The Barbarians - Peter Bogucki

A history of Europeans from the late Stone Age through to the end of the Roman period.  In the Roman stage, the "barbarians" refers largely to the Germanic and Celtic speaking groups outside the Roman Empire.  This book is essentially a reworking of the image of "the barbarian" as inherited from roman authors of antiquity.
The Barbarians were farming peoples living in small villages or settlements.  Farmers, not warriors really.  They operated complex trade networks with goods of all types moving great distances, both luxury goods and goods for manufacturing and metal work.  People also moved great distances, especially during the Bronze age, when there seems to have been a fair bit of cultural and linguistic unity across Europe, at least for some groups.
Bogucki also offers a more nuanced account of the relationship between Rome and the groups beyond its borders.  Thought there was some raiding and mayhem, the relationship by and large was one of trade and economic advantage to both sides.  The borders were porous both for traders and Germanic speaking mercenaries seeking employment.
The book also calls into question the movement of large groups of people (like the Visigoths) immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire in the west.  Apparently there is no archaeological evidence for a period of mayhem and cultural/artifact shift.  Maybe it was bands of warriors moving about looking for good places to set up as small independent kingdoms - opportunities for "protection rackets"  ie.  You feed me, house me, provide me with booze, and I'll protect you from others (and myself).
This lack of big shifts could also explain what I have read elsewhere ie. that the Dark Age wasn't really so dark.  It marked a continuation of Barbarian Iron Age culture, with small villages and towns, complex trade networks and a farming economy.  (Just the Roman thing disappeared:  certain luxury goods, and large towns - which Germanic tribes has never really been interested in.)

Overall, an interesting different take on an interesting, creative ( though illiterate) culture in an interesting era of change.

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.

1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed - Eric H. Cline

An interesting overview of the late Bronze age and the mysterious collapse of most of the powerful Bronze Age civilizations/states over a relatively short period of time - Cyprus, Minoans, Mycenae, Hittites, Mitanni.  Egypt struggled, but managed to hang on.   This book is essentially an overview of what is known about the last stages and final collapse of each of these civilizations.  At the time, they created a tightly woven set of interdependent centres, trading food and other essentials (especially tin and other metals used for the creation of weapons) as well as luxury goods for the elites.   They all used some form of writing for record-keeping, for letters and other communication both for government and for business - in fact, Akkadian was the Latin or English of the day.Within a hundred year period though, all of them collapsed, followed by a 300 to 400 year period of reorganization and renewal or establishment of new centres and cultures.

Cline also provides an overview of the various causes that have been considered by various academics.  His conclusion is that the collapse was caused by the interaction of several factors over time.  Earthquakes - the whole area was shaken by numerous earthquakes over a period of several decades, and "earthquake storm", which destroyed several key cities.  Climate change - around 1177 B.C. the whole Mediterranean basin seems to have entered a drier period, which would have lowered ground water and affected agriculture.  Internal revolts - in some places, the elites and power centres within cities seem to have been destroyed.  This may have been related to famine and economic hardship.  Economic disruption - as these centres had developed a highly interdependent economic trade system, disruptions in one part could have serious economic effects on other centres, especially the centres that relied largely on trade for their economy - leading to rebellions also.  Warfare - there is some sign of invasion and destruction of some major centres by marauding bands, perhaps pushed to migrate by drought or economic failure.  These sites are usually not resettled after the destruction.

After this period of collapse, writing systems seem to have fallen out of use, states became much smaller, and economic activity more local and more limited.  As the author points out, this is a pattern that repeats itself in history in every part of the world where large empires come and go.  Interesting to think of ourselves in this cycle...

Blood of the Celts - Jean Manco

A look at the origins of celtic languages and peoples.  A bit of a confusing narrative, I suppose because it is hard to pin anything down definitely in such remote periods.  The book does confirm the link between the bell beaker people/culture and the ancient celts.  Also their link with metal working, as you the the bell beaker culture jump from one locale to another, each locale a source of minerals for iron working in particular, rather than cover an entire large home area.  There does seem to be an original movement from the east, perhaps north of the Balkans to a homeland around Hallstat in southern Germany, but then the culture pops up all over Europe, even down into Italy at times.  There also seems to be some later movement from Spain back towards the original homeland.  Apart from that, it is hard to really get anything clearer from this book.
One surprising thing is that the genetic sequence of the European copper age population influx seems to originate around Lake Baikal in Siberia.  This genetic group is also related to North American native populations that seem to have spread across Beringia around the same time.

