Neolithic Europe: Encyclopedia II - Neolithic Europe - Pre-Indo-European peoples

Neolithic Europe - Pre-Indo-European peoples

The earliest modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens - as opposed to Neanderthals - to enter Europe did so perhaps around 50,000 years ago, during a long period of particularly mild climate, when Europe was relatively warm, and food was plentiful. Some of the oldest works of art in the world, such as the cave paintings at Lascaux in southern France, are dated to shortly after this migration. The Neanderthals, the earliest Homo sapiens to occupy Europe, are thought to have already been there for about 150,000 years. The Neanderthals seem to have died out by about 30,000 years ago; being out-competed for resources by the recently immigrated modern humans is presumed to have been a major factor in their extinction. There has been some speculation that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, so that they did not truly go extinct, but possibly have descendants among us today.

The Neanderthals' decline might also have been exacerbated by the worsening climate; the last ice age plunged Europe into a much colder and harsher environment, and covered much of the north of it with inhospitable glaciers. There is genetic evidence that the Europeans of the time passed through a 'population bottleneck' -- where the population severely declined over a long period of time, perhaps thousands of years, before finally rebounding after the peak of the ice age, around 17,000 years ago. There is also evidence that humans had spread into northern Europe during the period of clement climate, but were forced entirely out of northern Europe during the height of the ice age, so that only those who migrated southward to the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and southeast Europe survived; it was these groups that then presumably migrated northward again, following the retreating glaciers to repopulate northern Europe and become the ancestors of the Pre-Indo-European peoples.

The Basques of the Pyrenees are thought to be a surviving non-Indo-European remnant of a once more widespread Pre-Indo-European culture. Older theories considered the ancient Picts of what is now Scotland also to be Pre-Indo-European. It has also been suggested that in North-Eastern Europe, Uralic speaking peoples preceded Indo-European speakers [1].

According to some studies, modern European peoples derive about 72% of their genetic code from the Pre-Indo-Europeans, on average. Basques show a remarkable lack of genetic markers from other groups, prompting the conclusion that they are the closest of any present ethnic group to having completely Pre-Indo-European genes. Native speakers of Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic from the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland also come very close to the Basque, with a close to 100% "Pre-Indo-European" set of genetic markers. These two groups present useful data points in the study of correlation between genetic and linguistic heritage.

Labels applying alternately to genetic or linguistic groups are often incorrectly conflated, including with Pre-Indo-European and Indo-European ethnic and linguistic groups. Sometimes, little to no correlation can be found between genetic and linguistic grouping. This is true, to take a non-European example, between the Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien language groups in southern China, where no significant genetic differentiation correlates with the differentiation in language families, indicating ancestry that thoroughly mixed while maintaining separate language communities. On the other hand, Basques show a striking correlation with both genetic and linguistic differentiation from their neighbors, providing a compelling indication of a coherent population group that has remained effectively differentiated since before the Indo-European groups immigrated.

From such genetic evidence, it has been theorized that Celtic language family groups were probably the first Indo-Europeans to reach the British Isles, and were able to replace the native languages with their own, without leaving much impact on the people's genetic markers. Later Indo-European-speaking immigrants to the British Isles, associated with the Romans and the Germanic language groups, brought with them a more disparate genetic admixture, and absorbed much of the Celtic-speaking, genetically largely Pre-Indo-European people into their Latin, and later, Germanic speaking, more genetically varied population, while a geographically marginalized minority population preserved the Celtic-speaking, more pre-Indo-European genetic combination from the previous admixture.

Many geographic names in the British Isles are considered to be remnants of lost Pre-Celtic languages, including London, Thames, and Liverpool.

According to the Kurgan hypothesis, Indo-European peoples arrived in the 4th millennium BC across the steppes north of the Black Sea. Recent genetic studies apparently suggest that they stem from among groups of people who expanded over the previous several tens of thousands of years from southwestern and southern Asia into central Asia, and then to the region north of the Black Sea from the east, after the last ice age receded, sometime after about 17,000 years ago.

In historical times, some ethnonyms are believed to correspond to Pre-Indo-European peoples, assumed to be the descendants of the earlier Old European cultures: the Pelasgians, Minoans, Leleges, Iberians and Basques. Two of the three pre-Greek peoples of Sicily, the Sicans and the Elymians, may also have been pre-Indo-European. The status of the Etruscans is disputed; they are considered either Pre-Indo-European, or speakers of an Anatolian language. The term "Pre-Indo-European" is sometimes extended to refer to Asia Minor, Central Asia and India, in which case the Hurrians and Urartians, Dravidians may also be counted among them.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Pre-Indo-European peoples", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki