Neolithic apocalypto

As long as we're going back to 2019 content on this blog; let's check back in on Herxheim. This was notable for a massacre of non-Herxheimers. It wasn't alone.

Central Europe in the Neolithic, when no bronze was known, was united in the Linear Banded Ceramic culture, abbreviated "LBK" because they're Mitteleuropans; therefore, the LBK language. Pottery itself was a fairly new product at the time. This LBK was trundling along fine until the last century of the 5000s BC. This span, by the way, is amenable to dendro' should any logs survive (in peat?) and anyone think to do it - a Miyake had flared 5259 BC, not implicated in the collapse of course but certainly in range of a solid log cabin.

In 5075 BC the town at Vráble set up a citadel within itself. Normally this would hint at an aristocracy organising itself for layers of defence. One kink in this town-plan is that the town was divided into sectors some of which had different customs from the others. This may imply migration from other towns or even from the hunter-gatherer groups, who'd been hustled north of the LBK band when it formed, but weren't dead yet.

A generation later came the beheadings. We haven't found the heads. That is an annoyance since heads usually come with teeth and inner-ear-bones, which we've been using to extract DNA. Enough can be known that these were, in fact, mass executions and not just an ancient cumulative gravesite, nor even the mass grave one might get from a plague. Yersinia, I think, will come to Europe millennia later, with the Cucuteni before the IndoEuropeans, IndoEuropeans also not yet bothering with that Europe place just like they weren't yet in India.

This all reminds me of the Classic Maya. As aristocracies form, not everybody gets to be a high status polygamist. Wars commence. The losers die. Seeing what happens to losers nearby, smarter people in nearer cities figure they might be more comfortable further away. Maybe they go to another town. Now the second town's old guard has Diversity.

Further notable: the ox drawn plow won't arrive until the 4000s BC. This may have spurred a second wave of minor urbanism, including the Cucuteni in the Balkans but not just them; with higher Gini, and the mouse. Achenheim (also infamous) is middle 4000s BC.