: Harald Haarmann
: The Mystery of the Danube Civilisation The discovery of Europe's oldest civilisation
: marixverlag
: 9783843806466
: 1
: CHF 14.10
:
: Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Antike
: English
: 288
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Over the last few decades, archaeologists and cultural scientists have come to a better understanding of the extent of Neolithic civilisation on the Balkan peninsula. This Danube Civilisation, thriving between the 6th and 4th millennia BCE, was using a writing system long before the Mesopotamians and is remarkable for its accomplishments in craftsmanship, art and urban development. In this book, Harald Haarmann provides the first comprehensive insight into this enigmatic Old European culture, which is still largely unknown to the greater public. He describes the trade routes, settlements, mythology and writing system of this people, traces the changes resulting from the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, and shows how this first advanced civilisation in Europe influenced its successors.

Harald Haarmann (* 1946) is one of the world's best-known linguists; PhD in Bonn, Habilitation (post-doctoral qualification) in Trier. He has been Vice-President of the Institute of Archaeomythology (director of its European office in Finland) since 2003; author of more than 70 books in German and English, some of which have been translated into over a dozen languages. In addition to his study of the Danube Civilisation, he has produced remarkable insights into the roots of ancient Greek civilisation and the early history of Rome. His work has earned him the Prix logos (Paris, 1999), the Premio Jean Monnet (Genova, 1999) for essay writing, and the Plato Award (UK, 2006).

2.


IN SEARCH OF THE OLD EUROPEANS


People went back and forth across the land bridge. Phases of largescale migration cannot be proven, but there must have been a regular exchange of ideas and goods, for not only the material legacy, but also the mythology and religious beliefs of people on both sides of the land bridge were similar (Haarmann/Marler 2008: 34ff.). The leitmotifs of the cultural similarities were female statuettes made of clay and distinctive burial forms. Geographically, this cultural area stretches from Thessaly to the Peloponnese, Bulgaria, western Macedonia, Transylvania and other regions (Bachvarov 2003: 292f.). Who were the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who occupied the Black Sea region and the Aegean islands in the time before the Great Flood, and who also sailed their boats along coastal waters in that early period?

The genetic footprint


It was not until the 1990s, in the context of human genetic research, that a decisive breakthrough on this question was achieved (beginning with Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994, among others). The genetic structures of the populations in Europe and Western Asia exhibit five main components that are present in varying concentrations in the different regions. Each of these main components corresponds to a grouping of 95 individual genes, for which a combinatorial analysis reveals certain basic patterns, i.e. the main components. The geographic concentration of the main components can be depicted on maps. Among these, there is one map that is of particular interest for our study: it shows the geographical expansion of a genetic constellation that human geneticists call the “Mediterranean genotype” (Fig. 16).

It is immediately apparent that the populations for whom this genotype is typical are spread around the Aegean Sea and in a wide arc on the southern coast of the Black Sea. A high concentration of the Mediterranean genotype has been identified for Southeast Europe as well as for western Anatolia. These obvious similarities allow for only one conclusion: An ancient population has left its genetic footprint in the genotype of the population on both sides of the Aegean Sea and in the southern Black Sea region.

16The Mediterranean genotype (Cavalli-Sforza 1996: 63)

There has been much speculation about where these people came from. However, human geneticists have run into a dead end with their hypotheses. The interpretation of the Mediterranean genotype is a good example of how answering one question can give rise to another. In this case: Was the population around the Aegean in ancient times genetically homogeneous? – gives rise to the next question: Which ancient people can be linked to this genotype? However, this question cannot necessarily be answered by geneticists.

Cavalli-Sforza and the members of his team have argued that the people who represent the Mediterranean genotype were the Ancient Greeks. The formation of this genotype would therefore be related to the early history of Greek colonisation on the Ionian coast (today western Turkey) and in southern Italy. The first centuries of the 1st millennium BCE would have been the probable timeframe.

The geographical extent of the radian