Noah's Ark ran aground on Mount Ararat. Noah himself, his sons, who were Ham, Shem and Japheth, and their wives disembarked to repopulate the world.
Noah planted wine, drank it and became so intoxicated that he fell asleep, naked on his bed. By mistake, his youngest son, Ham, saw his father's genitals, which was a great sin. For this, Ham's son, Canaan, and all his descendants were condemned to be "the lowest slave to his brothers". Noah's other two sons, Shem and Japheth, were, on the other hand, blessed, and Japheth was further promised a great expansion of his territory and the right to rest in Shem's tent, where both brothers were to be served by the descendants of Canaan.
The names of the grandsons clearly represent the peoples of the time, and therefore it has been speculated that Shem's descendants are the Semites, including the Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians. Ham's descendants are the Africans, including the Egyptians, Libyans, Canaanites, and Sudanese. Japheth's descendants are the Indo-Europeans, including the Lydians, Persians, Armenians, Greeks of the northern ocean, and the Indo-Europeans of the northern steppe.
1. Domestication of the horse
This graph is a manipulation of the Wikipedia file Holocene temperature. It shows eight different reconstructions of Holocene temperature. The thick black line is an average of these. Time progresses from left to right.
On this curve, the Mesolithic is shown to be only about one degree warmer than the present, but most sources mention that the Scandinavian Mesolithic was at least 2-3℃ warmer than the present. This need not be mutually exclusive, because the curve reconstructs the temperature of the entire Earth, and at higher latitudes the temperature variations have been greater than around the equator.
There are different opinions about when the Holocene Optimum was, but there was clearly a fairly warm period that lasted 4-6 thousand years.
As temperatures fell around 2,500 BC, rainfall gradually decreased on the Eurasian steppe, the grass turned yellow, and the deserts spread. One by one, many of the Indo-European tribes of the plain migrated from the center of the world to its edges, such as India, Persia, the Greek islands and coasts, Scandinavia, and so on.
Yamnaya culture, Khvalynsk and Botai. The Yamnaya people of southern Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are the probable proto-Indo-Europeans and thus the ancestors of Europeans and many other peoples. Yamnaya is the English translation of the Russian Yamnaya, which is a derivative of jama "burial pit", which describes the chambers of the burial mounds. The Yamnaya culture flourished from about 3,600 to 2,200 BC. Photo Google maps.
It is certainly and clearly proven that during the Holocene Optimum, the monsoon winds were able to bring rain into the Sahara, which desert was then a kind of savannah, as we know it today from East Africa. Logically, such a climate must have prevailed all over the Earth, and monsoon winds must have been strong enough to bring rain to the Eurasian continent, so that the steppe must have been much greener and more lush and the deserts less barren than they are today.
Yamnaya burial mound in southern Ukraine called a kurgan. Photo Iwona Dembicz, Ivan I. Moysiyenko, Anastasia Shaposhnikova, and more Wikipedia.
It was Indo-Europeans, who were the first to domesticate the horse. It is assumed by many that this happened in northern Kazakhstan or southern Russia. Then, with historically furious speed, they populated the steppe from the Hungarian Pusta to Inner Mongolia, probably during of a few hundred years.
Yamnaya cart reconstructed from parts found in a kurgan from around 3,000 BC. The massive wheels are reminiscent of wheels found in Denmark from the Neolithic Age in Kideris Mose near Herning from around 2,700 BC. One can think that it must have been hard work for oxen or horses to pull such a cart over sticks and stones across the virgin steppe. Photo Natalia Shishlina et al. Research Gate.
The Yamnaya people, who lived north of the Caspian Sea, are the most likely candidate for being the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
The earliest archaeological finds of the Yamnaya culture date from 4,500 BC and were made in an area called Khvalynsk. In the following millennium, they spread throughout the area north of the Caspian Sea, which includes northern Kazakhstan, southern Russia and Ukraine.
In the region around Khvalynsk, horses have been found as sacrifices in human graves along with cattle and sheep. No wild animals, such as deer, were included in these burials, suggesting that the horse was a domesticated animal, which suggests riding. This is supported by the fact that some Yamnaya skeletons show specific changes in their bone morphology, which may have been caused by prolonged riding. Horse skulls have been found with wear marks on their molars, indicating that they have had a bridle in their mouth for a long time.
