Otter.ai Note | Otter.ai | Otter Voice Meeting Notes
body
Speaker 1
0:00
Speaker 1
0:09
Unknown Speaker
0:17
Razib Khan
0:18
Hey everybody.This is Razib with the Unsupervised Learning podcast,and I'm here with a returning guest,Nemets of the eponymous substack.Nemets,who writes on various topics near and dear to a lot of the issues,concerns,and curiosities of people who read this substack.Curiosities of mine.Has a slightly different emphasis,a little bit more heavy on the archeology,I would say.Which,I think I was telling you sir,that I think one of the differences for me,it's like,I'm just like,sick of floor plans.I cannot.There's so many floor plans and archeology books,and I don't want to look at floor plans.So I just like,leave it to you,or go to ChatGPT or now Gemini,by the way,everyone out there,Gemini is really fast.It's really good now I'm thinking about switching.I have Pro on both,but just,just so people know.Anyway,we are going to talk about a post 'A story of the Slavs from the early Indo-Europeans to the Soviet Union' You know,periodically you have these,like massive,massive posts,surveys,that come out.And I like to talk about them because they're interesting.You've dug into the literature.It's kind of like a huge survey,but it's not like a book length,so it's doable in,I don't know,an afternoon,you know,like reading an afternoon,like on a Sunday afternoon.We are recording on a Sunday afternoon right now.So really recommend it.Story of the Slavs for the early indo Europeans to the Soviet Union.It's on your substack,Nemets,N,E,M,E,T,S,Nemets.substack.com,and I'll put a link to it.You guys should,first of all just read it.Maybe you should do it after,or maybe you should do before.I don't know.I actually don't know what we best,but I read it.There's a lot to go through.So I guess first of all,define what a Slav is,so that people know,let's define our terms,
Peter Nimitz
2:20
Slavs are the largest language family in Europe.It covers the Russian Ukrainian,Belarusian,the East Slavs.Then you have the West Slavs through the Poles,the Czechs and the Slovaks.Then there's the South Slavs,which is kind of the kind of an arc from Slovenia through Croatia,Serbia,Bosnia,into Macedonia and then Bulgaria.And those three groups,they speak a variety of languages which are fairly closely related.I mean,I can speak Russian fairly well,and I can understand like half of Serbian and maybe like a third of Polish.So they all descend from a shared language that existed about 1500 years ago.
Razib Khan
3:03
Peter Nimitz
3:18
Razib Khan
3:47
Peter Nimitz
3:49
Razib Khan
4:19
So I was actually kind of curious.You know,among the early indo European diversifications there is a hypothesis which is,I wouldn't say it's strongly supported,but it's definitely not crazy that the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian form a clade,which can be a little confusing,because the Indo Iranians were probably in close proximity to the Balto-Slavic for a while,and the northern Iranians for a long time,right?So in terms of like,but you know these two groups,they are both characterized by a very high frequency of Y chromosome,haplogroup r1a,with two different mutations to find the Indo Iranian branch and the Slavic branch.I think like Slavic branch is like,the mutation is like 282,Z282,and the Indo-Iranian is Z93 and then there's like downstream mutations from those.But I think there's a 282 that's a branch that's in in northern Europe,and Scandinavia is probably the Battle Axe people.But in you're reading,did you see much discussion of this?And I partly bring this up because one of the early Eastern European Indo-European culture,the Fatyanovo culture.I have read that initially,people had assumed the Fatyanovo culture were,for example,Baltic,because the hydrodynamics in that region seemed to be Baltic.But now from the DNA,it looks like the Fatyanovo males carry the Indo-Iranian R1a branch.So probably they're Indo-Iranian,right?Threw a lot out there,out there at you.But like,can you clear up a little bit about that in terms of your reading,if you saw anything?
Peter Nimitz
5:47
Sure.So there's a couple different approaches you can use for any prehistorical topic.The one that you like to use,which I greatly admire,and which is illuminated so much in prehistory across the entire world,is genetics.So looking through,ancient DNAs from various peoples,the haplogroups passed down directly in the male line,directly in the female line,all that stuff.There's another one,which is archeology.That goes back,at least in Eastern Europe,to end of the 19th century.You look at changes in pottery,you look at changes in housing construction,you look at changes in the kind of post Soviet sphere,Metallurgical technology is one of the main ways that,you know,people use metallurgical traditions and the ways that various weapons,tools,implements of daily life,were forged as a way of like determining which group of people was where.So that's the second one.And the third one is linguistics,which we were just discussing about,or talking about,where you have this very early contact between the Balto-Slavic languages and the Indo-Iranian languages,where people correctly understood that they were in very close proximity to each other.So we have these three.We can collect pieces of puzzles from each of these three.What I try to do in my piece is I try to put these pieces of the puzzle together in one narrative where we can actually identify where the Slavs are.So we know from linguistics that the Balts and the Slavs,or the Balto-Slavs and the Indo-Iranians.They do come from populations which are in close proximity to each other.So that almost certainly means that it's in the Eastern Range of the Corded Ware culture,like the back flow from the Corded Ware people who had first conquered,like Poland and Germany and then migrated back,kind of swept over both some of the Yamnaya people,like their more northernly realm,which had kind of spread up into the Volga and the Kama River basins and what's nowadays,Central Russia,as well as some of the hunter gatherer societies like the Volosovo culture,which were further north in the kind of forest region.So we know that,like that third of the Corded Ware world,roughly from Belarus to Udmurtia to Tartarstan is where this Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic proto population was living.And the Soviet historians actually did know that the Eastern,like the very far eastern part,was where the Indo-Iranians were.That's like the Sintashta culture they come out of,like the Abashevo culture.And there was were they looked back at the metal work and the pottery that was being made by these different cultures in kind of the eastern part of European Russia,and they were able to see that,you know,these were the groups that spread in the Central Asia.They were definitely the Indo Iranians.They were not the Baltic Slavs.They did understand that the Baltic Slavs were somewhere to the west of these Indo-Iranian groups,but not too far to the west.So there,there was a dispute,like,Okay,were they in Poland?Were they in Belarus?Were they in northwestern Russia,like,kind of on the border of the Baltic states?Were they kind of in central Ukraine,you know?Or were they in like?Were they the various post Yamnaya cultures prior to their destruction at the end of the third millennium BC?
Peter Nimitz
9:07
So DNA and archeology don't completely answer this question,but I think we can make a very educated guess that it's even more complicated than what these archeologists and linguists guessed.You have the middle Dnieper culture,which is kind of like the middle of the third millennium BC to the end of the third millennium BC,with some influences of surviving well into the second millennium BC.And they kind of dwelt on the middle Dnieper River,kind of like North Central Ukraine into the southern Belarus.So that culture they're right next to kind of the Western reaches of these Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture,they're none to have had interactions with each other for the entire period of their existence.So it's a very reasonable now,we don't have any DNA from them unfortunately,which is the issue.but we do have the archeology that shows their contact with each other.So this is most likely one of the contact zones for where prior to the split of Indo-Iranian from Balto Slavic,this is likely one of the contact zones between these,like pre/proto populations.There were some ideas,like further north,I think we do have some DNA from the groups.There were a lot the Fatyanovo-Balanovo groups that were kind of around,like modern Pskov area,just south of St Petersburg,east of Estonia.They do appear to be Indo-Iranian like groups that would eventually contribute to the Iranians,rather than the Balto Slavic groups.
