Reconstructed Srubnaya hut
Author: Водник. Source: Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0
The Cimmerians go up the Danube, settle in territories of present-day Romania, then in the Pannonian Plain (or even in the German-Polish plain). Finally, populations will move even further west and settle between the Paris Basin and the Southern Alps. In conclusion, we would go so far as to suggest that this massive Cimmerian immigration merged with the Hallstatt culture. And that it is not foreign to the La Tène culture that developed in Europe from the year 450 BC onwards.
The Cimmerians appear in history during an incursion into ancient Phrygia (Anatolia, modern Turkey). They came from the Black Sea. Apparently, they left and returned home after the death of the Phrygian ruler, the legendary Midas. They thus inaugurated a tradition that the Gauls would adopt and that can be summarised as follows: veni, vidi, vici (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’) and ‘venit’ (I returned).
One can, for example, recall the sack of Rome by the Senon Gauls led by Brennus in 387 or 390 BC. This behaviour is atypical. In ancient times, armies fought over territory. The Cimmerians and the Senon Gauls fought for glory.
Where did these Black Sea Cimmerians come from? Of all the ancient populations of Eurasia, the Cimmerian population is the oldest mentioned by Greek and Latin authors. This leads historians to consider their settlement on the shores of the Black Sea as early as 1200 BC Let us now quote the introduction to the Wikipedia article on ‘Kurgan’.
‘A Kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterised by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic-Caspian steppe kurgans spread into much of Central Asia and Eastern, Western and Northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BC. —… —The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus, and researchers associate these with the Indo-Europeans.’ Source: Wikipedia
Then there is an article on the ‘Srubnaya culture’.
‘The Srubnaya culture, also known as Timber-grave culture, was a Late Bronze Age – 18th – 12th centuries BC – culture in the eastern part of Pontic-Caspian steppe. The name comes from Russian сруб – srub – , “timber framework”, from the way graves were constructed. Animal parts were buried with the body. The Srubnaya culture is a successor of the Yamna culture, Catacomb culture and Poltavka culture. It is co-ordinate and probably closely related to the Andronovo culture, its eastern neighbour. Whether the Srubnaya culture originated in the east, west, or was a local development, is disputed among archaeologists.’ Source: Wikipedia
‘Animal parts were buried with the body.’ Animal parts are called meat quarters. This culture therefore considered that the deceased would need food. Before the Gauls practised cremation (probably due to a growing population), they buried their dead in rectangular graves. These were sometimes surrounded by a burial enclosure. The latter is reminiscent of the wooden logs that supported the framework of the Srubnaya tombs. Stranger still, some Gallic tombs contained provisions, including meat quarters.
The Cimmerians and the Gauls thus had at least one belief in common: in the passage to the afterlife, one is not only nourished by love and fresh water.
‘The Srubnaya culture is a successor of the Yamna culture.’
On the Eupedia site (European population genetics), the page Yamna Culture (c. 3500-2500 BCE) states the following.
‘The Yamna DNA samples recovered from elite serious Kurgan southern Russia belonged overwhelmingly to haplogroup R1b- Z2103, the essentially eastern branch of Indo-European R1b. In the absence of other hand R1b subclades probably simple percentage owed to the dominance of has golden royal single aristocratic lineage among the Yamnayan elite buried in Kurgans.’
Haplogroup R1B (Y-DNA) page on the Eupedia website shows the current distribution of this haplogroup. The highest concentrations are in the British Isles, the former Gaul and Spain. It also shows that all regions that were least affected by Roman colonisation have rates of 80% or more as some total population.
A continuity between the Kurgan civilisation, the Yamna culture, the Srubnaya culture, the Cimmerians (who could be considered as southern Yamnaians) and the Gauls can no longer be excluded.
There is one last question: ‘What is the link between the Keltoi and the Gauls?’ In response, a foray into the Bretons and Scythians of antiquity might bring its share of surprises.