Yamnaya stone man. Kernosovsky stele, 3rd millennium BC. Photo Dnipro Historical Museum. User: Narada Lefvfm. Wikipedia
Horses are also a common motif in decorative carvings on bones found in this area.
The Yamnaya used four-wheeled carts, probably pulled by oxen.
Yamnaya burial mounds, called kurgans, can be found all over the Eurasian steppe. Although many have been plowed over over time, it is estimated that there are 150,000 in Ukraine alone. The largest can be up to 15 m. high with a diameter of 100 m.
Blacksmiths and other craftsmen had a special status in Yamnaya society, and metal objects are found in large quantities in noble graves.
At a site called Botai, in northern Kazakhstan east of the Ural Mountains, archaeologists have found clear evidence of horse milking, pens, and harnessing from 3,500 BC.
At Botai, there were no bones from cattle or sheep. The only domestic animals they had besides horses were dogs. In Botai settlements, garbage heaps have been found containing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of gnawed animal bones, of which 65% to 99% are from horses. It seems unlikely that they could hunt all these horses on the open steppe without being able to ride themselves.
2. The Indo-Europeans populated the Eurasian steppe.
When the Europeans arrived in America, the prairie was largely deserted. It was basically a semi-desert, and no one could find food and survive there for long. The Indians lived mainly in the forests and on the border between forest and prairie.
The Indo-European expansion eastward across the Eurasian steppe 3,000 to 1,000 BC. The Afanasievo, Andronova, and Tocharian cultures all bear striking resemblance to the Indo-European Yamnaya culture north of the Caspian Sea that existed from 4,000 BC.
However, the Indians got hold of some horses that had been released by the Spanish. They enabled them to live on the prairie. And then suddenly things took off. Within a hundred years, a rich Prairie Indian culture grew up on the prairie. Many different tribes cultivated their own traditional rituals and customs. By historical standards, this had been created with lightning speed.
This must also have happened on the Eurasian steppe. The domestication of the horse made it possible to conquer the largely uninhabited steppe in a very short time by historical standards.
For several thousand years, the numerous Indo-European tribes had the steppe to themselves, although they were probably fully occupied with winning honors by warring with each other, as is the custom of Indo-Europeans.
They had no external enemies in the form of powerful coalitions or empires that claimed their territory, there was nothing that could motivate them to seek together in larger associations. Therefore, we must believe that the Indo-Europeans on the steppe were organized into dozens - perhaps hundreds - of small kingdoms, each of which jealously guarded its honor and territory, much as the Indians on the American prairie did.
Afanasievo faces recreated from the shape of skulls found in their graves. By Solodovnikov, Nechvaloda on X.
The first finds from the Afanasievo culture were found in the Minusik Basin in Siberia on the upper reaches of the Yenisei River. Since then, Afanasievo burial sites have been found in Dzungaria north of the Altai Mountains and in western Mongolia. The Afanasievo culture of Central Asia flourished from about 3,200 to 500 BC.
The Afanasievo people buried their dead in similar burial mounds to the Yamnaya people north of the Caspian Sea. The dead were often buried sprinkled with ochre lying on their backs in a wheel-legged position, perhaps symbolizing their life on horseback, as the Yamnaya people also did. Their pottery was of a similar type.
Russian anthropologists have repeatedly characterized them as Europoid types.
The Andronovo culture east of the Caspian Sea around the now-dried Aral Sea covered a very large area. Russian archaeologists have pointed out cultural variations within the area, indicating several different peoples, all of whom can be characterized as related to the Yamnaya and Afanasievo to the west and east. Their pottery was of a similar type. They buried their dead under flat ground sprinkled with ochre, as the early Yamnaya culture did. The deceased can be characterized as Europoid types.
The Andronovo cultures flourished from early 2,000 BC until the Bronze Age, when they were succeeded by such Indo-European peoples as the Alans, Sakas, Massagetes, and Sarmatians.
Reconstruction of the Andronovo timber burial in the "Lisakovsk Museum of History and Culture of the Upper Tobol River Area". Photo Woody Mcgehee.
The Tocharian language is known from the Dunhuang documents. It is an Indo-European language, said to be most similar to Scandinavian and Irish.
The Dunhuang documents were discovered and preserved by Wang Yuanlu and explored by Aruel Stein and Paul Pelliot.
