Who’s a Kurgan?
Published: 12/24/2003
"I looked back and saw the great black mass of the horde swarming
like locusts over the land, filling the sky with the clamor of their
kettledrums."
The Sowers of the
Thunder, Robert E. Howard
So far in the Anthropogene, I've
dealt with cultures that have been dealt catastrophic blows by extreme and
abrupt environmental changes, but with the Kurgans we have a people(s) who
are suddenly presented with opportunities to master the environment in
ways not previously possible. So in the tradition of James Burke's
"Connections," let's look at how a series of technological innovations
turned the steppes of Eurasia into a
cauldron of burgeoning warrior cultures.
Trypilia, the forgotten cousin of
the forerunner civilizations of Sumeria, Kemet (Egypt,) and Sarasvati (Harappan) stopped
at the edge of the Dneiper River. To the east stretched the
Eurasian steppes, a harsh and unforgiving landscape where agrarian
cultures cannot exist.
Human subsistence would have been limited to small hunter
forager groups with very low population densities. These small groups
would have been about 25-30 people at the largest, completely dependent on
migratory animals and a capricious environment.
Starting in the fifth millennia BC, these hunter forager
groups began to be replaced by a people(s) who buried their dead in
pit-graves or barrows, and it is because of this mortuary practice they
are called the Kurgans (from the Slavic.) According to the cult movie
Highlander (1985) the Kurgans were "an ancient people from the steppes of
Russia. For amusement, they'd
toss children in pits with hungry dogs to fight for meat."
If that isn't a bad enough reputation to live down, a quick
scan of the internet shows there is a modern feminist bias against the
Kurgans. They are cast as the villains who destroyed the ancient world of
the Great Goddess - murderous barbarians who come storming out of the
steppes towards the end of the third millenium
BC and slaughtered the innocent feminist agrarians of Old Europe.
The Kurgans were also known as the Aryans. Thanks to a
certain Austrian corporal, calling the Kurgans by that name will causes
all sorts of problems in these politically correct days ( I also don't want this site getting linked to white
supremacist groups so that name is an issue), so they are either the
Kurgans or the "proto Indo-Europeans," a name that becomes even more
awkward when used as an acronym by some; the PIE culture.
Where did they come from? The conventional wisdom is that
somehow the original hunter forager groups somehow changed over time to
become the pastoral tribes and proto-nations that would displace the
agrarian Trypilians of the Ukraine
and the Vinca of the Balkans. That is highly
unlikely based on the evidence of archaeology and linguistics. Instead the
Kurgans came in migratory waves up the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea
into present-day Kazakhstan from the Kurdistan/Iranian
region of the Middle East. If you're
wondering how Caucasians made it to Europe, here's the beginning of the journey though
we cannot be absolute sure. This is merely a best guess.
For these disparate tribes to become the Iranians (Aryans),
Celts, Germans, Slavs and Baltics of later days
would require three things; domestication of the horse, the invention of
the wheel, and metallurgy.
David W. Anthony of Hartwick College is convinced that humans first rode
horses about 6,000 years ago in the northern steppes of
Kazakhstan. As he puts it,
"Horseback riding was the first significant innovation in human land
transport, preceding the invention of the wheel by approximately 500
years."
The skull of a stallion unearthed at Dereivka in the Ukraine shows bit wear, based on lab
experiments done by Brown and Telegin, it was
concluded that the amount of wear would have required at least 300 hours
of riding. The skull is dated to around 4000 BC.
Others have argued that early domesticated horses were too
small to be ridden, measuring 12.2 to 14.2 hands at the shoulder ( little
more than 4 feet) - but I think that neglects one important fact. The
humans who took up horseback riding weren't very tall either. Women may
have been the first beneficiaries of such a discovery based on their
smaller size and here we see the genesis of the Amazons. Not all the
Kurgan tribes would have been horseback
riders, the Romans leave accounts of the Celtic and Germanic migrations
being done on foot - the change in diet had made them into physical giants
compared to the agrarian Romans. Horseback riding also made it possible
for larger population densities to spread effectively into the vastness of
Eurasia.