Razib Khan
10:40
Peter Nimitz
10:56
Yes.They were,I think at least until the adoption of the chariot at the end of the third millennium BC.And like,you know,all those military innovations,the climate shock,climactic shocks that happened around like 2300-2200 BC,the kind of like earliest Balto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians.They weren't militarily that strong,like you do see these kind of post Yamnaya cultures,like the Catacomb that are still dominating a lot of the steppe region - which is a much better place to live than modern Russia,north of the forest line.So these kind of pre/proto Balto-Slavic,Indo-Iranian groups,they're living in fairly marginal territory for Corded Ware people.Like,they can't dominate Poland.They can't dominate the north as they are in the south.So I think these people are kind of marginal.So they do have to migrate between various lands.And this is one of the reasons why they actually eradicate a lot of the hunter gatherers and all but the circumpolar regions of,you know,modern day European Russia,like the Volosovo cultural people,they have to go all the way up to,like the polar region to escape these Fatyanovo-Bolonovo culture.And they're,like,completely annihilated in their original home in the Kama River basin.And I think that's just because these Fatyanovo-Bolonovo culture people were pushed out of these better lands and had to fight for these very marginal landscapes.This was not the case in the Baltic - like the East Baltic region in Estonia,Latvia,Lithuania,parts of Northwestern Belarus,where you did see kind of this weird coexistence between the Corded Ware groups,not the Fatyanovo-Bolonovo/ Corded Ware,but like different Corded Ware groups like Rzucewo,which was more unlike Kaliningrad,like northern Poland,Western Lithuania area,where you actually have the coexistence of like these hunter gatherer groups who had been living there for like 1500 years or thereabouts,ever since they kind of displaced and mixed with the previous hunter gatherer groups.You know,it's not really until that big climate shock around 2300 to 2200 BC that you see like these old hunter gatherer groups in the East Baltic finally get fully displaced by the Indo Europeans.And even then,it's not like a full displacement.They do seem to have contributed,,a decent amount of ancestry,maybe like 5-15%,depending on how what model you use of these Indo European groups that exist in the Baltic,around 2000 BC.
Peter Nimitz
14:01
Yes,the pre-proto-Balto Slavs.So the big shock in the Indo European world,it's 3000-2900 BC,that's when they do their massive invasion of Poland and Germany.They overrun the early European farmers,the Globular Amphora culture,the Funnel Beaker culture and stuff.There are some farmer groups in kind of interior places,like Kuyavia,which is in kind of like Northeastern Poland,thereabouts.And then you have,like the surviving Baltic Hunter Gatherers that are hanging out in the Baltic that kind of like coexist with them.So 2500 BC,there's the introduction of the Bell Beaker culture,the Indo Europeans they,at least the Western branches,who are relatively more like early European farmer admixed unlike these Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture people.They go and they adopt,like this Bell Beaker,cultural package,which boosts their population.They start having more agriculture in their agricultural,pastoral,economic,cultural package they go,they overrun Britain,largely annihilate the population.They have this kind of,like waves of conquest into Spain,they start to penetrate into parts of Italy.In the east,it doesn't really - that 2500 BC expansion doesn't have too much of an effect.It's the 2200 BC shock,where you have like this sudden cold shock.There's droughts everywhere.All these populations are displaced by changing ecological conditions.And you have,crucially,the invention of the war chariot,which is what I think allows these Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture,these Abashevo culture people in the Far East,they go and they start to,like,eliminate these post Yamnaya culture people who hadn't really mixed with the farming populations,and it kind of dominated the Western steppe region.In the Baltic this leads the hunter gatherer population - They're finally absorbed at the time of this 2300 to 2200 BC climate shock.It's not totally certain what happened.I think what did happen,though,is there's a change in the salinity of the Baltic Sea and some of the rivers that feed into the Baltics.So you actually have in the archeological record,the fish that the people are consuming along these rivers that feed into the Baltic actually change.They shift to be more like pastoral like.They shift to eating cattle,more the type of fish that they're eating changes in species.I think in my Germania piece,I linked a couple studies about it.So the big thing is these ecological shocks are driving these changes in the Indo European world.And the Indo European world expands like it incorporates a lot of Italy,Spain,all of Western Europe,Northern Europe.And these post Yamnaya cultures are largely displaced by these Corded Ware cultures in the east.So when the and this is where you get the split between the Indo-Iranians proper and the like pre proto Balto Slavs.At this point you have two populations that,I think,predominantly form the major part of their - or,I guess I should say three.So there's the there's the post Corded Ware,Indo-Europeans in the Baltic who have finally mixed with these hunter gatherers,who have been fully absorbed into like the Indo-European world.And they're best represented by the Rzucewo culture,and also by the North Belarusian culture.Which the North Belarusian culture,as far as I can tell,there's almost nothing on them in English,almost everything is in Belarusian specifically.But fortunately,there's a very good book on them.It's a couple 100 pages long.I think it's an ethno cultural - Let me look it up,actually.It is "Ethno Cultural Processes of Central Belarus in Past and Present" It is available on Google Books.There's some Russian PDF downloading sites you can find it on.But it has the discussion of like,how these hunter gatherers mixed with these Baltic Indo-Europeans they go and they're linked with this Rzucewo culture in northern Poland.And these cultures,they come in contact with these Bell Beaker Indo-Europeans who are migrating from the West back East.They collide,and they form a number of cultures in Poland around the Vistula River basin.That's kind of the main river in Poland.And they expand up the Vistula River into like modern day southeastern Poland,Northwestern Ukraine,and that's they kind of like mix in with the people who are there.And that's actually other than the - we know that those people definitely have some sort of link to the slot,because those two populations that kind of descend from that mixed like Bell Beaker,you know Netherlands Indo European group that migrated to the east and forms the Trzciniec culture.The cultures they produce,the Komarov culture,other than the sample,I think there's like two samples.One of them is,like just a Slav who ended up in the Roman Empire.And that's like the best ancient DNA match for the Slavs prior to the Slavic migrations.But besides that,the best three matches are Baltic Bronze Age people.And then you have these two cultures in kind of Northwestern or Northwestern Ukraine and southeastern Poland,which I'm almost certain contributed a lot of ancestry to these kind of -the pre proto Slavs.So this group,the Trzciniec It actually has this - It spreads to the east.
Razib Khan
19:39
Peter Nimitz
19:43
Razib Khan
19:51
Peter Nimitz
20:07
Yes,yes.And the dates are kind of complicated.And there's different people who have different definitions of what constitutes the Trzciniec culture?What constitutes the Iwno culture?Because the Iwno culture that's the successor of like the Rzucewo culture in Poland.It's kind of like it's the equivalent in Poland to what the North Belarusian culture is in Belarus and in a Lithuania and Latvia.So these kind of two cultures,they're,you know,both progressing like towards the Dnieper and they're coming in contact with the successors of this Middle Dnieper culture in the Middle Bronze Age,like probably around 1800 to 1500 BC.So this is when we have,I think,kind of the formation of this proto Balto Slavic population.
Razib Khan
20:52
Peter Nimitz
21:24
I don't think there is a consensus.There's a lot of dispute over it.I personally lead lean towards it being and my article kind of discusses this,there's multiple waves,like,there's very clearly the Indo-Iranian influence,like very,very early on with,like the Indo Iranian Balto-Slavic isoglosses with each other.So I think that's extremely old,and that's where you see,like the context of Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture with Baltic Corded Ware.And then you also see Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture,and later - Abashevo culture,with this Middle Dneiper culture as the Middle Dneiper culture,I think,like those people do contribute a substantial amount of ancestry,not a majority,but maybe,like 20-30%.Once we have some DNA it'd be interesting to test.But they kind of come in a collision with the Trzcinie culture people,and these North Belarusian culture people from like,at the beginning of the second millennium BC.So the these Western and Northwestern populations from the Poland and Baltic,they're expanding towards the Dnieper River.And the Dnieper River at the time,it had been kind of hollowed out.It looks likethe various expansions the chariot riders from the east had devastated a lot of these populations who are living on the middle Dnieper because Poland is just completely flat,always gets overrun by the horsemen.So one of the crucial parts of history of the region is you have the depopulation of the steppe region,and you have the survival of these refugia populations just north of the forest line,since it's much harder for the chariot riders,the horsemen,all that stuff,to go and actually,like,hunt down all these people who are,like,hiding in swamps.So you have this refugia population,it's been devastated by these Indo-Iranian speaking chariot riders.And it comes in contact with these Trzcinie culture people,North Belarusian culture people.And they mix together and they form the Sosnitsa culture.And the Sosnitsa culture,it really hangs out until the Bronze Age collapse.And I think that this Sosnitsa culture is is proto Balto-Slavic.There are Sosnitsa influences that drift up through Belarus into the Baltic,I think that's like the proto Baltic population.And then you have like true proto Slavic which stays basically in the Sosnitsa region.
