My European Family: the first 54,000 years - Karin Bojs

Set as a personal genealogy explored through a DNA history of Europe from the Neolithic period.  (The personal setting doesn't sit so well with the scientific basis, in my mind anyway.  Would have been better as a straight out popular science book.)
Brings up a number of interesting points about European history and also about archaeology as a discipline.
First, DNA evidence seems to indicate that farming was carried into the whole of Europe by immigrants from modern day Syria and Turkey ie.  the place where farming seems to have originated.  Early farmers have radically different DNA from the local hunters and gatherers in the period where farming first moved into areas in Europe.  Later, the groups seem to have mixed as the hunters moved into the farming communities.

Many people carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, so Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people mated in some way.  The fact that so many carry a small part of this DNA would indicate that the early mixed individuals had a better survival rate than those without the Neanderthal DNA.  Perhaps some adaptation to cold climates, as the Neanderthals had been living in this kind of environment for millennia.

Every living human being's mitochondrial DNA comes from a single female way back in history! Apparently, at some point we almost died out as a species?

There were several waves of immigration into Europe from Africa, but only two waves seemed to have been able to survive in the long run, the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon.

Europe's population was formed by essentially three waves of immigration - two from Africa, and a last one from Central Asia during the Iron Age.

DNA analysis has upset a lot of theories about social development and migration that have been developed over the years.  Many older archaeologists couldn't accept the validity of DNA-based information as it blew their pet theories and their careers out of the water.  So much for disinterested science.  Some also seem to have objected to the DNA-based conclusions on essentially racist grounds. (There is no such thing as 'disinterested' thinking....)

Worth reading for the nice summary of current DNA research in archaeology.

The Best of Writers and Company - Eleanor Wachtel

A selection of transcribed interviews from the CBC show.  A great source for new authors!

Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Ventures to the Vikings - Jean Manco

A look at population movements and migration through the records in ancient and modern genetic material.  This is a fascinating approach to ancient prehistory.  The detailed discussion of haploids, y-chromosomes etc. and be a bit confusing or hard to follow in detail, but the discussion of what this rather technical evidence shows is done in clear, easy to follow language.  There are all kinds of little tidbits:

- the Celts seem to be associated particularly with iron work, and seem to have spread in scattered clusters all over Europe, settling in areas with good resources for iron work and other metal work.

- the population of a settled region does not remain constant; population levels rise and fall significantly based partly on weather patterns and long-term climate fluctuations
- in this way, the Indo-europeans seem to have initially entered Europe at a time when population levels in eastern Europe were quite low - this brings into question the whole idea of the Indo-eurpoeans invading and destroying the Old Europe culture that was highly developed in eastern Europe before the I-E's arrival - there is some evidence for shrinking population in Old Europe in the period preceding the I-E's arrival.

- many things can affect climate change - the bursting of a huge glacial lake in North America and the outflow of huge quantities of cold water into the Atlantic sparked a noticeably climate shift in Europe that lasted for at least 100 years!

The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson

Full of interesting bits:

"Of about three thousand languages spoken today, seventy-eight have a written literature.  The rest exist in the mind and the mouth.  Language - man - is essentially oral."  p. 68

Homer can be seen as a remembering of the culture and life of the bronze age warriors.  This links him to the semi-pastoral tribes of the first Indo-Europeans who tamed the horse, first used wagons, and moved outwards as warrior bands from their traditional homeland to establish all the large european language groups of today.

It is an interesting read and personal engagement with Homer's work, especially the Odyssey.  Nicolson presents some interesting evaluations and personal reactions to the work.  A good introduction for actually reading the poems.



To find:
1) Milman Parry - important Homer scholar exploring pre-written storytelling tradition

2) Duncan Macdonald - storyteller from Hebrides, South Uist (The Man of the Habit - one story)

3) Homer - Odyssey - trans. Robert Fagles
    Homer - The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles

4) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry - Adam Parry

5) The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord

6) Indo-European Language and Culture:  An Introduction - Benjamin W. Anthony

7) The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia - Philip L. Kohl

8) Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World - J.P. Mallory
     and D.Q. Adams

9) Symbols and Warriors:  Images of the European Bronze Age - Richard J. Harrison

10) The Rise of Bronze Age Society - Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson

11) The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard

12) European Societies in the Bronze Age - Anthony F. Harding

The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe - Marija Gimbutas

Subtitled "Myths and Cult Images"

This is an overview of ceramic decoration and various cult figures produced in pre Indo-european Europe in the late Neolothic period.  The artifacts are arranged by ritual functions, goddess and god myths or religious roles.

The decorative art work on the ceramics is spectacular.

I find it an interesting book for several reasons:

1)  The image Gimbutas creates of  a pre Indo-european culture and society built on very different grounds from the social structures and arts of the warrior culture of the Indo-european newcomers.

2)  The fact that some of the mythology, gods and goddesses and totemic animals survive even into Greek culture, especially in their drama - animal characters, performance with masks.  Greek culture than seems to occupy an intermediary position between this very ancient world and the european culture that grew out the the renaissance rediscovery of the Ancient Greeks.

3)  It is interesting to see mythical or symbolic or totemic thinking behind some of the images and cult figures from that time period.  It is striking how grounded in daily experience of the world this type of thinking is - so different from rational, linear, causal thinking.  Almost a "sideways" kind of thinking.  The purpose of this kind of thinking doesn't seem to be power and control so much as recognition of and participation in larger cycles or forces.
At first it seemed to me that we have largely lost this way of thinking but in fact it has just changed realms - from religion and the big unfolding of life, to consumerism.  Our myths are lifestyle myths; our cult priests and priestesses are celebrities, and our totemic figures and symbolic decorations are our purchases that allow us to identify with the myth, partake of it in some small way.  (Interesting how even such  longstanding human basic psychological process or structure can be coopted by the consumer society and the drive for profit...)

Gimbutas also has another book on this period that focuses on fleshing out more fully the life, religion and society of these Old Europe peoples.