Friday, November 30, 2012

Settling of the Indo-Europeans, Finno-Ugrians, and Turks in Eastern Europe (Survey)



The First Neolithic Tribes in Eastern Europe


The population of Eastern Europe are still led their traditional way of life of wandering hunter-gatherers, when a number of separate cultures was formed on the Balkan Peninsula and in the lower Danube in the 6th millennium BC. Common roots of these cultures were nourished by cultural flow penetrating to the South-East Europe across the Aegean area from Anatolia.
Demographic expansion of farming communities from the Caucasus and Anatolia in Eastern Europe could be due to a relative overpopulation in their primary habitat, or rather the achievement level of the so-called "maximum economic function", which places the border population growth in a certain area, occurring not only a natural way but also due to the retracting of small farming communities of neighboring groups.
The emergence of Neolithic cultures on the territory of the Ukraine was obviously connected with this cultural flux.

The first farmers and pastoralists penetrated in Eastern Europe from the Dniester River to the Lower Don from the south-west, and partly, perhaps, from the Caucasus (BROMLEY Yu.V., 1986, 292). Actually, these newcomers were the creators of the first Neolithic cultures in Eastern Europe. During their spread in the direction to the Carpathian Basin in the 5th mill BC, when engaged in farming and cattle breeding tribes were first settled here, a gradual transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic occurred (HERRMANN JOACHIM , 1982, 43). The newcomers created the culture Linear Pottery in the area of the Carpathian arc, which applies to large parts of Europe and even to France. Several interrelated Neolithic cultures belonging to the circle of this culture are known in the Middle Danube. The earliest of these, the culture Körös, created by people of the South-Balkan origin (SHUSHARIN V.P., 1971, 12).
Obviously, another group of newcomers has created the Bug-Dniester culture, which coulg have links with the more advanced synchronous cultures of South-Eastern Europe. Mykola Tovkaylo said that after establishing contact with the culture of Körös in the "the outsets of productive economy i.e agriculture and livestock spread in the area of the Bug-Dniester culture " (TOVKAYLO M.T., 1998, 1). However we can also suppose that the elements of the new management had been made not only by simple contacts by together with the resettlement of the population from the Balkan to the basin of the Southern Bug. Some large group of immigrants from the Balkans created here the Earlly-Trypillian culture. The race of the creators the Tripollian culture in the Ukraine can be identified by the data of anthropology, which also confirm the wave of newcomers from the Balkans:

"The physical types of people of the Tripollian culture is characterized by gracility and dolichocephalia . Morphological features of this type are wide spread in Western Europe, Mediterranean, Asia Minor, besides that special affinity with the Tripollians is shown by cranial series of Central Europe and the Mediterranean Basin". (KONDUKTOROVA T.S. 1973, 49)


The Reconstrucion of the appearance of the Trypillians confirms this fact (see Fig. 19)

Fig. 19. Graphical Reconstrucion of the Appearance of the Trypillians by M.M. Gerasimov on the basis of found sculls. (MASSON V.M., MERPERT N.Ya. 1982. Fig.)

The Bu-Dniestr and Early-Typollian cultures coexisted in the same area and maintained close relationships a long time from the middle of the 1st to start of the 2nd quarter of the 4th BC (TOVKAYLO M.T. 1998, 14-15). At the same time (in the 5th mill BC) Neolithic cultures spread through the South and North Caucasus to the eastern part of the Ukraine (the Dnieper-Surska and the Dnieper-Donets cultures). The spreading was occurred by as resettlement and partly by borrowing the productive economy.
One can assume that third stream of migration of carriers from the Neolithic cultures existed also from Asia along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the right bank of the Ural River and thence to the Lower Volga. The archaic Yelshansk Neolithic culture in the area between these rivers may be evidence of such a possibility:

It is not excluded that, the territory of Central Asia was transformed into a semi-desert in connection with desertification. Living conditions deteriorated sharply, which resulted in an outflow of population northward in a more favourable habitat. This area could be the Forest-steppe and the Volga region. Alien populations mingled with the natives and could borrow the local tradition of making stone tools" (TURETSKIY M.A. 2007, 53).

Thus the community of farmers from the South Caucasus and other parts of Asia have begun to move north in search of the land. Among these communities were the Indo-European, Altaic, Uralian people, who left their Urheimat iin the 6th mill. BC and gradually reached Eastern Europe.

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