Representatives of an Indo-European people, called Yuezhi, Yuti or Juti by the Chinese, who are believed to have spoken the Tocharian language found in the Dunhuang documents, arrived at the Shang dynasty court in the era of King Tang around 1,000 BC, and they also appear in a list of tribute bearers from Beidi, meaning "the northern natives" in the Yi Zhoushu, Lost Book of Zhou, from .400 to .300 BC during the Zhou dynasty.
3. Indo-European expansion.
Around 2500 BC, in the latter half of the Scandinavian Neolithic, a significant drop in temperature occurred. On the steppe, the climate became drier because with the lower temperature, the monsoon winds no longer had the energy to bring as much rain over the Eurasian continent. With a delay of a few hundred years, this triggered the first wave of migrations from the steppe towards the edges of the continent, closer to the sea.
The Indo-European expansion. Photo Arminius66.
The Anatolians appeared in Asia Minor first, attested by the clay tablets of Assyrian merchants, who in 1800 BC give names of their Anatolian customers, which are clearly Indo-European. The Hittites 1650-1200 BC have left thousands of clay tablets attesting to their indo-european origin. They were followed by the Luwians, Lydians, Phrygians, Carians, who spoke, or at least wrote, similar languages.
There is a tradition of blaming the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization around 1800 BC on attacks by the Indo-Aryans.
It is believed that the Greek Dorians and Ionians also arrived in the Aegean region around 1800 BC.
In Scandinavia, the Bronze Age people appeared around 1700 BC with an advanced bronze casting technology, despite the absence of copper and tin in Scandinavia. They have left no evidence of their language, but they built thousands of burial mounds, which are suspiciously similar to the Yamnaya kurgans.
A new drop in temperature brought the Armenians to Asia Minor perhaps around 1200 BC.
There can be no doubt that the Italian peninsula became Indo-European between 3000 and 800 BC, and thus became non-Indo-European languages such as Etruscan, Ligurian, Raetian and Osco-Umbrian displaced.
4. The Migration Period.
Around .400 - .500 BC, another drop in global temperature occurred, causing the steppe to become even more yellow and dry, the lakes to dry up, and the deserts of Eurasia to spread. Many tribes and peoples left the center of the world and moved towards the edges of the world, closer to the sea, where rainfall is generally more abundant.
Refugees from the steppe sought the Chinese Empire in the east and the Roman Empire in the west.
The British meteorologist "grand old man", H. H. Lamb, was one of the first to link the world's climate to historical events. He writes in his "Climate History and the Modern World": "For centuries, from about 150 BC to 300 AD or a few decades later, camel caravans used the Great Silk Road through Asia to trade luxury goods from China. But from the fourth century AD, as we know from changes in the water level of the Caspian Sea and studies of irregularities in rivers, lakes and abandoned cities in Sinkiang and Central Asia, droughts developed to such an extent that they stopped traffic on this route. Other severe stages of this drought occurred between 300 AD and 800 AD and especially around these dates, as can be seen from the ancient coastlines of the interior and ancient port constructions, which indicate a very low water level in the Caspian Sea around these times.".
King Alaric and his Visigoths sack Rome - 410 AD. Old drawing of unknown origin.
The Huns, who came from the interior of Asia, first attacked the Alans in 375 AD and then the Gothic settlers on the steppe in southern Ukraine, driving some of them into the Roman Empire. Here they became an army of wandering mercenaries, who conquered and plundered the city of Rome and after some time took possession of Spain. This led to the Franks, a confederation of Germanic tribes east of the Rhine, crossing this river and conquering Gaul, which later came to be called France. Burgundians, Lombards, Goths, Vandals and Suevi were inspired to leave their homes in the North to seek richer and warmer regions in the Roman Empire. Angles, Saxons and Jutes conquered Roman Britain, which later came to be called England.
On the eastern steppe the situation seems to have been even worse. Around 300 AD China had problems with refugees from the steppe. The "Five Hu" peoples, Xiong Nu, Xianbei, Di, Qiang and Jie, sought refuge in the empire behind the Great Wall. When the mandarins ordered them to return to their homeland, they responded with force of arms and established their own states on Chinese territory.
"Hu" describes people with European appearance, which means large noses, prominent eyebrow arches, beards, etc. Not all "Hu" were Indo-Europeans and we have no absolute knowledge of who were. But we can guess that the Xiong Nu were the ancestors of the Turks, and the Xianbei were almost certainly Indo-Europeans. The Russian explorer Przewalski met the Qiang in Sichuan in 1872, and they were not Indo-Europeans. We know nothing about the Di and Jie, even fairly certain.