1177 The Year Civilization Collapsed - Eric H. Cline

An attempt to get to the bottom of what happened in the early 12th c BC, which saw the collapse of every current major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.  Cline begins with a thorough overview of the world of the late Bronze Age.  It is a fascinating picture, with every civilization built around a ruling political/religious elite that governed from a central palace temple complex.  Most of these political religious elites also ran the economy, both internally and external trade.   At least at the elite level, this was a very international, interconnected period, with lots of movement of both luxury goods and goods essential to the elites - such things as tin for weapon making, gold, as well as emergency food supplies to hand out to the populace in years of failed crops.  I picture the sailors of these ships from Crete, from Egypt, from Ugarit, from Greece sitting down for a few drinks in bars in the  big port towns of the time - that would have been really travelling!

Turns out the Sea People are a difficult group to pin down.  Their presence outside of the documented attacks on Egypt and probably Ugarit, is pretty difficult to determine.  Much of the destructions blamed on them seems to have been the result of earthquakes and local rebellions rather than warfare. It seems this area may have collapsed due to a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, prolonged droughts, climate shift - coupled with some external raiding, some migration pressures (perhaps caused by the natural disasters), some political upheaval, and a breakdown of a complex system of economic exchange.  The large political units  have evolved a complex system of interdependence and when that began to fray, it dragged most of the involved players down.  It may have been that the elites lost the wealth needed to maintain their position and either buy or enforce compliance from their subjects.

Like with the fall of the Roman Empire, the area seems to have slipped into a "Dark Age" - smaller, more local political units, loss of culture, building techniques and established art styles (and writing in the case of Mycenean Greece), falling off of trade and long-distance exchange, idealization of the preceding Golden Age.

It is so long ago, it may never be possible to determine the exact causes and sequence of events at that time.

Before the Dawn - Nicholas Wade

This book starts off well.  When he sticks to reporting science research, he presents some interesting current ideas.
- the original homo sapiens population before the spread out of Africa seems to have been about 5000 people living in East Africa near the Red Sea - most of the rest of Africa at that times seems to have been suffering an extreme drought
- the original group that left Africa may have been as small as 150 people
- they seem to have spread east first, along the coast and into India and South-east Asia - from India, some groups spread back west towards Turkey and ultimately Europe
- the original Homo Sapiens would have been dark-skinned as there is strong selection pressure in Africa to have dark pigmentation to protect from degradation of reproductive capability (due to overproduction of vitamin D?)
- based on genetic studies of the differences between body lice and head lice DNA, it can be theorized that humans first started wearing clothes about 10 000 years ago!

- the migration out of Africa would have started about 50 000 years ago - this is also roughly when then last brain mutation appeared in an area affecting speech and language - people where this area is damaged or underdeveloped have trouble both articulating speech and processing incoming messages

- African click languages seem to be the oldest languages in the world - speakers of click languages have the largest accumulated number of DNA mutations in the homo sapiens population, making them the group that would have split off first from the original homo sapiens genetic profile - this suggests click languages may be the closest to the original speech of homo sapiens

- genetically, all lines of homo sapiens are descended from one X chromosome male and one Y chromosome female!!!  Adam and Eve...

Unfortunately, when Wade gets past the earliest years of human development, he starts bringing in a lot of his own speculation and bias.  There is a significant drop off of reference to research and studies once he starts discussing Neanderthal  Homo Sapiens relations, early homo sapiens society and social relations, and intra- group dynamics.  You get the strong sense he is a staunch Republican... war, conflict, social hierarchy and quest for dominance as the natural state of man.
Boring reading - I will not be finishing the book.

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.

River of the Dead - Barbara Nadel

Another Barbara Nadel mystery set in Turkey.  While a lot of the book takes place in Istanbul as usual, a good part of the plot unfolds in the southeast of Turkey - Antep, Mardin and places in between.  The plot is centred on the drug transit trade through Turkey from points further east, and it's  a tight, convoluted plot as usual.  Better written than some of her earlier work.

This book is well-researched as usual, and brings up some interesting cultural elements peculiar to the south-east.  It highlights the complex cultural mix of Kurds, Turks, Suriani, Jews and Armenians that once existed there - mainly through observations about architecture and history - sounds like this area would be an interesting place to visit from that point of view.
There is also a glimpse into the clan and family structure that seems to dominate society there, with identifying tattoos for each clan.
Then there is this whole snake goddess cult thing called the Shameran, which apparently crosses ethnic and religious lines.  On Wikipedia, this cult is traced back to ancient Crete, where the earliest images of a goddess holding two snakes in her hand were found.   This suggests both an unusual cultural affinity and ancient historical continuity worth exploring further.

