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Sardinia

Near the northern tip of Sardinia is a ziggurat-like platform where sheep, pigs and cattle were sacrifice nearly 6,000 years ago, when the first Sardinians had arrived, most likely from colonies that had been established earlier on the Balkan Peninsula, where Greece is now located.  As the population of the Sardinian colony had burgeoned pilgrims had come from all over Sardinia to sacrifice at the altar on this platform that had been built near the northern tip of the island, and rejoice in their brilliance of the culture that their ancestors had built on a foundation of farming, fishing, animal husbandry and the mining of silver -- massive deposits of silver had been discovered on the western side of the island.

Mercantile Beaker people living on the coast of North Africa noticed when large quantities of silver began to to emerge from Sardinia, and they founded colonies of their own on the island to trade with the natives.  Soon, shipments of silver were being delivered to Beaker colonies in North Africa, along the Atlantic coast, and most importantly on the Isle of Britain, where tin was available in large quantities.  Ships owned by Beaker merchants also traded with colonies of Neolithic farmers along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

It probably wasn't long before owners of the vessels were hiring Sardinians to man their ships, because Sardinian men had been manning fishing boats since the firs Sardinians had arrived on the island.  Sardinian Women didn't like the new developments, because their husbands were often tempted to go to sea, where new adventures might await them, but there was little that Sardinian women could do about it.

The Nuragic culture

About 3,900 years ago Sardinians started building massive stone towers on the island.  These towers, known as nuraghe, housed priests who spent their days mostly sleeping and their nights observing the movements of stars.  The knowledge and understanding possessed by the priests was very valuable to Sardinians, who paid the priests for advice on everything under the sun.  More than 10,000 nuraghe were eventually built on the island, and archaeologists named the culture of the later Sardinians the Nuragic culture because of the large number of nuraghe that they built.

Then, about 3,200 years ago Sardinia, the home of the Nuragic Culture, was invaded by warriors from southern Corsica who wore horned helmets.  The Sardians eventually assimilated the Corsican invaders, but several centuries later they were again invaded, this time by Phoenicians, who then yielded to the Carthaginians.  The Carthaginians were then expelled by the Romans, who simply assimilated the Sardinians.  And that was that.

Incantations, ceremonies and religious prohibitions

Archaeologists have had a hard time explaining how Sardinians managed to be so expert in so many things, even though they used no written language.  In this regard we should note that they must have brought much of their knowledge from the Middle East.  Moreover, they must have learned about ship construction from both the Minoans and the Beaker people, and the Maritime Beaker people were expert long-distance traders.

Moreover. they were extremely superstitious people.  This might be viewed by modern people as a handicap, because their superstitions made them avoid changes in procedure or use of new methods.  For them, everything was magic, and the slightest deviation could interfere with the magic, but there was another side to the coin.  Accompanying every action with an incantation and considering every action to be a ceremony would ensure that no detail is amiss.  Moreover, such an approach also encouraged the practitioner to rehearse his procedures to ensure that he makes no mistakes when it comes to actual performance.  Thus, serendipity played no part in performance, and this prevented new inventions and discoveries from occurring.  But attention to detail ensured perfect preservation of knowledge and skills, and perfect performance.

Based on the example of the Nuragic Culture, we can see how belief in magic has been key to the success of hominins from the start.  Belief in magic is not just a biproduct of an overactive imagination, but a strategy for survival, and it was probably a factor in the survival of hominins from the very beginning, when teaching and learning behaviors became our specialty.

Contrary to what we may think, the specialty of our genus and species is not inventiveness.  For instance, chimpanzees rival us and may surpass us in inventiveness.  If you doubt that, take a look at a chimpanzee's nest in a tree -- they build a new one every night, and each nest is a new invention because no two trees are alike.  (This is not an inborne behavior, like a spider building a web.)

The problem is that  chimpanzees are often unable to transmit knowledge from one generation to the next -- a chimpanzee will not copy another chimp's actions, or a human being's actions, unless he can see a reason for doing so, whereas a human being often will, regardless of whether he can perceive an advantage in doing so.  This is what I call a learning behavior.

Other things that prevent chimpanzees from creating a body of knowledge are that their memories are too poor and their lives are too short.  And of course they lack a capability for language, which, along with teaching and learning behaviors, can transmit knowledge from one individual to another and from one generation to the next.