Nomadic states in China around 400 AD
The Kushan monk, Zhu Fahu, of Dun-Huang translated the "Tahagataguhya-sutra" from Sanskrit into Chinese in 280 AD. Here he translated the Sanskrit word, "Huna", as "Xiong-Nu". He did so again in 308 AD when translating the "Lalivavistara". Indian sources also referred to the Xiong-Nu as "Huna".
The Chinese called them Xiong-Nu. But it may be that the Xiong-Nu became known in Europe by their real name, which they called themselves, namely "Hun" or "Huna".
The invasion from the steppe initiated the period in Chinese history known as the "Sixteen Kingdoms", which lasted from 300 to 400 AD.
In the same way as the European migrants admired the Roman Empire and the Emperor, so the Chinese migrants admired the Empire and Chinese culture. They named their states after famous historical dynasties, the Han Kingdom, the Qin Kingdom, the Xia Kingdom, and so on. The newcomers quickly adopted Chinese culture and language. Their nobility and royal families married Chinese princesses.
Migration states in Europe in 476 AD
In the year ca. 317 AD Millions of northern Chinese migrated to southern China; allegedly due to invasion from the steppe. A new Jin dynasty was proclaimed in Nanjing. Entire clans of northern Chinese fled south, along with 60 to 70% of the nobility. Entire Daoist monasteries moved south with all monks and religious leaders.
Some Central Asian Indo-Europeans also left the steppe in large numbers and sought a new land to the west. The Alans are the best known.
The Heptalites, "the White Huns" - whoever they were - left the steppe of Dzungaria north of the Altai Mountains and invaded India.
In the Scandinavian "Ragnarok" poem it is said: "Tell of Ragnarok - Of that there are great tidings to bring. The first is that the Fimbul winter is coming. Then the snow blows from all sides. There is much frost and sharp winds. The sun does not work. There will be three such winters in a row without a summer in between". It sounds as if our ancestors had experience that such a thing can happen.
5. Mongols and Turks take over the steppe
Therefore, it was not a case of decadent Indo-Europeans being driven from the steppe by new and harsher peoples. The Mongols, Turks, Kyrgyz and Manchus only emerged from the ice cellar of Siberia more than a hundred years after the beginning of the Migration Period. By then, the climate on the Eurasian steppe had softened again, and it lay empty and inviting.
Illustration in "In Search of the Indo-Europeans" by J.P. Mallory, which shows the expansion of the Turks across the steppe from their origins in western Mongolia in the sixth century to the conquest of Asia Minor and southern Ukraine in the thirteenth century.
Mallory writes: "The historical expansion of the highly mobile Turks shows how quickly a language group can spread."
The Turks formed a very large part of Genghis Khan's armies and "inherited" the steppe, so to speak, from the smaller Mongol population. The net result of the Mongol conquests was a Turkish and Muslim Central Asia.
Ellsworth Huntington was a professor of geography at Yale University in the United States. He participated in several expeditions to Central Asia and Palestine. Together with the British H. H. Lamb, he was one of the first to emphasize that the natural variability of the climate was the cause of dramatic historical events.
His main work is "The Pulse of Asia", in which he wrote: "The decline of Europe in the Middle Ages - was apparently due to a dramatic change of climate in Asia and probably throughout the world, - a change which made immense areas that were habitable at the time of Christ uninhabitable a few centuries later. The barbarian inhabitants were forced to emigrate, and their migrations were the dominant factor in the history of the known world for centuries.
Ellsworth Huntington - 1876-1947.
"The data which I have found in Central Asia," Huntington continues, "confirm the claim of historians. There is strong reason to believe that during the last two thousand years there has been a widespread and marked tendency towards desiccation."
"In drier areas the extent of land suitable for agriculture and cattle-raising has been seriously reduced" - "After a period of rapidly diminishing rainfall and rising temperature in the early centuries of the Christian era, there is evidence of a slight improvement and of increasing rainfall and falling temperatures in the Middle Ages."
"In relatively dry areas increased desiccation is a catastrophe, causing famine and migration, which in turn causes the fall of dynasties and empires, the creation of new nations and the growth of new civilizations."
Ellsworth Huntington measured the rings of the great old trees in the American national parks to find evidence for his theory of cyclical climate change as the decisive driving forces of history.
