My European Family

by Karin Bojs

  Simple mortars in which microscopic traces of starch have been preserved have also been found at sites including Kostenki (Russia), Biancino (Italy) and Pavlov in the Czech Republic. All of these date back about 30,000 years. The starch seems to have come mainly from the roots of bulrushes and ferns.

  Amanda Henry says she is irritated by those who seek to make money by writing books claiming that people in general have an ‘evolutionary adaptation’ to a particular way of eating. There is no scientific proof that any particular kind of ‘Paleo diet’ suits everyone best.

  In other words, the notion that evolution has shaped us to do without carbohydrates almost completely is mistaken, even though some pundits want to give this impression. We are genetically equipped, to a far greater degree than apes, to digest starch in our food. The reason for this is that starch in the diet has played an important part in our survival for the last six million years, since our evolutionary branch diverged from those of our nearest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos.

  However, we may differ in our sensitivity to the large proportion of starch typical of the modern diet, and our genetic background may account in part for that sensitivity. After all, there can be no doubt that the switch to agriculture represented a dramatic change. Most farming societies throughout history have eaten more starch than most hunting societies. Even our dogs changed their way of life, as is shown by a number of interesting DNA studies.

  Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a Swedish researcher based in Uppsala, is the world’s leading expert in canine DNA. Comparing the genetic material of various breeds of dog – which are often exactingly bred to meet pedigree specifications – is an ingenious shortcut to identifying disease-bearing genes that also occur in human beings.

  In 2012, Lindblad-Toh and her collaborators made a contribution to the heated debate on when dogs were domesticated. The main conclusion their study reached is probably incorrect. The team suggested that wolves became humans’ companions only when we took to farming – that is, slightly less than 12,000 years ago. This cannot be right, as there is convincing archaeological evidence – and other DNA studies – that show dogs must have been with us for several millennia before that.

  However, the results of the study are very interesting anyway, as regards both the history of dogs and that of humankind. This is because the Uppsala researchers managed to show that dogs, just like people, have a number of genes whose function is to break down starch. These genes emerged after dogs had started living together with humans; wolves have them to a far lesser degree. The conclusion is thus that dogs have adapted through evolution to the food they have been given by farmers over the millennia, which includes quite a large proportion of leftover porridge and bread.

  The one minor error in this initial conclusion is that it is not true of absolutely all dogs. A few years later, an inter­national team of researchers published a new study. They had examined the DNA of more breeds of dog, including some very old ones. Their study showed that a number of ancient breeds, such as dingoes, basenji and Siberian huskies, resemble wolves in that they are not genetically equipped to break down starch. Lindblad-Toh’s team subsequently confirmed these findings and added further old breeds, such as Greenland sled dogs.

  So the conclusion to be drawn from these latest results is that some dogs were already living with humans when we were hunters, and were genetically adapted at that time to live almost exclusively on meat. Dogs adapted to consuming farmed food at a later stage, when their human companions went over to farming. A parallel can be drawn here between dogs and people. Farmers have largely displaced Europe’s earlier population of hunters. At the same time, farmers’ starch-eating dogs have multiplied at the expense of the older breeds of dogs that accompanied the hunters.

  Humans, too, have undergone a similar genetic adaptation to farmed food. For example, there is a gene known as AMY-1 whose function is to break down starch by means of saliva in the mouth. Our cousins the chimpanzees normally have a single gene that works like this. Bonobos, which are equally closely related to us, have none. A human being, on the other hand, can have several copies of the AMY-1 gene. Some have only a few, while others can have up to 15 or 20 copies. Individuals who have many copies can break down starch more efficiently.

  And the capacity to break down starch efficiently has been vital for survival in certain human environments, but not in others. This is why the Hadza, a people of hunter-gatherers living in East Africa, have a comparatively large number of copies of AMY-1. They live in a dry tropical climate and live largely on starchy roots that they dig up out of the ground. The Aka and Mbuti peoples also live in the tropics, but in regions with humid rainforests. Their traditional diet contains more animal protein and sugars from fruit and honey, and they tend to have fewer AMY-1 genes. People from farming cultures based on the cultivation of grain, such as the Japanese, have significantly more genes of this type.

  It is simply the case that the capacity to break down starch varies depending on the type of environment in which our ancestors lived. Their lives – whether they were hunters or farmers – marked our genes in different ways.

  Most people living in today’s Europe have a mix of ‘hunter genes’ and ‘farmer genes’. We represent different waves of immigration, which affected the early history of our continent in different ways.

  Take me, for example. Following my own mitochondria and thereby my direct maternal lineage, I can go back several tens of thousands of years to Ice Age forebears who hunted reindeer and other deer. Following my paternal grandmother’s mitochondria, my maternal lineage goes back to Syria and the cradle of early agriculture. I am a mix. We all are.

  However, the fact is that the first wave of ‘hunters’ and the second wave of ‘farmers’ do not really account adequately for the early history of Europe. DNA researchers are beginning to be increasingly convinced that there was a third wave.

