultures did
They made idols similar to those made by other Siberian peoples
The Yamnaya culture, also called the Kurgan or Late Ochre Grave culture, of the late Neolithic and Bronze age Pontic steppe is believed to be one of several Proto-Indo-European speaking Western Steppe herder peoples who were ancestral to many modern peoples and who spread Indo-European languages across Eurasia. But what did Yamnaya look like? In this documentary film you can see 3D forensic facial reconstructions of Yamnaya men by the artist Robert Molyneaux and you can learn all about what Yamnaya people ate, why they loved milk, how they lived, their burial customs, how they spread and more.
— 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐍 (@GramanhFolcwald) May 31, 2021
Altyn Tuu - Altai throat singing
Gargoyle - dance with me
The Whole Other - Ether Oar
Patrick Patrik - Away
Doug maxwell - tribal war council
Bark sound productions - in return
kevin macleod - Master of the feast
Aethelruna - Output
Chris Zabriskie - The Theatrical Poster for Poltergeist III
Borg - The Dancing Forest
Khan Kurra - Little dragon
Chris Zabriskie - I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary
