New Books on Indo-European Origins
Two books that have come out recently about Indo-European migrations are Tracing the Indo-Europeans: New evidence from archaeology and historical linguistics by Olsen, Olander and Kristiansen, in 2019, and Jean Manco’s Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe in 2016. The former is all about Indo-Europeans, so can be forgiven for leaving out the pre-Indo-Europeans. But Manco’s book is remiss in leaving out this crucial part of the story.
I have already discussed how The Dawn of Everything provides abundant evidence for peaceful, egalitarian societies with large populations, and how rape and the suppression of women go hand in hand with the expansion of empires. The authors explain how the ideas of democracy that radically changed Europe during the Enlightenment came from Native Americans. They offer fascinating examples of how oppressive societies have been abandoned in favor of democratic ones, such as in Teotihuacan where pyramids were demolished to build palaces for everyone; every person lived in lavish dwellings![i] They also abolished human sacrifice at the same time. The authors believe that some of our ancestors carefully kept oppressive tendencies in check in order to create just societies. This should give us hope. Hierarchy can be reversed!
Another book on inequality that came out in 2022 is The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality by Oded Galor et al. With such a sweeping title, you’d think they would mention our egalitarian ancestors, and the massive role that the Indo-Europeans played in bringing inequality to the world. Nope. They don’t even mention the Indo-Europeans. They may have interesting things to say about inequality in the later world, but I don’t think the book speaks to the origins.
The Book Inequality: A Genetic History
And finally, I’ll discuss the book Inequality: A Genetic History, also from 2022, by Carles Lalueza-Fox, a geneticist who collaborates with well-known geneticist David Reich and with archaeologist Kristian Kristensen. These guys are the biggest voices in this discussion. The good news is that they’re combining evidence from genetics and archaeology to tell the story of the Indo-European invasions to the current generation that knows nothing of it, ever since the silencing of Marija Gimbutas. The bad news is that they’re leaving out the Old Europeans and focusing only on inequality.
For example, the book mentions a 2017 study in Nature that looks at archaeological evidence for inequality in many ancient cultures, assigning each culture a Gini coefficient: a ranking of how egalitarian they are. He does admit that hunter-gatherers had very low inequality numbers. But he then cites two examples that could be evidence for inequality. One is a 10,000 BCE burial of a woman from the Natufian culture with artifacts that seem to have a magical significance. He describes this as organized religion and hence an indicator of inequality.[ii] This betrays ignorance of the difference between a medicine woman in an indigenous culture who has earned her position through ability and training, and corrupt religious authorities in later institutionalized religions.
He then goes on to claim that the Gini coefficients of “ancient farming societies” are high. But the society he’s looking at is Babylon, well after the arrival of patriarchal Semites in the area. He fails to mention the pre-4000 BCE cultures. If you look at the data, the numbers are low before 4000 BCE (except in China, an area I know nothing about). Çatalhöyük is one of the highest of the Neolithic cultures of the Near East at 28, but the Linear Band Neolithic and Hornstaad-Hornle cultures show only 15 and 17.
After 4000 BCE, high numbers occur in areas after the arrival of the steppe people. One later Bronze Age culture with low inequality is BMIII, which stands for the Bactriana-Margiana complex. Despite the later date, they retain matrist characteristics such as fat female figurines, likely because they have no steppe DNA; they descended both from Anatolian farmers and from Neolithic Iranian farmers,[iii] who also made female figurines.[iv] Somehow the steppe nomads spared them.
The Gini chart shows that some societies in the Americas remained egalitarian well into the common era. Recall that the evidence is mounting that Bronze Age people traveled to the Americas and settled there; this controversial topic is the subject of my next book. It would make sense that hierarchy would have less of a foothold in the Americas if it arrived by boat. The most violent areas were the Mississippi valley and some Mexican cultures.[v] So it makes sense that some American cultures in the Gini study with high inequality were Cahokia in the Mississippi and the Mayan culture of Mayapan.[vi] (The influence of Bronze Age sailors on the Americas is the answer to Yuval Harari’s claim, in Sapiens, that the existence of patriarchy in the Americas is proof that it’s universal).
In any case … this Gini coefficient chart is a smoking gun that proves that egalitarian agricultural cultures existed, and that inequality shot up after the Indo-European invasions.
