The article deals with topics concerning the events that happened 5000 years ago in Europe. The publication provides details on the migration of Yamnaya peoples, its long term consequences and presents current interdisciplinary research and the importance of genetics in the investigation of these events.
YAMNAYA – CORDED WARES – BELL BEAKERS,
OR HOW TO CONCEPTUALIZE EVENTS OF 5000
YEARS AGO THAT SHAPED MODERN EUROPE
Volker Heyd
The third millennium BC has been considered for decades as one of the most interesting epochs in European prehistory. With Yamnaya, Globular Amphorae, Corded Wares, Bell Beakers and then the Early Bronze Age we have something extraordinary in store; no cultures in the actual archaeological sense. Keywords such as super-regional distributions, ideologies, burial cultures, emblematic ceramics, and East and West may best describe the situation in a given briefness.
Of course, archaeological research had already noticed this particular finding situation a long time ago, describing the third millennium as the age of a great shakeup, of potential migrations and of immense cultural change. One only needs to be reminded of Marija Gimbutas’ Kurgan theory, Andrew Sherratt’s Secondary Products Revolution, Kurt Gerhardt’s ominous planoccipitaler Steilkopf of the Bell Beakers, or Edward Sangmeister’s Reflux Theory, all born out from the 1960s to the 1980s. Nevertheless, no one would have thought it possible that the changes would be as revolutionary as now recognized -- a true turning point on the way to modern Europe, as we otherwise only know it in connection with the first farmers of the Continent, the Roman Empire, the Migration Period, the 30-Years-War, or WW1.