Razib Khan
23:54
Peter Nimitz
23:57
Razib Khan
24:04
Peter Nimitz
24:28
Yes.So it's roughly the Vistula to the Dnieper where they're hanging out?And there's the migrations are back and forth.Like,sometimes there's northern migrations,sometimes there's southern migrations.But the main thing is,there are these refugia,and that here's repeated expansions out of these.Refugia,the most crucial one being like Southern Belarus and northern Ukraine,where you do have access to the rich soils along the Dnieper.And then also you're close enough to the steppe where you can expand.And that gives you a certain amount of like historical and demographic buffer for times of catastrophe.It's not like those Abashevo culture people where they lost the Kama River and that was like the end for them.They had to eke out and survive in the Circumpolar Arctic after that.So this refugia,it's very valuable because it is close to these very wealthy lands.So the pieces we put together are so far we know that this Komarov culture which is part of the Trzcinie cultural sphere,is very closely linked to this migration period Slavic populations.We know they play some role in the story.We know that there's close contacts between the Middle Dnieper culture as well as these Baltic Corded Ware people with these populations who are genetically known to have spoken Indo-Iranian,almost certainly.So we have those contacts because they share the eyes of losses.Now there's points against this,like middle naper,I,like my strong suspicion is there a minority component in this proto multi Slavic population,because we don't see,like,a lot of the influences from,like the non corded ware end of European languages,like we would expect,expect to see,like ISO classes,from Albanian,from Greek,Tolcharian,which we really don't see.So that's why I lean more towards like this,Iwno culture,Rzucewo culture,this North Belarusian culture as being like the predominant element in the creation of this protocol to Slavic population in the Middle Bronze Age,like 1800 to 1500 BC.
Razib Khan
26:41
All right.So 1800-1500 BC.So as Indo-Iranians are spreading south and eastward,you have the these Balto Slavic people that are separate from them,predominantly.I mean there's still some Indo-Iranians,they're going to be in the area.But they're agro pastoralists,right?They're basically in Northwest Ukraine,you say,like Southern Belarus that whole zone and,like,what's going on with them say,after the Bronze Age collapse,like,I mean,were they part of the trade network of the Bronze Age,late bronze age,which actually went into Northern Europe and Denmark,they were creating all these bronze daggers and stuff like that.Like,I mean,what do we know about the archeology of these groups?
Peter Nimitz
27:27
So the Sosnitsa,they were a bit east.They were in the middle Dnieper,Southern Belarus,central Ukraine.And they spread the Sosnitsa river,that's a river tha goes east to west.It feeds into the Dnieper.It's tributary of the Dnieper.I think it's sources in Russia.That's really the core of the Baltic Slavs.I don't think it's that like,even though a lot of their ancestors came from of southeastern Poland,Northwestern Ukraine,like the core of the Sosnitsa culture was the middle Dnieper.So the middle Dnieper they do have a lot of contacts.I think there's stuff.There's finds,goods from Central Asia that are found in the Sosnitsa culture.So it looks like they were part of the east to west trade route as well as the north to south trade route,like the amber road.It goes mostly through the Vistula,but there's some stuff that goes through the Dnieper as well.And naturally the bronze,you know - so when the Bronze Age collapse happens,the center of the world,really,back then,was the Eastern Mediterranean.You've got Egypt,the Mesopotamian and Levantine civilizations,all those extensive trade routes.I think what all the studies from basically everything for the Bronze Age collapse have been suggesting is when you have an ecological hit,which hits a lot of the eastern Mediterranean and East Africa,but you also have the systems collapse where all of these different groups,they've gotten hooked on the advanced trade goods of these eastern Mediterranean civilizations,which we do see in Sosnitsa culture,and really a lot of Northern Europe too.I think there's like finds in the Nordic Bronze Age contexts showing that they had trade routes that connected them to the Mycenaean civilization and vice versa.
Razib Khan
29:05
Okay,okay,so they're part of that,all right.So at some point Bronze Age collapse happens,and that kind of pulls the rug out of a lot of the broader trade networks that were sustaining the archeological civilizations that were kind of the penumbra around these,like early literate societies.So what's going on with these proto Balto-Slavs after 1000 BC?When,at this point,after 1000 is also,I think,when we're probably getting the Germanic speaking populations pushing out of Scandinavia,probably starting to edge into northern Germany and stuff like that.Eventually the Jastorf culture,I think,is the culture that was there during the late Iron Age,during the late Republican period.I mean,we're getting up to the point where you have Herodotus and other classical commentators talking about various random people in Northern Europe.And some of them might be Finnic,some of them might be Slavic.And also,it's not the point of your post,but this is also the period,the late Bronze Age,early Iron Age,when the Finnic people,Finnic speaking people,are pushing out of the Northern Urals and kind of like sweeping across and eventually,like the most common Y chromosome,a lineage of modern day Lithuania Latvia,is N1c-n3a you know,whichever N3a,like the whichever nomenclature.So,you know,you're starting to have the demographic impact of the Finnick people to the north.And you talk about this later in your post but there's a huge Finn zone that was russified in the last five centuries,right in northern,in North,basically the North East quadrant of Europe.So like,tell us where we're at,like in the early Iron Age,like late Bronze age
Peter Nimitz
30:49
So 1200 BC,there's the massive Bronze Age collapse.The Sosnitsa culture kind of the produce,like the pre proto Slavs at this point,because the Balts,I think,had largely split off.They're devastated too.I think there's a lot of stuff showing that they were linked in with the Srubnaya Indo-Iranian people,who were kind of dominating the Western steppe at the time.So I think they were kind of dragged into these conflicts in the same way that they were when the Persians invaded a couple centuries later,where Herodotus talks about how you have all these tribes that are presumably Slavic or para Slavic,who are getting dragged into fighting Persians on behalf of their Scythian overlords.I think there's something like this for Sosnitsa culture Slavs,they get dragged into these kind of,like collapsing Srubnaya conflicts and the result is their population is devastated.A lot of their sites start to disappear.It was definitely not a good time to be them.So you actually see the rise of this,I think it's the Lebedovskaya culture.It's basically just the descendants of the Sosnitsa culture,except kind of more primitive.They have a lot fewer trade ties.And crucially,they migrated further north,north of the forest lines to be shielded from like these rampaging horsemen.So for a couple centuries,things are very,very bad.One of the crucial parts,both of this very dark time as well as for Slavic ethanogenesis,is we actually seeing migration out of the Balkans,like,specifically the Pannonian plain,kind of the Carpathian area of these cultures that adopted iron very,very early on.I think,like only a century or two after the Bronze Age collapse really started.So the Carpathians had always been kind of like a metallurgical center,even going back to,like,the fifth millennium BC,I think you have,like,very,very early signs of copper mining from there that maybe had something to do with that mysterious like 4400 BC collapse in Europe.Same thing happens in the Bronze Age collapse.Those groups are the first ones to really,like,invent iron.Naturally,they explosively expand.So you have these various cultures.There's this Stamped Ware complex that emerges out of modern day Romania.And they just go and expand everywhere,like they drive into Germany,some of them,like,drive into Greece.You know,some of them go into Bulgaria,where they come the historical Thracians.The one that's relevant for the Slavs is the Chernoles culture.The Chernoles,they're on the north side of the Carpathian Mountains.They start off on the Dniester River and they expand into the Dnieper river.But they kind of colonize both the steppe region as well as kind of the fore steppe region.They don't really penetrate into kind of the Lebadovskaya culture core territories,and the kind of Pripet marshes and southern Belarus.So this Chernoles culture,they're pretty militarized.They have to be because they have to first contest with the Srubnaya Indo- Iranians,and then around like,you know,950 to 900 BC,you have the Cimmerians,who are a historical people who arise from the North Caucasus and start to storm on to the Western steppe.So the Chernoles,they kind of go and wage this kind of long series of conflicts going on for several centuries with the Cimmerians.And the Cimmerians,I think they are,I believe,mentioned in the Bible as either Gog or Magog Yeah.