White skin in Europe

XXXWhile the Nuragic Culture was at its height, Neolithic civilization in Europe was undergoing a dramatic change as a result of the introduction of millet, which grew fast and was rich in energy,  At the same time, there was an increasing population in Europe of rootless people who wandered about, stealing crops from the fields.  These rootless people had been crowded out by rising populations in other places where millet had been introduced, causing the human populations to burgeon.XXX

XXXThese rootless people began to not only steal crops from the fields, but to squat on land owned by the elite that was being farmed by tenant farmers.  The elite, who lived in large villages nearby, whose land was being stolen from them, were unable to stem the tide, and often became rootless people themselves.XXX

XXXThe new farmers tended to have very small plots of land which they had to defend fiercely.  Men were forced to do much of the farm work, and they were afraid to leave their land even for short periods in order to go hunting.  Nor did they have extra land on which to raise domesticated animals.XXX

XXXThe result was that these farmers with small plots of land were poorly nourished.  In particular, they had little Vitamin D in a diet that consisted almost entirely of cooked millet seeds, and many of the farmers had weak bones, and their children had weak bones and often were unable to acquire and defend even small plots of land.  The survivors often had whiter skin, with less pigment, that could absorb more sunlight to manufacture Vitamin D.  The European population gradually became whiter, and they became better able to endure poor diets.XXX

The Sea People

The Corsican warriors, after plundering the superrich of the Nuragic culture, quickly learned the rudiments of seafaring, commandeered ships from their Sardinian owners, and went on a rampage of plunder in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.  Their first targets were likely merchant ships carrying valuable cargoes, but their next targets after that, were the superrich of other societies, like the Mycenaeans on the Greek mainland.

The palace at Mycenae was indeed plundered about that time, and the Corsican pirates were likely the culprits.  Robbed of their treasure, the Mycenaeans were unable to pay their priests, soldiers and servants, and they quickly lost power.  Then, local people, inspired by the success of the Corsicans, pillaged the palaces again.  The Mycenaean elite knew of no way to live richly except by robbing others, and quickly joined the lower classes.  The common people of the Mycenaean world, even if they knew how to read the Linear B script, lost all interest in literacy, and the Mycenaean world entered into a Dark Age, and the deeds of the Mycenaeans were remembered only in tales told by storytellers.

Other raids were carried out by common people who had commandeered ships, in imitation of the Corsicans, and attempts were made to raid even the Egyptians.  The Egyptians called these raiders the "Sea People".

Phoenicia seems to have never been touched by the raiders, perhaps because their wealth was not concentrated in palaces, and the Phoenicians went on to develop a written language whose script was the inspiration for Syriac script, Arabic script and the Greek alphabet.

The Etruscans

At the same time that various cultures were developing on Sardinia, ending with the Nuragic culture, other cultural developments were occurring on the Italian Peninsula, just across the water to the east.  Among these cultures was the Villanova culture, which was very much like the Nuragic culture with respect to interest in looking for omens of every kind, including those based on movements of the stars.  Then, just about the time that the Carthaginians took over part of Sardinia, the Etruscan culture developed out of the Villanova culture.

The Etruscan civilization did not have a unitary government, but consisted of a number of city states, and one of those city states, perhaps attracted by salt mines near the mouth of the Tiber River, made the mistake of subjugating Romans to their rule and teaching them the arts of war and shipbuilding.  Subsequently, the Romans shook off their Etruscan king and set to work at conquering Etruscan city states that were so busy fighting each other that they neglected to deal with the upstart Romans.  The Romans conquered and sacked Etruscan city states until all of Etruria came to accept the superiority of Rome.

The Romans obviously despised the Etruscans, whose women ruled their households and whose men often spent their nights observing the stars and spent days and nights looking for omens of every kind.  Etruscan men were excellent seafarers, but Romans made better husbands, so Etruscan women were probably happy when Romans came marching into their cities and took over.

Tombstones are virtually the only place where the Etruscan language can be found today, so linguists are reduced to reading tombstones, and know very little about the language -- in spite of the fact that Etruscans had taught the Romans to read and write.

One peculiarity about the study of the Etruscan language is that the word for "father" does not appear on tombstones, and linguists do not know what it was.  This avoidance of the word may have had its roots in the time when Minoan ships suddenly vanished from Sardinian waters.  Trade was the lifeblood of the Beaker communities, so Beaker communities along the coast frantically built ships to replace the Minoan fleet, and enticed men to desert their families to man the vessels.  Sardinian women were terrified of losing their husbands in this way, and Sardinian people being extremely superstitious, a rumor circulated that excessive use of the word the word "father" (not the word by which fathers were addressed, but the word which identified a biological father) could result in such an unfortunate event.  Thus, use of the word became taboo, and if the word was used at all, it would be only in whispers.

When Romans came marching into Etruria, the Etruscan language quickly disappeared, no doubt because the Romans made Etruscans ashamed of their own language.  Since it was shameful to use the Etruscan language in the presence of Romans, and Romans were everywhere, women no doubt avoided teaching any fragment of the language to their children, and punished them for speaking it.

