Thursday, August 20, 2020

On to Europe

Last year I looked at millet in central Asia - "Inner Asia Mountain Corridor", specifically. Millet was, those Kiel researchers thought, animal fodder and maybe bait for birds.

Kiel is now looking further west and later. From the 2700 BC Kazakh steppe, to the 1500 BC Pannonian. Here they don't see it left for the animals; its Bronze-Age humans would eat it too.

Bronze-Age Millet wasn't brought by Yamnaya. The Yamnaya had made Europe Indo-, millennia before. Greece was already Greek and almost Linear-B by then; Italy was certainly Italic. And I don't think either peninsula needed millet at that latitude. Some other factor drove the Europeans (across the Alps and Balkans) to this crop.

Was it Thera?

HELVETIA 2/3/21: The transalpine Gauls had it 1300-800 BC. It was wheat before that. The article suggests the switch to millet wasn't voluntary; they had a larger population in LBA but suffered a drought.

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