Al Jazeera means "the Island" and for some groups in the area, this is what they call the great Syrian Plain.  Another name for this area is "the ocean".

Empires and Barbarians: Migration Development and the Birth of Europe - Peter Heather

A very interesting topic, and the author is obviously an expert in his field.  Unfortunately, his writing style is impenetrable.  I find myself skipping down the page, running over sentences, looking for "the meat".  I keep muttering to myself, "Get to the point!"  Convoluted sentences, overly detailed digressions, very academic vocabulary and structures - unnecessary for the topic.  Too bad.

From the first chapter or so of the books, I came away with some important ideas:

1) the concept of wholesale tribal migration (men, women and children with their culture) has largely been supplanted in early history

2) if there was migration, it was probably of warriors who replaced existing elites in areas conquered, and then integrated with the local population in a two-way dance of mutual influence.  (this ties into a gender article I read recently - shortage of opportunity for males in most societies - warrior-adventurer as a solution to shortage of resources/women for a society's males) - this elite migration/integration concept is strongly supported by DNA studies in Asia Minor, where the population, though Turkish and central asian culturally, is basically genetically contiguous with Greece and the Balkans

3) cultures and people can mutate, change, develop without a change of population - innovative influence coming from outside

4) in prehistory and early history, the concept of culturo-linguistic (self-aware?) peoples/tribes/ethnic groups, is a projection of 19th and early 20th century european nationalism onto the past - if you examine the history of invading/migratory groups, you see shifting tribal/cultural identities, depending on circumstances, opportunities and political expediency - a useful tool for modern-day nationalistic politicians, but a complete fiction never-the-less

Too bad about the rest of the book.

The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond

This book is a very interesting read.  It looks at the great variety of human societies and how they deal with or conceive of some basic human activities.  The book is divided into areas of human endeavour and life.:  there are chapters looking at warfare and conflict resolution, child rearing, aging and the elderly, diet, dealing with strangers, danger and risk, languages, multilingualism and the disappearance of world languages.
Diamond frames his book as an attempt to see what is valuable in traditional societies and how we might benefit by adopting some of these elements in modern western society.  I don't see that though. For me, the most important or valuable element of the book is the sheer variety of ways of life, thinking and understanding that humans have developed over the millennia, in response to different environments, social conditions and simply just because.  It offers a huge shakeup to cultural  self-centredness and western-centric thinking.  The book underscores the sheer extent of possibility for us humans.
It offers background to understanding some of the cultural differences between different societies - for example the stronger family-focused element in Turkish society, which on the surface seems modern and western in many ways.  You could see it as a surviving element from an earlier culture where the state did not provide the kind of security and support that we are used to in western Europe and North America, and where family was the main source of security and safety when faced with economic or social difficulties.  Also, as a surviving element of village life when people's families remained close-by and provided a strong social network - true also for my mother and her generation (somehting which I observed but couldn't really be part of...)
His accounts of New Guinea are also in themselves very interesting.  It's hard to imagine how such a small space came to be inhabited by so many different cultures and languages (over 1000 distinct languages from different families and types) in such a density without somehow blending and losing their distinctness.  Reminds me a bit of the Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan.

Ancient Wine - P. E. McGovern

Not a particularly great read - too much arcane methodology discussion.

Some interesting facts, though:

- wine seems to have first appeared around 5500 BCE, which is remarkable; almost contemporaneous with the appearance of farming - wine and cheese, some of our earliest foods

- first records are in the Zagros mountains above the plains of Babylon - also along the highlands in Turkey above the Syrian plain and in the Caucasus - basically the edges of the fertile crescent where elevations created slightly cooler, wetter growing conditions

- the method of fermenting wine in clay containers buried in the ground is one of the earliest methods, and is still practised in Georgia

- flavoured wines were very common in early period - spices and other flavourings helped preserve the wine from turning to vinegar - retsina (or pine resin) is only one of the additives - frankincense myrrh, a selection of herbs and spices were also used - oaking wine is a very ancient practice; it is basically adding the flavour/chemical substance in oak to the wine by storing it in barrels, and served to preserve as well as mellow the wine by interacting with some of the chemicals in the wine

- Christianity is so deeply rooted in the preceding mythology and ancient culture of the middle east, not only in its Old Testament mythology and stories, but also in its cult of wine - wine has been an integral part of religious rites and offerings since its first appearance in the Middle East

- makes wine all the more fascinating and enjoyable...