Inequality’s author Lalueza-Fox does admit that inequality only appears thousands of years after the advent of agriculture, proposing that the invention of plow oxen is to blame around 4000 BCE. But … this just happens to be the same time frame as the first wave of Indo-European invasions. Since he spends many chapters talking about the violence, inequality, and male dominance of the Indo-Europeans … isn’t it strange that he doesn’t consider the possibility that these traits arrived with them? He discusses the Varna burial as a remarkable example of this “emerging inequality.” But he doesn’t mention that Varna remains contain steppe DNA, as we will see in the Genetics chapter. Isn’t that significant? Wouldn’t this suggest that inequality didn’t “emerge,” but arrived with newcomers?
He does conclude, “Still, such findings are exceptional, and there is a general consensus that Neolithic societies were more egalitarian than later ones.” Since that is the case, why doesn’t he focus more on the egalitarian cultures, instead of stressing from page one that “ancient history was all about conquerors, dramatic quotes, bloody battles, and deaths?”[vii]
Laleuza-Fox mentions in his book, and he and David Reich both lament at length in a lecture,[viii] how painful it must have been for the local men of ancient Eurasia to have been prevented from passing on their genes by the Indo-European invaders. But neither of them speculates about what it was like for the women who must have had to raise the children of their rapists. Passing on one’s genes may leave a record for later geneticists, but it’s not what makes a good life. I, for one, would choose death over a lifetime of sex slavery. The tendency for some men (not all!) to see history from an exclusively male perspective is why new ideas enter a field once it opens to women.
Another example from Inequality is the ancient city of Jericho. Laleuza-Fox says that by 10,000 years ago it was already fortified with a defensive tower. He does mention that since there was no evidence for invasions back then, many believe the tower had a ritual rather than defensive function. But he goes on to say that since it would have taken so long to build, it was “obviously intended as an imposing demonstration of power and domination. These first farmers then must have already had some degree of social hierarchy.”[ix]
This claim reveals a bias to see dominance hierarchies. It’s pure speculation, but he presents it with certainty. He clearly has no inkling of the ancient indigenous mind. Thanks to my teacher Martín Prechtel, I know that indigenous societies donated enormous time and resources to ritual endeavors. Their societies revolved around cooperative spiritual functions. Domination wasn’t required. This is an example of how modern values get projected onto a much different ancient past. Fortunately, this assumption that creating large monuments must involve social hierarchy is being questioned more and more nowadays, as we will see in Chapter 10.
Another example he sites for potential inequality from the deep past is a Russian burial from 34,000 BCE, with fancy clothing decorated with many shell beads. To his credit, he does state that we can’t be sure if it’s a sign of status or not.[x] The lack of other, less-decorated skeletons from the site suggests it is not. Martín Prechtel taught us how to make these shell beads that were made by ancient peoples around the world as an offering to the divine. It’s time-consuming and difficult, but it’s not about human status. Academics’ lack of understanding of ancient mindsets is one reason they so often get things wrong.
One phrase he used more than once that indicates gaps in his knowledge about prehistory is “military advantage” when applied to the steppe people as compared to the Neolithic farmers. Given that the farmers had no weapons, no warriors, and no military, while the steppe nomads’ culture revolved around violent raiding … yeah, I’d say that constitutes an “advantage”. Sporadic episodes of violence during times of trauma with hunting tools cannot be compared to a permanent army with weapons that were created for the express purpose of killing people.
I hope these examples have given you some insight into how data can be misinterpreted in accordance with belief systems to distort the past.
[i] Ibid., 342.
[ii] Lalueza-Fox, Carles. Inequality: A Genetic History. The MIT Press, 2022, 47-8.
[iii] “Prehistory of Iran.” Wikipedia.
[iv] Kantor, Helene J. “Chogha Mish.” oi.uchicgo.edu, 29.
[v] DeMeo, Saharasia.
[vi] Kohler, Timothy A. et al. “Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than in North and Mesoamerica.” Nature, November 30, 2017.
[vii] Ibid, vi.
[viii] Lalueza-Fox, Carles and David Reich. “Carles Laleuza-Fox discusses Inequality: A Genetic History with David Reich. YouTube, uploaded by Harvard Bookstore, March 1, 2022.
[ix] Lalueza-Fox, 32.
[x] Lalueza-Fox, 12-3.