Razib Khan
34:21
Peter Nimitz
34:35
Razib Khan
34:38
Peter Nimitz
34:43
Yes,it's Cimmerians,at least in the ancient Greek.I never know what the C if it's pronounced.So the Cimmerians,they kind of storm in and they replace the other Iranian groups.So you have that conflict that goes on for several centuries.The proto Slavic population they form what's called the Milograd cultures.The Milograd culture,they're north of the Chernoles.They're north of the forest line.They're hanging out on like the Desna River,the kind of upper Dnieper the west Dvina,parts of the very upper Niemen.They're in contact with,this is actually one of the places where you probably like,we consider it Balto Slavic,but I think there were probably like multiple - it was less of like a hard division between Balts and Slavic,and more of like a continuum at the time,because you do see like this Milograd culture,which is probably like the true proto Slavs,you know.And they're on the Niemen River,which flows into the Baltic rather than to the Black Sea.So they're in contact,presumably,with a lot of these,what we would consider now Baltic tribes.So kind of the Balto-Slavic split hadn't completely happened yet.And you do see this in Herodotus as well,where you have like these populations that are migrating from the far north to hang out with the presumably Slavic populations of kind of a middle Dnieper.So like the and which makes sense,because y like the differentiation between Baltic and Slavic at least for linguists,probably started around like 1500 BC,or the middle of the Sosnitsa culture.So the Chernoles -you have the Chernoles,and they kind of act as a shield for these Slavs from a Milograd culture.There are some disputes,like there are some archeologists,they believe that it's the Chernoles culture,which is the proto Slavs,rather than the,Milograd culture,because the Milograd culture,like,they're still fairly primitive,unlike the Chernoles culture they don't have - There's not that much evidence of iron working among the Milograd culture,whereas there's tons of evidence for it among the Chernoles culture.So the Milogrod culture,they're fairly primitive.A lot of their survival seems to be they would just hang out in the swamps.Archeologists,they have these things called bog forts,where it looks like they were kind of temporary refugues,refugues for these Milograd culture people,if something bad happened,if they're like,kind of main farmstead on the Dnieper or the Desna,or whatever kind of overrun by the Cimmerians,they would kind of flee to these bogs where they'd have food stored there as they could hold out for like a winter or two.So again,this kind of like swampy refugia,really plays this huge role in Slavic history by just giving them like a safe harbor where they can repeatedly expand from even after massive defeats on the more prosperous lands of the South.So the Milograd Slavs,they just kind of hang out in that region for a couple centuries.And eventually the Cimmerians,they get swept off by the Scythians,I think,towards the end of the eighth century BC.So the Cimmerians,like this is when they get pushed into the Middle East.This is when they get mentioned in the Bible,the Odyssey,and by Herodotus,you know.And then it's the Scythians who become the great steppe menace of the Western steppe.And this is where we get more into history,because you have Herodotus,who goes and discusses a lot of these different groups.So he discusses the Budini and the Gelonians were the two important ones.The Budini are described as a great populous nation.They're all they have blue and gray eyes and red hair.And the Gelonians,they have,like no resemblance to the Budinian complexion or general appearance.He has some contradictory stuff,like,in another part,he describes the Budini as having,like,few people,and they're very sparsely populated.I would guess he had different informants who are,informing him about the different kind of proto Slavic Milograd culture groups.Because the locations he gives like to line up with a Milograd culture and with this kind of,like the very late Chernoles culture,
Razib Khan
39:04
Peter Nimitz
39:13
Yes
Razib Khan
39:13
All right,so Scythians,obviously.So from what we know about archeology and our genetics,like you know,they actually come from.Actually come from the eastern end of the old post Andronovo range,you know,kind of towards,towards the Altai,like in the in the pastures north and west of the Altai,because they have about,like 10%,the original Scythians,The Royal Scythians,have about 10% East Asian ancestry that seemed like be from,like some Siberian,an adjacent Siberian culture that they adopted some motifs from,right?And so they're pushing westward,eventually past the Urals.They go all the way to Hungary and by the time they get to Hungary they're assimilating a lot of different people.And they're people who are Scythian,who are genetically just like other people in Central Europe.So setting that aside,this is kind of looming over these agropastoralists,these farmers,these proto Slavic populations,right just to the north of the steppe zone.And you said that they were a lot of the more than Dnieper That would be kind of in the middle of Scythian territory.So are we just talking basically like small scale societies that are beingdominated by these steppe Iranians at this point?
Peter Nimitz
40:20
Yes.I mean,that's strongly what Herodotus suggests.And the archeological evidence suggests that as well,where you have,like,a lot of these - the whole the Scythian culture takes over,really,the whole step zone,even though there's a lot of genetic heterogeneity within the populations.You do see some people who are fairly like Balkans,admixed.And I assume those are at least partially descended from these Chernoles culture people.But then there is one find which is almost like a perfect match for migration period Slavs from one of these Scythian sites,which I think does show that there was,like a true Slavic element within this Scythian culture,even though it was largely like a mix of the Chernoles,the steppe Iranians and these Slavs who would migrate south.So the true Slavs were within,probably,the Scythian realm,but not necessarily within the sites we've sampled yet.
Razib Khan
41:18
All right,so they're basically still hanging around,Western Ukraine,Belorussia,the adjacent areas of Russia,maybe into Poland a little bit.And we are in the historical period now.So you said Herodotus around,say after 500 BC,and then,the period of the Roman Empire.But the Slavs are one people that,at least until a pre late antiquity pre sixth century,they were never,unlike some of the Germans,obviously,a lot of the Celts,most of the Celts,- They're an Indo-European,speaking tribal people in Northern Europe that really were not touched by Romanitas,right?Like they're Beyond the Frontier,and there's interposing populations,mostly Germanic,between them and the Romans,correct?
Peter Nimitz
42:03
Yes,by the time we get to the Roman period,I mean,there's - once the Scythians establish the rule.I think this is when you see like,kind of these mixed Chernobyl Slavic people they mix with,like the refugia Slavic population.That explains the results that we see from the DNA which show an admixture between this Balkans population and this East Baltic Indo-European population kind of around the end of the Bronze Age.I think that find,like you have the earlier contacts,from like the Trzcinie era,where you do have some interaction with the Carpathian populations,but then also some of the later stuff,with the absorption of these Chernoles people you know,who as attested by Herodotus are,you know,probably defeated.That's the,you know,one of those two groups that are referenced earlier,the Gelonians,you know,by the historical like,after Herodotus,within a century or two.I think the groups are totally mixed.And this is where you have,like,the true produce.Like,the true proto Slavic population.And that's why you see that,like,perfect match for Slavic migration period samples within that Medvin Fort.I think that that's like the true -that's the formation of Slavic people.Like,finally these refugee populations contact the Chernoles,and they're being separated by these first Scythians and the Sarmatians,and eventually these Germanic migrants who kind of cut through at the beginning of the first millennium AD
Razib Khan
43:31
Okay.So my understanding,and I've read this elsewhere also,is that the period kind of basically around the time of the birth of Christ,like we're getting to the AD period.Eastern Europe,Central Eastern Europe,is kind of like a it's in a lot of tumult.And there are situations where it looks like,you know,proto Slavic people,or proto Balto Slavic people are replaced by Germanic people,then the Germanic people disappear,then they're re replaced by proto Slavic people.And we also have this situation where we know this from the historical records that the Germanic speaking Goths,who were probably from Southern Scandinavia at one point had migrated wandering all the way to the Black Sea coast,so kind of creating a Germanic,Germanized band that has shifted eastward,presumably,I mean,not presumably,there were other types of people in that area,but the Goths were culturally dominant,right?Can you talk about the interactions of the Germanic people and the Gothic people,like,kind of on the precipice of history?
