New map of early to middle Neolithic Europe (5000-4500 BCE)

Maciamo

Maciamo

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I had not made any new archaeological maps for 6 years. Yet there are still periods that weren't covered, including that particularly interesting one that saw the emergence of the Khvalynsk culture, which may well have been the first PIE culture in the Steppe, before Sredny Stog and Yamna. That same period see the spread of the Megalithic cultures from Portugal along the Atlantic coast to Brittany, the Cardial Pottery moving more inland in France and Spain, the LBK crossing the Rhine to colonise Belgium and northern France with the RRBP and VSG cultures, the emergence of the Lengyel and Cucuteni cultures, and the beginning of the Copper Age in the Starčevo culture and in the Near East. A very exciting period of prehistory indeed.

early_middle_neolithic_map.png
 
Nice map Maciamo, regarding the Ertebølle culture, you can make the region wider.
Wikipedia dutch:
"Omdat de cultuur sterk overeenkomt met de Ellerbekcultuur van Sleeswijk-Holstein, wordt ook de naam Ertebølle-Ellerbekcultuur of Ellerbek-Ertebøllecultuur wel gebruikt. De Ellerbekcultuur is genoemd naar een vindplaats aan de rand van Kiel. De Swifterbantcultuur maakt ook deel uit van het cultuurcomplex. Hiervan gaan de eerste vondsten terug tot 5600 v.Chr. en dan is deze nog niet van de Ertebøllecultuur te onderscheiden."
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ertebøllecultuur#cite_note-1
Wikipedia Engl.
"In the 1960s and 1970s another closely related culture was found in the (now dry) Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands, near the village Swifterbant and the former island of Urk. Named the Swifterbant culture (5300 – 3400 BC) they show a transition from hunter-gatherer to both animal husbandry, primarily cows and pigs, and cultivation of barley and emmer wheat.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ertebølle_culture
And on a German site:
" Wie war es nun zeitgleich in Norddeutschland und Dänemark?


Trotz viel zitierten - und deshalb hohe Erwartungen weckenden -, ausführlichen, 400-Seiten starken archäologischen, vergleichenden Überblicks-Untersuchungen (7) ist die Entstehung der Trichterbecherkultur im westlichen Ostseeraum um 4.100 v. Ztr. noch vergleichsweise wenig gut geklärt (vgl. auch 8 - 12). Versuchen wir dennoch, die wesentlichen Ergebnisse der hier angesprochenen, mühevoll erarbeiteten Untersuchung von Lutz Klassen aus dem Jahr 2004 zusammenzustellen. Zunächst schreibt er zur Vorgängerkultur, jener Ertebølle-Kultur von weit entwickelten und halbseßhaften Fischern und Jägern im Ostseeraum (7, S. 347):
Festzustellen ist eine starke Einbindung der Ertebølle-Kultur in ein weiträumiges mesolithisches Kontaktnetz. (...) So dürfte die Einführung der Keramik, einige Elemente der Grabsitten sowie die Elchgeweihhämmer auf Einflüsse aus dem ostbaltisch-nordrussischen Mesolithikum zurückzuführen sein. Besonders stark ist jedoch der Kontakt mit dem Mesolithikum der Swifterbant-Kultur, auf den die T-förmige Hirschgeweihaxt, die Schulterblätter mit Ausschnitten, Entwicklungstendenzen in der Flintindustrie sowie einige Elemente der Grabkultur zurückgehen dürften. Die gleichen Kontaktmechanismen sind für die Vermittlung der ersten Haustierhaltung und des ersten Getreideanbaus in die ältere norddeutsche Ertebølle-Kultur verantwortlich zu machen.
Spielten die Swifterbant- und die Rössner Kultur in den heutigen Niederlanden Schlüsselrollen?