  That wave came from the east.

  PART THREE

  The Indo-Europeans

  Måns was the father of Per, who became the father of Johan.

  Johan’s son was Per, and Per became the father of Johan.

  Johan had a son called Nils, who had a son called Peter.

  Peter’s son was called August.

  August became the father of Eric, who became the father of Göran, Anders and Gunnel.

  Göran had a daughter, Karin.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The First Stallion

  The lowing of cows and oxen was to be heard on the plots of the Gökhem farmers in Västergötland 5,500 years ago, along with the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs and, in the woods around the farms, the grunting of pigs. At the same time, in the steppe far to the east, people were beginning to make use of an entirely new domesticated animal.

  Of one thing we can be sure: there were domesticated horses in the region we now call Kazakhstan about 5,500 years ago. The oldest incontrovertible proof that has been found comes from the Botai culture.

  The Botai people lived in the steppes north-east of the Caspian Sea. They were primarily hunters, though compar­atively sedentary, and their diet consisted largely of horse meat. Over 99 per cent of all the bones found in their settlements come from horses. The Botai people rode their domesticated horses and hunted wild ones. Many of the bones from their settlements come from particularly fine-boned or gracile animals, which researchers view as an indication that they were domesticated.

  There is even better evidence that some of the horses at the time of the Botai culture were domesticated. One piece of evidence is milk. Traces of fat on terracotta shards show that the pots from which they came were used to store milk. Even today, horse meat and foodstuffs made from mares’ milk are part of the traditional diet in Kazakhstan and the neighbouring steppe regions.

  Damage to horses’ vertebrae suggests that the animals concerned carried riders. And there is even clearer proof in the marks on the tooth enamel of some horses, which were clearly caused by bridle bi
ts. The bridles were very probably made of leather and wood, and most of the stone tools from the Botai culture seem to be designed for leather-working.

  There is thus a consensus that horses were domesticated at least 5,500 years ago, and that there were domesticated horses in the northern steppes of the region that is now Kazakhstan. However, the fact that the oldest undisputed archaeological evidence comes from the Botai culture does not necessarily signify that these people were the first to domesticate horses. There may have been domesticated horses elsewhere at an even earlier stage, though the evidence is less conclusive.

  DNA researchers have also sought to identify horses’ origins. The focus has been mainly on examining living horses of all possible breeds. The first large-scale analyses, which were carried out in Uppsala, revealed an interesting pattern. Modern horses have a multiplicity of different mitochondrial lineages. The only possible explanation for this is that people in many different places captured wild mares and used them for breeding. In contrast, only one Y-chromosome lineage was identified. That means that wild stallions were domesticated within one area only, and that there were only a few such cases – possibly just one, in fact.

  These patterns make sense if we reflect on how wild horses live in their herds. Stallions are far more aggressive and independent. Mares, on the other hand, are used to living in a group and to accepting subordination to a higher-status horse. They are typical herd animals, just as cows are. It is a fairly straightforward matter to tame a wild mare; taming a wild stallion, on the other hand, is all but impossible.

  I imagine the first domesticated stallion may have been a little foal that followed his mother when she was captured by humans. The youngster must have been unusually gentle-natured. He would undoubtedly have been outcompeted by other males in the wild, and would never have had any offspring of his own. Under people’s care, however, he was able to grow to adulthood and serve the mares of the herd, thereby becoming, several millennia later, the ancestral father of all the horses living today.

  Unfortunately, DNA research has not yet been able to provide any more precise information about where the first stallion was caught and where people first started to breed horses. The evidence points towards a fairly extensive region stretching from western Kazakhstan through the Russian steppe to the Volga and the Don, and possibly towards Ukraine.

  One reasonable scenario is that farmers with domesticated animals spread from modern Turkey to the regions north of the Black Sea. On reaching the steppe, they faced a number of problems. There were endless amounts of excellent pasture for half the year. But the winters were harsher than they were accustomed to. Their sheep could not cope with a frozen crust of snow, and even the thinnest layer of snow prevented the cattle from grazing.

  While the farmers’ own animals were dying of cold, they could watch herds of wild horses gracefully scraping the snow from the pasture they needed with their hooves. When the horses needed to drink, they used their hooves to make holes in the layer of ice covering springs and streams. These horses were well adapted to living in a climate with cold winters; that was how they had got through the Ice Age so successfully in the European steppes. They were not suited to living in forests, however. When the forests emerged after the end of the Ice Age, most wild horses disappeared from Europe. It was only in the steppes in the eastern part of the continent that they were still to be found in large numbers.

  Those who found ways of capturing and controlling horses benefited from a domesticated animal that was largely self-sufficient and provided an excellent reserve of meat during the cold winters of the steppe. And the step from providing a meat reserve to being a dairy animal was a short one.