Peter Nimitz
44:35
Sure.So the Germanic peoples,there's kind of these repeated migrations out of Scandinavia into continental Europe,probably beginning as early as the Nordic Bronze Age.There's probably some stuff around the time of the Bronze Age collapse,but it really starts in the kind of in the middle of the first millennium BC.And there's these repeated expansions where they kind of go out,they migrate and by the time of the Roman Empire,they're actually like,breaking on the borders of the Roman Empire.So first you have these groups that were probably like,not all that Germanic.They were,like,heavily Celtic admixec,heavily descended from the Trzciniec people.And this is where like Tacitus isn't sure if people are like Scythian or if they're German.I think that those are like the very,the early,the descendants of the earliest Germanic migrants out of Scandinavia who kind of mix with these non Germanic groups.So I think it's like the Scirii are one of them.There's some other ones,the Goths,though they're one of the later groups.They don't actually arrive in continental Europe until after Caesar's death,probably during Augustus's reign.So around the time,like Jesus is a child,the Goths,they sail out of Gotland or Sweden,they invade the Vistula River,like modern day central Poland,and they have this incredibly destructive invasion.It's,I think,the study I saw from a year ago,I think it came out in January,suggests something like 75% population displacement in Poland as a result of this Wielbark Gothic culture.So these Wielbark Goth culture people,they do not stop.Eventually they take advantage of the power vacuum on the western steppe,and they expand in the western steppe too.This is where,again,we get into history a little bit.Jordanes,he discusses the formation of the kingdom of Oium.There are some -
Razib Khan
46:30
Peter Nimitz
46:35
Yes.So the Goths,they actually go,and I believe starting in the second century but really in the third century you have the Goths.They go they take over the western steppe,and they form the Cherniakhiv culture,the Chernyakhov culture,depending if you're looking at Russian or Ukrainian archeologists.So the Chernyakhov,it completely displaces this Zarubinets culture,which the Zarubinets culture is the fusion of the Chernoles culture with the Milograd culture.So the Chernoles people,they had been largely defeated by the Scythians.Their survivors are absorbed into this Milograd culture,it probably accounted for maybe,like 10 to 25% of the Zarubinets culture ancestry.So the Zarubinets people,they go and for,like,the last few centuries before the Common Era,they have a quite considerable expansion.Like,their population grows quite a bit.You do start to see some integration with trade.They are expanding into what's nowadays western Russia,into like parts of southern Ukraine.But,again,are focused on kind of that middle Dnieper region and the tributaries of the Dnieper river.So when the Goths storm in from the West,rather than the east,they're incredibly destructive.They go and they dominate the entire steppe.The Zarubinets it's culture basically implodes.It actually fragments into like multiple cultural traditions.So whatever,like unity the Zarubinets had,and they were,I would assume,kind of like a loose Federation.That's what Herodotus implies.There was some sort of,like diplomatic back and forth between a lot of the different tribal chiefs.They did have,like foreign rulers that would show up sometimes and kind of impose a somewhat unified cultural sphere that would enable them to not be destroying each other all the time.So the Zarubinets culture,it completely implodes.And you have these fragments that survive,kind of on the fringes of the Dnieper,the fringes of the Desna river,and,of course in the Pripet marshes as well.These fragments still cause the Goths a lot of problems.Jordanes mentions that just before the arrival of the Huns,the Goths from this kingdom of Oium,they waged this extremely destructive war against these presumably Slavic populations to the northeast,and that's what weakens the Goths enough to allow for the Huns to kind of completely destroy them.So the Goths,prior to the arrival of the Huns,they were actually expanding quite far.There are some Gothic finds as far east as the Kama River,whether or not that means that they're actually Gothic settlers or soldiers going that far,or whether it's just like diffusion from trade network is uncertain,but they clearly were like expanding massively to the east at the time of the Hunnic arrival.So the Huns arrive,and they start off the great wandering of peoples.And this is kind of a thing that really gives the Slavs their -
Razib Khan
49:41
Yeah,let me.Let me just jump in.Just give me a break here.You know,you're talking about the great wandering of people.So what happens is the Huns show up in about the fourth century,sometime in the fourth century,obviously before,like 376 or so,375.And okay,the Goths who are being bad asses they freak out.There are Sarmatian tribes that are like,racing ahead,running into them.And so it's just like a basic,a massive bum rush.And there's a knock on chain reaction as various Gothic people stream eastward or westward into the Roman Empire.Sometimes they're giving refugee status,basically.And sometimes the Romans are like,talk to the hand.And so the Goths are just like,all right,you either kill us or we kill you.And like,you know,that's how the battle of Adrianople happened,where the Romans lost,like,a huge I mean,they lost an emperor,I think Valens died during in that battle,but they lost a lot of legions.And,some would argue that this is the beginning of the end of the Unified Roman Empire,even though,you still have Theodosius the Great.I mean,the Romans recovered from Adrianople.But the reality is like this is,I think,the time when you're starting to see the real full integration of Germanic peoples within the borders of the Roman Empire.And it's triggered by the arrival of the Huns to the Western steppe from probably Western Mongolia,whatever.And the Slavs don't really play to my knowledge,like a huge role at this stage.They're kind of like around as bystanders,presumably.Like,it's mostly,you know,Iranian peoples.It's mostly the Sarmatians at this point,Sarmatian tribes,Hans,and then you had a bunch of Germanic peoples,and you kind of had a coalition,kind of like a cosmopolitan horde.And it shows up in things like Wagner's Ring cycle,you know,where you have like,Huns and Goths and all these different groups interacting with each other,right?But the Slavs don't play really that big of a role initially,from what I can tell.But,I can let you elaborate on that.
Peter Nimitz
51:48
Yeah,that's very true.We have a bunch of burials from the migration period now.There are a handful that do suggest that they were Slavic.There's one,I think,in a Roman imperial context,it's probably,I think he was a legionnaire from the fourth century.As there were some Slavs that were like drifting into the Roman Empire,signing up to join the border guards.I think there's two finds of Slavs in Iberia,in a Visigothic or Vandal context.So at least some of them did accompany,like the Eastern Germanic groups as they were migrating across Europe.I don't think it was like a full - I mean,there's no evidence to suggest,at least there was,like political movement.These were probably just like random Slavic subjects who had been recruited for the armies and decided to drive west with the rest of the people.You're completely correct,the Slavs themselves did not really play a role in this stage of the migration period.It would have to be a later period,with the arrival of the Avars,that they really start to play a role in the affairs with the Romans.One thing that the Huns do set off is the series of conflicts in the fourth and fifth centuries,though,that does appear to have basically depopulated all of Eastern Germany and Poland.There's very few archeological finds in any context in Eastern Germany and Poland for really,most of the fifth and sixth centuries.And this is presumably when you have these Slavs who has survived in the refugia within these swamps within Belarus that were too difficult to conquer for these various,Huns and other nomadic tribes.You know,they migrate out to these newly opened up lands in Central Europe.And,you know,they start kind of the colonization.And this is where you get,like the Poles,the Slovaks and,you know,the Czechs eventually.So the proto Slavic language was spoken roughly around 500 ad,so that lines up with it.There's also a volcano that blows up,I think,in 534 AD.Which had extremely negative effects everywhere,but particularly in the far north,where crop where kind of the agricultural season is already like,shorter than it is elsewhere.So there was,like,extreme depopulation in the far north,and this so the combination of,like the post Hunnic invasions,the post hunt like succession wars between the various Germanic groups and this volcano goes off in 534 ad do open up,like a lot of Eastern Germany and Poland,to the Slavic settlers.The most recent DNA research suggests that it's something like 80% population replacement,possibly more.So this is like the first part of the Slavic migration out of the Slavic urheimat into the territories that dominate Europe today.
