This is how the periglacial tundra looked like, in which ancient newcomers to the lands of Scandinavia hunted such deer.
At one time it was promised that material would appear on this topic, and now this time has come. Well, to begin the story about who the ancient Scandinavians were and where “their land began to eat” should be mentioned with a mention of very important finds made in 1996 in the Wolf Cave in Western Finland. Many researchers believe that material evidence of the presence of Neanderthals in it was found there. At the same time, archaeologists estimated the minimum age of the finds made there at 40 thousand years. Note that before this, the most ancient evidence of a person's stay in the North of Europe was considered to be finds dating back to about 8500 BC - that is, the remains of primitive settlements in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as in the Baltic States and Finland.
It is known that the Stone Age, or rather its Paleolithic time, coincided with a large-scale cooling and glaciation. Glaciers either retreated or recaptured vast territories of Europe and Asia. Moreover, the last ice age was only some 26, 5-19 thousand years ago.
The level of the World Ocean in this epoch was much lower than the modern one - by about 120 - 135 meters, since a colossal mass of ocean water froze in glaciers, which were 3 - 4 km thick. Such shallow seas as the Yellow, North, as well as the Persian and Siam gulfs at that time simply did not exist, or they were much smaller than modern ones.
But somewhere between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. NS. the last ice age is finally over. By this time, the entire Scandinavian Peninsula was covered with ice, but they began to recede about 12 thousand years ago. First, Denmark and southern Sweden were freed from their ice shell, then more northern regions. And it was then that the tribes of primitive hunters, who lived at that time on the border with ice, began to move north with herds of reindeer.
That is, all the finds that are at the disposal of archaeologists unequivocally say that the first people, and not "just people", but Cro-Magnons, appeared in Scandinavia precisely at the end of the last glaciation, that is, approximately 13-14 thousand years ago, that is, already in the Upper Paleolithic era. But neither the bone remains, nor the tools of labor of an earlier time, that is, belonging to the Neanderthals, have not been found in Scandinavia. Names at least two similar ancient cultures, whose tools were found on the territory of modern Norway and Sweden.
The tribes that roamed the tundra of the postglacial era were engaged in hunting and gathering. They also fished in rivers and lakes, which were everywhere due to the melting of the glacier. A truly fertile place for primitive settlers was the territory of the so-called Doggerland - the land lying between Denmark and England, and today is hidden under the waves of the North Sea. The finds of tools and a harpoon made of a deer antler at the bottom of the shallow Dogger Bank prove that once there was dry land and people who were engaged in fishing and hunting lived here. Moreover, these were already people of the Mesolithic era, as evidenced by the shape of their tools and the technology of their processing. The shores of Doggerland were overgrown with reeds, in which many birds nested, which made it possible for people to carry out their fishery, remaining in the same place. So it was here that the first pile settlements of sedentary, not nomadic, hunters and fishermen arose even then.
However, fate turned out to be harsh for them. Between 6200 and 6000 BC NS. on the seabed off the coast of Norway, about 100 km from it, three underwater landslides of loess soil, carried into the ocean as a result of melting glaciers, occurred one after the other. The result was a tsunami wave that flooded all of these low-lying lands. Well, the further rise in the level of the World Ocean completely hid these lands from people, thus separating the British Isles from continental Europe.
The rise in the level of the World Ocean caused another phenomenon: the huge glacial Ancylovo Lake, located in the southern part of the modern Baltic Sea, merged with the Atlantic Ocean, and in its place the Litorina Sea was formed, and the outlines of the coastline approached the modern ones.
Distribution map of haplogroups U2 and U5 in Europe.
In the VII millennium BC. NS. Scandinavia has already begun to be covered with forests. At this time, the Mesolithic Maglemose culture (7500-6000 BC) developed in Denmark and southern Sweden, and the Fosna-Hensback culture to the north of it, in Norway and in a large part of southern Sweden. Here, on the eastern shore of Lake Vettern, the remains of seven men were found who lived just in the Mesolithic era, i.e. about 8000 years ago. It was possible to determine their genetic affiliation, and it turned out that they have mitochondrial haplogroups U2 and U5.
An indicator for the culture of that time are flint microliths with a sharp edge, which were used as spearheads and arrows. From 6000 BC NS. their finds are becoming increasingly rare, but long flint flakes, characteristic of the Congemose culture (c. 6000-5200 BC), appear, which were used for arrowheads and flint knives. This culture was also replaced by the Mesolithic culture of Ertebelle (c. 5300-3950 BC) at the end of the Mesolithic era.
The transition to the Neolithic began in Scandinavia around 5000 BC. e., which led to the emergence of many innovations in everyday life of the inhabitants of the peninsula, primarily ceramics. People have learned to polish their stone products and, in particular, stone axes. Settlements have become permanent, rather large and located at river mouths.
Stone axes from the end of the Neolithic era, approx. 3000 - 1800 BC. (Museum of Toulouse)
The culture of Ertebelle was replaced by the culture of funnel beakers from continental Europe (c. 4000-2700 BC). Its main feature was the construction of megalithic structures.