  People who are used to milking cows can learn to milk mares too. And just think what a bonus it must have been when people discovered the particular virtues of mares’ milk. It contains a good deal more lactose than cows’ milk and is unsuitable for drinking when fresh, particularly for people with lactose intolerance – nearly all adults at that time. But those who drank mares’ milk that had been kept for a while must have felt a little bit warmer, more relaxed and more talkative. The high sugar content of horses’ milk makes it ferment easily, producing a small percentage of alcohol.

  ***

  The Samara Valley, near the River Don in Russia, was the site of the Samara culture. In the valley archaeologists have found the remains of horses over a thousand years older than those of the Botai people. The remains of 10 individuals have been found at an ancient burial site. They were buried with gifts such as red ochre, broken pottery and beads made from seashells. Archaeologists have also found the heads, hooves and lower legs of two horses in the immediate vicinity of the graves. Close by lay two small horse figurines made of bone.

  One interpretation is that the people who took part in the burial feasted on the horse meat, after which they laid the horses’ hides, together with their heads and bones, in the graves of the dead.

  The Samara people lived in the northern part of the steppe, near the margins of the forests. It is quite clear that they kept domesticated cattle and sheep, and, to judge from finds of bones in their settlements, they also hunted deer and beaver. This meant their diet included meat from both domesticated and wild animals. Many, though not all, experts are convinced that the horses of the Samara culture must have been domesticated and that they were used at the very least as a source of meat. They may also have provided milk and been ridden by the Samara people, but there is some disagreement on this.

  The US archaeologist David Anthony has made tremen­dous efforts to locate the oldest evidence of riding. The items he and his wife and collaborator Dorcas Brown have collected include a large number of horse teeth – some of which bear the traces of a bridle bit, while others do not – which they have examined under a scanning electron microscope. They have also ridden horses using different types of bit that they believe early riders would have used. They have tested bits made of leather, horsehair, woven hemp and bone. After 150 hours of riding, they made models of horses’ teeth at the point where the bit had rested, and studied the damage to the teeth under the microscope. They then looked for similar damage to horses’ teeth that they and other archaeologists had found in excavations in the steppe.

  David Anthony also draws attention to the regions around the Don and the Volga. He makes particular mention of the herding culture known as the Khvalynsk culture, which occupied approximately the same area as the Samara culture, though slightly later. These two cultures, and others, gave rise to the Yamnaya (Yamna) culture, which would eventually dominate large areas of the steppe – all the way to Ukraine in the west. It is clear that horses were important to these people. This is shown by finds in their typical tombs, known as kurgans. The kurgans consisted of a pit, often lined with timber, which was covered with a tumulus made of stones and peat. There is much evidence that horses were sacrificed at such burials, as were cattle, sheep and dogs.

  The Yamnaya culture took off 5,300 years ago, at exactly the same time as the farmers in the Falbygden area were most active in building megalithic passage graves. There are three factors that may explain why the Yamnaya culture became so successful and extended over such a vast area.

  Firstly, the climate changed at that time. The steppes became colder and drier. Pollen analyses show that tree cover declined, while plants well adapted to a dry climate, such as wormwood (sagebrush), became more common. The steppe had never been a particularly favourable environment for cultivation, as the soil was often too dry, sometimes too marshy, and not infrequently too salty. But the spacious grasslands were ideal for animal husbandry, especially for keeping flocks of sheep, which are better adapted to a dry climate than cows.

  Secondly, the Yamnaya herdsmen on the steppe had a vital factor in common with the Funnel Beaker farmers of the Falbygden area: they were beginning to use oxen as draught animals, along with wheeled vehicles. We know this because both wheels and vestiges of carts or wagons have been found in the typic
al kurgan graves of the steppe.

  Thirdly, they were probably beginning to master the art of riding.

  The combination of the drier climate, the ox-drawn wagons and horses that could be ridden brought dramatically altered conditions for animal husbandry. The Yamnaya culture, which focused more on herding animals than on tilling the soil, drew the winning straw. People could pack everything they needed into their ox-drawn wagons, including tents to spend the night in and drinking water for at least a week. This enabled them to live in the steppes for months and drive their animals on to fresh pastures. When an area had been grazed to the limit, all they had to do was lead their animals onward to new green meadows. With the help of horses, they were able to control many more cattle and sheep than before.

  Before the time of horses that could be ridden, oxen and wagons, the gigantic steppe regions between the river valleys were like a vast ocean to people without seaworthy boats – infertile, impenetrable land. With the help of horses and wagons, however, the Yamnaya herdsmen could take possession of the whole steppe. Their herds grew larger and larger, while they grew richer and richer. They acquired more and more fä, to use an old Swedish word of ancient Indo-European origin for livestock. The word for livestock (pek´u in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European, pecu in Latin) acquired an extended meaning in the colloquial Swedish pekiner, which became penningar and finally pengar, the Swedish word for money (English ‘pecuniary’ comes from the same root).