Razib Khan
54:33
Yeah,one thing I want to say about these depopulations,and these mass killings and all these things I want to emphasize,you know,this is not like Nazi Germany with industrial extermination processes going on.These pre modern people with their compound bows and their swords.You know,they really could not physically kill.Uh,all of these people like it,just they don't have the time and energy.Just the math doesn't work out.But what does happen is if you destabilize,local institutions,and you make it so people can't farm everything collapses,they start killing each other,and also they just starve to death,right?And so when you're talking about depopulation,it could just be the arrival of these nomadic peoples makes it so that the people can't farm anymore.And so it is aninvasion induced famine.And so that's how something like that can happen.I just want to make that clear,like,how,how you have people disappear.I mean,when people could migrate,they will just leave,yeah,like,we might see that actually,like in Greenland with the Norse leaving the 15th century,possibly,right?So just want to be clear about the dynamic there,
Peter Nimitz
55:48
Razib Khan
56:09
Yeah,yeah,everyone just disappeared.And,okay,so,I mean,at this stage,though - I've written about this,you know,I've actually been surprised as ancient DNA and modern DNA as both have come online,that the extent of the Slavic migration in terms of demographics in the south,for the south Slavs,for the Balkans,which,like you've just explained partly actually why that might be,but even as far south as like Macedonia,you know,people are still 30 to 40% at least exogenous.They date to a migration that came out of the Slavic Heartland after about like 500 ad,you know,which is,I mean,that's,that's substantial.I mean,it's like,probably,like Anglo Saxon England might be the same,you know.So obviously there's a massive cultural transformation.Then we go to Slovenia and Croatia.The majority of the ancestor there is actually new.Only a minority of the ancestor date their dates to the Illyrian people that were probably Latinized,you know.And so you're having the Slavs,who were not,they were not a notable State Building,people,you know,with,like,big empires,or anything like that,but they came to inherit much of eastern Europe.And if it wasn't for the Magyars,like,Hungary would probably be a Slavic speaking area.I think there's a good chance that Hungary would be.And then Romania is kind of the exception,where you have a Roman speaking,Roman language,Latin,ypost Latin speaking populations becoming Romanian.There's some blocks of other groups.But can you talk a little bit about,I don't know,like,I mean,what's going on in Eastern Europe after 500 AD?Because Eastern Europe,to some extent,is kind of synonymous in the modern mind,with Slavs.But it was not like that at all during antiquity.
Peter Nimitz
57:59
No,you still had a lot of Germanic groups,and even some Sarmatians that were wandering around,I think,like Pannonia,modern day Hungary,kind of Northern Serbia,that area was dominated by Germanic tribes like the Heruli.There's all these different conflicts.Like,I think the Gepids are another one of the big Germanic tribes in kind of that region,from North Serbia to Eastern Austria to all of Hungary.They're all fighting amongst each other.And you have these Slavic groups,the Slovenes and the Antes,they go and actually set themselves up on the Danube River.Like the Danube,it's a lot warmer,you know,much better and advantageous in kind of the cooling climes of the middle of the first millennium AD.So they go and they start,like,waging a lot of wars,and actually defeat,like,two entire Eastern Roman armies in the 550s.Their population grew quite substantially in that first half of the sixth century.They don't last forever,though.Like,eventually,if the Avars,who they're derived from the Rouren,who are related to the Xianbei people over in China.They go and they show up,I think,in the 560s and they go and actually,like,take over a lot of these Slavic groups.They mobilize these large Slavic armies.They devastate the Balkans in these horrible wars.And this is where you have kind of the first,or I think this is the second wave of - So the first wave of the Slavic migration.The Balkans is like these Antes and Slovenes who actually do have kind of a state structure,or at least some sort of Federation.The second wave is once you have the Avars arrive in kind of the middle sixth century,they are demographically dominated by their Slavic subjects,even though they remain separate for a few generations.They waged a lot of wars against the Romans.They infamously besieged Constantinople as well as Thessalonica,and kind of an alliance with these Sassanids in the early seventh century.And these groups,though,I think the issue is a lot of these groups that came from the east,they're when they try to settle down and,like organize themselves,they cease to be like a nation,and they became a ruling caste.And if your ruling caste is dedicated to war,and you lose a few battles,or even,like a lot of men to various wars,you're forced to rely,like,more and more upon your subjects.So you have to incorporate different tribes into your empire,and that weakens it,since those new tribes don't necessarily have the same level of loyalty as your original,like nomadic nation.the Romans they had their ideology and religion.Had this,like,extremely fundamentalist wave of Christianity that developed in the seventh and eighth centuries.The Avars really didn't have that,though,so they couldn't - their realm could not endure the way that the Eastern Roman Empire could,or the caliphates could.And you know,this was when you see,really,there's a lot of interesting conversions to,Islam and Christianity at this point,but it's probably a different -
Razib Khan
1:01:08
Okay,so I think one thing that I want to bring up here,and I want you to elaborate on,you know,my,you know,I think I read a book called The coming of the Slavs,like,about 20 years ago.It's mostly archeology,you know,based on literary texts.And it dates to after.I mean,really,I think,I think the Slavs really,like,busted through the the East Roman borders during,what was that,like,reign of was it was after Justinian,but before focus,like,it was like,580-590,something like that,maybe Justin II?But in any case,s they show up and you have these complex institutions and social systems.And Illyria,which Slavs ended up taking over,was the military,administrative heart of the empire for a century and a half,like most of the Empire emperors had Illyrian background in some way,like 90% of the period between like,260 and I believe like 570 had some like,Illyrian background,You know what I'm saying?There's a few exceptions like Anastasiaus.A few others.And this becomes totally Slavicized,right?And the argument that I saw in Coming of the Slavs is that Slavs has small scale society which was robust and anti fragile to the collapse of these bigger institutional systems.So,if you had,like,a remnant Roman peasant populations,they were actually culturally assimilated into the Slavic tribal confederations.What do you think about that model?
Peter Nimitz
1:02:42
I think that's largely true.First,the depopulation caused by the wars,the climate shift.Two,you do have the Slavs,they're ecologically advantaged over the other groups.They you know,they can't survive on small scales.They don't rely on institution.They don't rely on large scale institutions to mediate their disputes as much as the Romans did.They're not as reliant on trade.Their economic methods require a lot less sophistication.It's very noticeable in pottery.For instance,the Slavs produced pottery,whereas the Roman and post Roman populations had to import their pottery.So you do see,like,the Slavs were much better adapted for this kind of low tech,decentralized dark age than the Roman and post Roman populations were
Razib Khan
1:03:30
But this is also kind of starting to be,like,on the precipice of the period where we see Slavic ish polities.And I want to,like,actually ask you about that.So a lot of these Slavic polities Have you know only the Polish case is true,although even the Poles like invent Scythian origins for themselves,a lot of them seem to have original like the ruling lineage has a non Slavic root.So for example,the Russian case,or the Kievan Rus case,the ruling lineage is famously basically Swedish and post Varangian adjacent,these Rurikids.Then you had Bulgaria.The Bulgars were originally a Turkic speaking people,right?They were,like,kind of part of the broader Penumbra of the Avar confederacy that came out of that they got Slavicized but they were originally a Turkic people.And I have heard,I don't know how true this,I've heard the Serbs and Croats themselves,who emerged during this period as independent people may have had originally a Sarmatian administrative core,like,what do you know about these sorts of things?