Die Swifterbant-Kultur lag in den heutigen Niederlanden (5.300 bis 3.400 v. Ztr.) und zu ihr heißt es auf Wikipedia (engl.):
The oldest finds related to this culture, dated to circa 5600 BC, cannot be distinguished from the Ertebølle culture.
Sie gehörte also zu Anfang zur Ertebølle-Kultur und ist erst später eigene Wege gegangen. Die Rössener Kultur (4.500 bis 4.300 v. Ztr.), die mit etwas "plumperen" (trapezoidförmigen) Langhäusern die "kultivierteren", streng rechteckigen Grundriß-Formen der Langhäuser der Bandkeramik nach deren Untergang weiträumig im norddeutschen Raum fortgesetzt hat, scheint, was schon immer nahegelegen hatte, im Randgebiet der Swifterbant-Kultur und auch im Austausch mit ihr, sowie mit der untergehenden Linearbandkeramik entstanden zu sein - vielleicht sogar als Abspaltung von der Swifterbant-Kultur:
Contact between Swifterbant and Rössen expressed itself by some hybrid early Swifterbant pots in Anvers (Doel) and hybrid Rössen pottery Hamburg-Boberg.
heißt es auf Wikipedia. Und weiter heißt es dort über die zweihundert Jahre später einsetzende Vollneolithisierung der Swifterbant-Kultur selbst:
The agrarian transformation of the prehistoric community was an exclusively indigenous process (...). This view has been supported by the actual discovery of an agricultural field in Swifterbant dated 4300–4000 BC. Animal sacrifices found in the bogs of Drenthe are attributed to Swifterbant and suggest a religious role for both wild and domesticated bovines.
Das Verbreitungsgebiet der Swifterbant-Kultur und der frühesten Rössener Kultur wird nicht größer gewesen sein als jenes Gebiet am Plattensee, an dem sich 1500 Jahre zuvor die Ethnogenese des heute genetisch weitgehend ausgestorbenen bandkeramischen Volkes vollzogen hat. Und von wem sind die Bandkeramiker ersetzt worden? In Norddeutschland vor allem von der Rössener Kultur."
http://studgendeutsch.blogspot.nl/2011/08/4100-v-ztr-tertiare-neolithisierung-im.html
 
You are right. I forgot the Swifterbant culture. I have now added it, and also the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures in Norway and Sweden.
 
Goga, the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criș culture is an umbrella term that includes many other archeological cultures, some overlapping with one another. It also includes the Turdaș-Vinča culture.

We should also not forget that archaeological cultures are modern inventions of archaeologists. There is no way people of a wide ranging culture like LBK or Cardium Pottery knew that they were part of a unified culture sharing similar pottery, lifestyle, etc. Back in the Neolithic, there were no maps, no roads, no horses, no governments, and most people only know their village/tribe and the few neighbouring ones. Mesolithic people were more mobile and might have roamed a bit. But Neolithic ones were sedentary. So we should never confuse an archaeological culture with a country or even a Bronze/Iron Age civilisation with a monarch and a government. Archaeologists from different countries or with different agendas or theories will define archaeological finds differently. Genetically we see that there is not much point differentiating all those Balkanic and Danubian Neolithic cultures from a same period. There may be small variations in pottery styles, but there were surely similar variations, if not bigger ones, in wide-ranging cultures like the Cardium Pottery, which is defined as a single culture. It's purely arbitrary. That's why I prefer to lump similar cultures together.

The colours on the map also reflect (as much as possible using only one colour) the Y-haplogroup compositions and carry the shade of the dominant haplogroup, with nuances in colours brought by minor lineages. I am of course always using the same colours for top-level haplogroups on Eupedia. Starcevo is strongly G2a, so grey. LBK has more I2, so blue-grey. Megalithic cultures have much more I2, so they are essentially blue, with a grey tint. Cardium Pottery is G2a, but with some E1b1b (light brown), which makes the mix more beige. Khvalynsk is essentially a R1a-R1b fusion, so orange. The Chalcolithic Near East has lots of haplogroups, but I think it represents the expansion of J1 and J2 from the Caucasus and Zagros into G2, H2 and E1b1b territory, so we get a mix a green, grey and light brown.
 
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I do thank you for posting but I gotta wonder. The Kunda Culture took up much of European Russia and the culture's land appears to have shrunk till the Narva Culture succeed the Kunda Culture in the Baltic States. What happened to the Kunda Culture to have caused their land to shrink?
 
Twilight said:
I do thank you for posting but I gotta wonder. The Kunda Culture took up much of European Russia and the culture's land appears to have shrunk till the Narva Culture succeed the Kunda Culture in the Baltic States. What happened to the Kunda Culture to have caused their land to shrink?
Click to expand...


It's because of the arrival of N1c Uralic tribes from Siberia with the Kama culture. I will add them to the map.
 
Maciamo said:
It's because of the arrival of N1c Uralic tribes from Siberia with the Kama culture. I will add them to the map.
Click to expand...

N1c and Uralic language spread in the late bronze age and early iron age, I have posted the scientific proof for this several times but you choose to ignore it.
 
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