Shovel axes 2800 - 2200 BC. (Archaeological Museum of Brandenburg in St. Paul's Monastery)
Finally, by the end of the III millennium BC. NS. this culture fell under the onslaught of continental aliens belonging to the battle-ax culture, which many researchers consider to be the bearers of the early Indo-European languages. Polished stone battle axes served as a symbol of social status to the people of this culture. Then the inhabitants of Scandinavia got acquainted with the technology of metalworking and entered the Bronze Age.
Flint dagger 1800 BC (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen)
Interestingly, the Swedish-Norwegian battle-ax culture is represented by no less than 3000 burials. From 2500-500 BC NS. also preserved a large number of petroglyphs of western Sweden ("images from Tanum") and in Norway, in Alta. The first petroglyphs were discovered here in 1973. Now there are about 6000 of them. Age from 2000 to 6200 years. In 1985, these rock paintings were included in the UNESCO list of cultural heritage. But in Bohuslan, they found petroglyphs with images of a sexual nature, dated to the time of 800-500. BC NS. So the plots of the Scandinavian petroglyphs turn out to be very ambiguous!
Rock carvings - petroglyphs in the commune of Tanum, Sweden. In 1972, they were discovered by local resident Age Nielsen, who wanted to blow up rocks with dynamite, and as a result, he found these unique images. In total, more than 3,000 drawings were found, located in groups in more than 100 places along the coastal 25-kilometer line of the fjord coast during the Bronze Age. The total area of the complex is 0.5 km². The age of the drawings is estimated in the range from 3800 to 2600 years. A variety of scenes from the life of people of that time pass before us: hunting, everyday scenes, weapons, animals, boats. Due to the influence of acid rain, the drawings are endangered. They are specially painted in red to make it easier for tourists to see them.
Ceramic vessel. (Archaeological Museum of Schleswig)
The early Scandinavian Bronze Age culture arose around 1800-500. BC NS. first in Denmark, and then spread to the southern regions of Sweden and Norway. In the burials, bronze weapons, bronze and gold jewelry, as well as artifacts from Europe appeared. From the 5th to the 1st century BC NS. in Scandinavia, the pre-Roman Iron Age began, which from about the 1st to the 4th century AD was the Roman Iron Age and was significantly influenced by Roman culture. And then the Wendel era and the "Viking era" began …
Dolmen burial
And now let's once again turn to the data of paleogenetics, especially since research in this area under the Human Genome project is carried out regularly today and gives a lot of interesting things. First of all, we note that there is a certain similarity in the specific weight of the same haplogroups on average for ethnicity between the Scandinavians and the Eastern Slavs:
- Scandinavians have 20% R1a, 40% I1 + I2, 10% N1c1 and 20% R1b;
- the Eastern Slavs have 50% R1a, 20% I1 + I2, 15% N1c1 and 5% R1b.
Distribution scheme of haplogroup I1.
The second is that haplogroup I1 is traditionally Scandinavian and that the last common ancestor of modern carriers of haplogroup I1 lived 4,600 years ago. Moreover, the first mutation that separated I1 from I, it is believed, could have occurred 20 thousand years ago. And nevertheless, all those who possess this haplogroup today come from one single man who lived about 5 thousand years ago. And this, just as it was, was the time when Indo-Europeans, belonging to the culture of battle axes, came to Scandinavia, and who, obviously, destroyed most of the male part of the aboriginal population.
As a result, the ratio of haplogroups among the Scandinavian peoples today is as follows:
I1 - R1b - R1a - N3 (%)
Icelanders: 34 - 34 - 24 - 1
Norwegians: 36 - 31 - 26 - 4
Swedes: 42 - 27 - 13 - 10
Danes: 39 - 39 - 12 - 2
Burial mound. (Archaeological Museum of Schleswig)
On the territory of Russia, a study was also carried out of the genetic line of the Podgornev family from the village of Annino, Vologda Oblast, who lived here for a very long time. It turned out that her men belong to the haplogroup I1a3b (Z138), which in popular literature is often called the “Viking haplogroup” (I1a). But the most interesting thing is its Z138 marker. Today it is very scattered over the territories of Germany and Austria, but reaches its maximum on the coast of Wales and England, that is, in the Denlos area - "Danish law". However, the warlike Danes also made campaigns to the lands of the Eastern Slavs. For example, the Acts of the Danes by Saxon Grammar (written at the turn of the 12th-13th centuries) speaks of the capture of Polotsk in the 5th-6th centuries by King Frodo I, the son of Hading, who killed the Polotsk king Vespasius, capturing the city by cunning. That is, DNA analysis shows that those who believe that the Scandinavian Vikings did not leave their genetic trace on the territory of Russia are wrong. Moreover, it turns out that among the Vikings there were … also faithful family men who took their wives and children with them, and not just plundered new lands, but also settled on them!