Peter Nimitz
1:04:39
There's a really interesting theory called the stranger King theory,which I'm sure you've heard of.It's usually applied in post or in a colonial and post colonial contexts,for Europeans,they would arrive in an area like Malaysia,Africa,whatever.And since it would only be like a very small like European elite dominating this huge area,the local tribes would actually prefer the European leaders.Or,you know,in like,Islamic context,have like,the Ottoman Sultan,who was like,technically the sovereign - or the Ottoman Khalif was like,technically the ruler of the Sultanate of the say and Sumatra.And I think the Sultan of Gujarat answered to him at one point,as well as you have all these like,there's a like,when you have a lot of different communities who are in conflict,kind of these unending contests with each other.And they know each other very well.They know each other's weaknesses a lot of like,long standing feuds and disputes.They don't trust each other at all,because they know that if they were able to briefly ascend,they're not strong enough to consolidate their power.So it's the roving bandit versus stationary bandit kind of thing.Do you want the people to be in power to be - Like y ou can either do like,a power sharing agreement with different communities where everyone's a roving bandit and have a very lineffective political structure that rewards thieves.Or do you have a stationary bandit where you give power to,this far away,like relatively alien group,and this group is very small,they can't extract that much surplus from you,and they can mediate,like honestly,between all these different communities,since they have no particular interest in any of these communities,at least initially.And I think that's what drove a lot of this,you know,the take over the Slavic communities by the Avars for,like the a lot of the Eastern Slavic groups,where Samo took over the Moravians for the Western Slavs,and then of course the Varangians with the Russians,
Razib Khan
1:06:34
Yeah.The story Samo is very interesting.He's a Frankish merchant.I have a post on my old Gene Expression blog.I think it was like 15 years ago,maybe something like that.It's called a,I called it 'The Dark Age Mighty Whitey' And so there were those Sultans,the White Rajahs of Southeast Asia,like Sarawak and Sabah that area.You know,those are classic cases,they kind of went semi native.You know,Samo was a Frankish merchant,presumably them from a Christian background but he ends up going native among the Islamic tribes and kind of consolidates them and takes over leadership of them.And births a lineage in this area of people descended from him who totally repaganized,or totally become pagan,you know.And I think the Slavs are interesting,because this period shows kind of a regression in our stylized understanding of,like ascending pathway of civilization towards,you know,institutional religion,or monotheism and all these things and that just all just unwound really quickly in vast areas of East Central Europe and the Balkans,where we had a pretty high level of civilization with institutional Christianity,Roman baths,fortifications,all these things.Specialization.You were talking about pottery.Roman pottery,going back and forth is part of the system of international trade that makes the Empire more advanced and more prosperous and makes it even accessible to have consumer goods for even middling prosperous peasants,that all disappears.And what you're describing is is basically just like some sort of,like a localized autarky,where you know it's total subsistence,and you know you eat,what you kill,you're making your own clothes,you're making your own pottery,you're making your all of the finished goods you're making within the local area.Probably the village is like the biggest scale,right?And it's primitive,but it was incredibly successful for a vast area of Eastern Europe.And it just shows how anti fragile this simple way of life is,right?
Razib Khan
1:07:23
Yeah,and that again goes back to that whole concept of the refugia in northern Ukraine and southern Belarus,where you have this very robust style of living that always endures no matter what catastrophe happens in the past,and any time that people try to advance upon that in a way that's not robust it expands like further south into Ukraine.You know,east into Russia,west into Poland,and then the more sophisticated parts of it would just get wiped out.So you have this,like,almost purification of like this,you know,almost perfect,robust lifestyle that can survive in any conditions,and was ideal for expanding in the Dark Ages.
Peter Nimitz
1:08:52
That is a massive question,and it kind of differs.You have the South Slavs,who are more like Byzantine oriented.They like they're extremely heavily influenced by the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire.They ape the Imperial titles later on,I think,by like,the 14th century,the Byzantine Empire reverses course of becoming - Like over the course of.13th century,the Byzantines are becoming like more and more turkified,whereas the defeat of the kind of more turkified Greeks of Anatolia by the rising Ottoman Empire,like shifted the focus the Byzantine Empire towards the west,towards these South Slavic populations,particularly the Serbs,I believe,the very last Byzantine emperor was half Serbian.So you have,like,that stuff's going on in the Balkans,although the Croats and Slovenians are,like,more aligned,you know,they're Catholic,they're not Eastern Orthodox.The West Slavs,they end up in like the more Germanic sphere.The beginning,I think,you know,like in the 10th century,the Germans,they're pushing from like the Elbe,like,further to the east.That's the beginning of the Drang nach Osten,the drive to the east as the Germans take over what's nowadays,like Eastern Germany by the middle of the 12th century,and eventually they launched the northern crusades in the 13th,14th and early 15th centuries to Christianize the pagan Baltic peoples.That drive to the east,it was demographic,it wasn't just ideological.The Germans did,mix with a lot of the different groups of peoples.The traditional way that it would occur is the Germans.They would have their knights.They would conquer an area.They would incorporate the local - they would convert the local nobility to Christianity.Local nobility would agree to tithe its income,a certain fraction of its income,to these German churchmen.These German churchmen would extend Canon law,basically to try to,like,regulate the lives of these partially Slavic,partially Germanic communities.And when the various West Slavic tribes would push back the Germanic noblemen would resettle a lot of these populations,usually enserfing them,whereas promoting,like,a number of the people to the nobility who are,useful soldiers,and that would like,fully deracinate these Slavic tribes and like,make them Germans.That's why you have these eastern Germans who are,like maybe 25 to 40% Slavic in ancestry.It was a very slow process where they gradually incorporated all these different peoples,starting with the Western Slavs and like finishing with some of the Lithuanian groups.Russia is more complicated.You have Vladimir the Great he goes and most likely his story claiming descent from Rurik is fake.He was likely an usurper who murdered the previous ruling family and established himself as like the new ruler.
Razib Khan
1:12:40
Peter Nimitz
1:12:48
Yeah,I think Vladimir the Great was a germanicized Finn basically.Like,his male lineage was probably like - what's very noticeable in Baltic German history in particular,is a lot of the Baltic Germans,they have very little Germanic ancestry.It's the chiefs of the Estonian tribes.And they would convert to Christianity.They would learn German to communicate with the traders and deal with the Germanic churchmen.And they would become German noble families in time.I think that's what happened for,like,the kind of the early Swedes,as they were,like,settling Finland.They incorporated,like,a lot of these Finnic groups into their own society.It wasn't like a population displacement.So I think that's how Rurik - you have,like,this finite Finnic lineage.It becomes a Viking lineage.And eventually,you know,they eventually becomes a Slavic lineage.And there's other stuff.That's the way it is initially,at least.That's why you see like the Rurikids are N1c you see more generally,though,like the more diverse clades of N1c or more diverse lineages of N1c in the Russian population,because later in the Middle Ages,after the 13th century,after the Mongol conquests,the Mongols,they devastate these Finno-Urgian and Turkic polities that are inhabiting,like a lot of European Russia and the particularly the Mordvins,the Moksha,they're one of the the main Mordvin group.They actually had a principality that was successfully resisting Russian expansion,and they were just completely devastated by the Mongols.Their last great king,pouresh.He ended up serving with the Mongol invaders,like he went,I think he died in Poland fighting against the Poles and their German allies at Legnica.So the Russians,they're finally able to colonize a lot of these areas in the central Volga after the Mongols devastate a lot of these polities,like the polities,whether the Khanate of Kazan or this,you know,the various principalities of the Mordvins,the Mari chiefs,they're not able to organize as effective.Believe,as they had been prior to these Mongol expansions.So a lot of these groups,they realize that the Russians are going to win.They see that there's like a constant stream of Russian,Rus,Slavic,whatever you want to call them,like pirates that are tested in the Chronicles.They're like sailing down the Volga.They're settling on the tributaries.They're maintaining a virtual independence from a lot of these Finno-Ugric and Turkic leaders.And they're actually incorporated into these,like,it's very noticeable in the Slavic DNA paper,for instance,that the a lot of like the Moksha,all these groups,they do have noticeable Slavic ancestry,and it's from like these kind of early penetrations in the 13th century and the 14th century following the Mongol conquest,where you do have,like them kind of overrunning these groups,I guess,like European ancestry and Paraguayans would be kind of a good new world example.This Slavic infiltration of these Finno-Ugric and Turkic societies and the Volga and the Kama,it pre stages like actual rush,like a broader Russian political demographic expansion.Once the Grand Duchy of Moscow really firmly establishes itself.You have already like these people.They're part Russian.They're part like Finno-Ugrian.A lot of them start to learn Russian,just so they can participate in trade routes,negotiate with,the various nobles and stuff.A lot of them serve in the armies and the Russians.They're actually very keen to win their support.So they actually extend,like,ranks of nobility onto,in some cases entire tribes,just because all of the men of a certain tribe agreed to provide - or agreed to join the Russian army in return.One of the Mari tribes,for instance,they were just entirely ennobled,like,as a collective,because they agreed to join as a whole Tsar Ivan IV Grozny's campaign against the Khanate of Kazan.So there were these people,like,over time,they were like,they're no longer Mari,they've been fully absorbed into the Russian population.So that's how you get,like,all the Slavic - So these early penetrations,I guess it's the simple way to put it,the early penetrations,I think.And like the maybe the 12th but definitely the 13th and 14th centuries,like these pirates,bandits,runaway Serfs and stuff into the Finno-Ugric and Turkic territories,partially slavicized these Finno-Ugric and Turkic populations,and then later the Russian political structure fully slavicizes and russifies some unnecessarily slavicized Finno-Ugric Turkic populations by offering a stake in the political structure of what will eventually be the Russian Empire.