Kurgan horse-herders like
the later Scythians, rode geldings only, their main herds being kept wild
under stallions, the mares were hobbled near the settlements and milked
regularly based on the accounts we have.
In the Southern Ural Mountains, one Kurgan culture, the
Sintashta (who along with the Srubnaya would later become known as the Aryans who
invade Iran,
Pakistan and India.) may have
taken the next step. Again their grave mounds provide the clue. The Sintashta nobility are interred along with their
chariots. The wheel has been discovered.
The final technological advance is again seen among the
Sintashta. Metal production of
copper for tools and weaponry have been discovered. The knowledge
must have come from the Caucasus region
because it was unknown to the Trypilians and
Vinca of Eastern Europe.
Characteristics that become prevalent among the Kurgan are these;
They had become pastoral and mobile, using domesticated horses and cattle
for meat, milk and transportation. Oxen would be used to pull two or four
wheeled wagons to move their family and belongings from one locale to
another.
They worshipped the male Thunder God above all others. We
remember the dyaus pater as Zeus, Jove, Thor, and Perun, these are some of his names left in the linguistic
wake of the Kurgans. (Odin or Wotan came later
and may have been an actual person - Freya was
the Earth Mother and borrowed from the conquered races.)
The burial sites had become more elaborate. The later
Scythian and Cimmerian burial mounds are immense in size and scope. The
Tokharians of the Altai will erect clay pyramids
in China that still stand, rivalling their Egyptian counterparts. The use of red
ochre for burials is revived or continued by them, (see news for this week
on that meme.)
A caste system had arisen that will distinguish them. A warrior nobility, priests, and the commoners drawn
from the surviving remnants of the agrarian cultures they come to
dominate, and who tend the fields for the new overlords.
For when the Kurgans do settle down they build massive hill
forts to to consolidate their rule. At Kurgan
sites at Miklajlovka, Skelja-Kamenolomnja and Liventsovka along the banks of the Dnieper and Don rivers are
the prototypical megalithic fortifications that later are duplicated in
the Greek, Illyrian, Celtic and Germanic landscapes. These hill forts are
built on a scale that is now known as Cyclopean (for the ancient Greeks
were convinced that only giants could have built these ramparts!)
The evolution of Indo-European languages is beyond my
ability and patience to trace, but on the subject of hill forts it is
worth noting that the English words hill, fort, berg and burgh all derive
from the Proto-Indo-European word bhergh. ie, translation high. Here we
see the concept of High Lords, and High Kings developing. They ruled from
on high.
The Kurgans were fond of gold, panned from the rivers of the
Caucasus. Figurines of lions, stags,
horses and wild bison, the aurochs, were a popular motif of their
craftsmen. Rich treasure troves of gold, silver and precious gems have
been found (or plundered) in the burial mounds.
If lions sound incongruous for a people of the Eurasian
steppes, we know from the Greek chroniclers that the range of the Asiatic
lion (panthera leo
persica) was far greater then, and the lions
would come down from the mountains of Asia
Minor to prey on livestock. The warriors must have gone out on
great hunts to prove their bravery and we hear of one tale of Herakles and the Nemean
Lion. Even more fearsome must have been the wild aurochs.
One strange and still not proven account of the Kurgans
comes from the Russian naturalist P.S. Pallas of the hunts for the large
land reptile called the Coluber Jaculator lizard which he wrote "is not venomous, is
often six feet long, it moves about with erect head and breast, and when
pursued defends itself by darting against the horse and his rider. There
are likewise two other species of reptiles, the Berus and the Halys, both of
a poisonous nature." - from "The Southern Provinces of the Russian
Empire", 1812
Between 3000 and 2000 BC, the Kurgans begin the first of the
many migrations out of Asia that will plague the peoples of Western Europe for millenia.
Are the migrations of the Kurgan peoples in response to an environmental
catastrophe - similar to what Slavs and Avars
faced in the fifth century AD? Or do they simple outgrow the Eurasian
steppes. There can be no certainty on the matter. In time they will
establish their nations, ideals and languages throughout Europe.
To the people they overrrun, they
are the catastrophe.
last revised: December 24,
2003