Razib Khan
1:17:46
Well,I mean,so I guess one of the things we've been going for a while now - So,we start with this narrative that these proto Slavs,proto Balto-Slavs are kind of these people,like smashed between other indo Europeans.Is a way that I can think of it,because you got the Indo-Iranians,kind of south of the East and the north and the west.You have the proto Germanics,and like,presumably,in the Balkans,you have,like,proto Illyrian type peoples,like these Slavs are this kind of,like little black hole of like they're not on the coast land,they're not on the open steppe.They're these,like forests,or these swamps.And then,kind of like the Anglos,with the new world,these Russians,these East Slavs,but the West Slavs didn't do too shabby either.You know,expanding into the Balkans and and into,you know,what is today,a lot of Eastern Germany,with where the Sorbs were,the Wends,those West Slavs that they they really took advantage of an opportunity,like,expanded,like,radically.I mean,even setting aside the Siberian expansion of the Russians,later on,they assimilated and intermixed with these Finnic groups.And so the zone of the world that are occupied by the Slavs blew up really quickly.And I think,like,people would be like if you talk to Herodotus,he's probably be a little shocked.You know what I'm trying to say?Like,the ethnic like,the ethnographic map of the world was very different,and the Slavs were very,very constricted 2500 years ago,right?
Peter Nimitz
1:19:04
Yes.I mean,a lot of it,again,was just ecological and agricultural,though.In Herodotus time,cattle did not have adaptations for the far,far north.A lot of the far northern peoples,like along the Kama River,they focused on pig farming rather than cattle ranching.So by the early Middle Ages,I think it's like the,you know,12th,13th centuries,you actually do see,like the Russians,they're deliberately breeding cattle to be resistant to the Far North.That's where you get their you know,they're starting to expand ranching like,all the way as far north as,like modern day Arkhangelsk area.Similarly,starting I believe in the 10th or 11th century,there's a new type of rye which is invented,and that's the main thing that allows the East Slavs to explosively expand and really demographically dominate a lot of what's nowadays,European Russia.So,like,all of a sudden the crops that the East Slavs were growing in the Volga,the Oka,all these other river basins,the Dvina - it's much more resistant to the cold temperatures.Sometimes you can even,like,sow it over the course of winter,and it'll survive.So crop yields probably doubled,you know,over the course of a century and actually that enabled a massive population expansion.That's why you see,like the drive all the way to Nizhny Novgorod.And this also allows a greater surplus too.So these,like previous Varangians,who had relied on gift exchanges and stuff to form kind of a weak Confederation,in some ways,were actually able to build like a state which was dynastic and could be passed down by father to son.And even though it didn't,there were a lot of like internal factions,which eventually resulted in,you know,the division of the Slavic people today.
Razib Khan
1:21:00
So I want to jump forward really quickly and close out.The stuff like ideas like Pan-Slavism and all these ideas that emerge.I guess,a question that I would have you with Pan Slavism is,is it basically just a way for Russians to take charge of Slavdom?Because you have these Catholic poles and Czechs and other groups that are very,very like,tightly integrated into Central Europe,into Germanic Europe.But Pan-Slavism seems to be just a way for the 19th century,for a way for the Russian state and the Russian Empire to just kind of take charge and create,make all the other Slavic people kind of satellites of them
Peter Nimitz
1:21:37
That was definitely why the Russian Empire - Like a lot of Russian imperialists,like Alexander Pushkin,were very supportive of it.The Poles never supported it.But there actually was quite a bit of support for Pan slavism.Maybe not like a majority of the Western Slavic populations,but like,there were a lot of Slovaks and Czechs,for instance,who they disliked German domination and actually supported the Russian Empire,and they wanted the Russians to go and conquer them.You had a particularly in like the Ruthenian population.You know,there were some people who were,very Russophillic,rather than Ukrainophilic,or,like Austrophilic.Most famously,the Serbs were massive Pan-Slavists and thought that Russia should help them in their struggles against the Turks.The Bulgarians inherited that and also believe that to a different extent,since the kind of partial Turkic background of the Bulgarians was known both in Russia and in Bulgaria,I don't think it was until,like the 1880s actually,that the Russians actually knew that the Bulgarians were Slavic.They thought they were Turkic.It wasn't until after the Russians split Bulgaria off from the Balkans that they were like,oh,yeah,these people speak the language that's probably closely related to us.I mean,at least,like,widely known.There were some academics that did believe this.I mean,the main,like,focus of Pan-Slavism was on the kind of meta cultural frontiers with the Germans,with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia,and especially in the Caucasus.Like the Caucasus is where you see the really hardcore Pan slavists.They're like,it's kind of ridiculous that people who look exactly like us.They have the same you know,round face and you know blonde hair and balding by 25 and have the same Slavic fatalism.Why are we like feuding with each other when we've got Chechens and Dagestan and Circassians just to the South.Bbefore,the displacement of the Circassian,I don't think is well understood by like anyone in the West,The population of the North Caucasus had exploded from the introduction of corn,and it was only Nader Shah devastating the area,like some Crimean Tatar slave raids.You know at the beginning of the 18th century that it kind of like depopulated the region.But by the beginning of the 19th century,the population growth of these North Caucasian peoples was actually a really serious threat to Russia and to the Ottoman Empire.
Peter Nimitz
1:22:23
Peter Nimitz
1:24:34
Razib Khan
1:24:37
Okay,okay,which is,you've written a little bit about Iberia,and it's actually pretty actually pretty interesting,because Iberia,so it's like a place like Britain.It looks like the Neolithic people just disappeared.They were rolled in totality,like 10% left.Iberia is interesting because it looks like kind of a mixed situation where Neolithic civilization - I don't know,like the details.And I don't know if you've done enough reading to make to draw a conclusion,obviously the Basques are almost certainly Neolithic in origin.But what about the Iberian languages like Tartessian are the ones on the coast,like,do you think they're indo European or the Neolithic?Because we know the Celtiberians had already brought,you know,probably before the Celtiberians,because the celtiberians are relatively late.They're probably Indo-European.They're Indo European.They're Indo Europeans that arrive with the Bell Beakers,right?Probably related to the Italic languages or something like that.Lusitanian might be like a remnant to that is what I've heard.But so do you think the Iberian languages of the Southern and the eastern coast areIndo European or not?
Razib Khan
1:25:42
Peter Nimitz
1:25:46
Yes.
Razib Khan
1:25:47
Peter Nimitz
1:26:11
Razib Khan
1:26:48
Peter Nimitz
1:27:45
Razib Khan
1:27:47
Speaker 1
1:27:48