Etruscans had, at least early on, considered Romans to be barbarians, and Romans had perhaps accepted that judgement, and this enabled the Romans to learn many things from the Etruscans, including the engineering skills needed for the construction of arches and other structures and about military tactics, wTTeaponry and military organization.  Even after the Roman conquest of Etruria the Romans continued to consult with Etruscans, on occasion, particularly with regard to divination and the interpretation of omens -- Etruscan priests were quite knowledgeable about such things.

Reconstructing grammar from tombstones

The Etruscans, unlike the people of the Nuragic culture, developed a written language, but their spoken language quickly died after Rome took over Etruria, most likely because the Romans despised the social behavior of the Etruscans, and made the Etruscans ashamed of their own language.  As the Etruscans became assimilated to Roman behaviors and adopted the language of the conquerors, they quickly forgot their own language.  One if the few places where the Etruscan language can still be found is tombstones.

One peculiarity of these inscriptions is their repetitious nature.  Words, phrases and sounds are repeated, and the repetition of word endings, representing the sounds with which the words end, is making it very difficult for linguists to decipher the language, because word ending are basic to the grammatical structure of the language, and Etruscans who composed the text on the tombstones often changed the word endings so as to come up with a string of like word endings.  These endings are often ungrammatical, but the linguists are so unfamiliar with the language that they don't know which endings are grammatically correct and which are not.

White skin in Europe

XXXWhile the Nuragic Culture was at its height, Neolithic civilization in Europe was undergoing a dramatic change as a result of the introduction of millet, which grew fast and was rich in energy,  At the same time, there was an increasing population in Europe of rootless people who wandered about, stealing crops from the fields.  These rootless people had been crowded out by rising populations in other places where millet had been introduced, causing the human populations to burgeon.XXX

XXXThese rootless people began to not only steal crops from the fields, but to squat on land owned by the elite that was being farmed by tenant farmers.  The elite, who lived in large villages nearby, whose land was being stolen from them, were unable to stem the tide, and often became rootless people themselves.XXX

XXXThe new farmers tended to have very small plots of land which they had to defend fiercely.  Men were forced to do much of the farm work, and they were afraid to leave their land even for short periods in order to go hunting.  Nor did they have extra land on which to raise domesticated animals.XXX

XXXThe result was that these farmers with small plots of land were poorly nourished.  In particular, they had little Vitamin D in a diet that consisted almost entirely of cooked millet seeds, and many of the farmers had weak bones, and their children had weak bones and often were unable to acquire and defend even small plots of land.  The survivors often had whiter skin, with less pigment, that could absorb more sunlight to manufacture Vitamin D.  The European population gradually became whiter, and they became better able to endure poor diets.XXX

The Bantu expansion

Very early fleets of merchant ships were based in Taiwan and the Philippines  -- specializing in carrying raw jade that was mined in Taiwan and mostly processed in the Philippines.  Later merchant fleets were based in Island Southeast Asia, and specialized in a spice trade with Sri Lanka and southern India.  Austronesian merchant ships also began sailing clear across to Africa.  This is how Africans obtained Austronesian, Southeast Asian and South Asian crops that grew well in parts of Africa.  The growing of these crops spread across Africa, and eventually to the Bantus.

The Bantus originally occupied only the southwestern corner of present-day Cameroon, near the present-day Nigerian border, but today about half of the people in sub-Saharan Africa speak Bantu languages, all descended from the language spoken by these ancestral people.  How this came to be is the story of the Bantu expansion.

 The original Bantus came into possession of three very important food plants (African yams, bananas and millet) about 3,500 years ago and quickly transitioned from a hunter-gatherer way of life to a settled life of cultivating those crops and others.

By a stroke of luck, they came into contact with early pioneers of the African Iron Age. which seems to have been concurrent with the Iron Age in Anatolia, and they quickly learned to smelt iron and pound wrought iron into tools and weapons.  These skills were important, because iron tools were useful in loosening the soil so crops could be planted, in digging out weeds that robbed the crops of moisture, and in harvesting yams and other crops, as well as in clearing trees from land to make way for crops.

Fed by the high-energy crops that they grew, the Bantu population grew rapidly and spread first to the west, into present-day Nigeria and then northward along the course of the Niger River.  As they moved north they came into savanna country where yams and bananas did not grow well, but millet grew very well, and their population kept expanding.in that otherwise inhospitable region.

But other Bantus spread south, into the jungles of Equatorial Africa, where yams and bananas grew well if land was first cleared.  After crossing the jungles some of the Bantus continued south, and reached the Upper Zambezi Valley about 2,200 years ago, while others moved westward and arrived in eastern Africa about 2,000 years ago, where yams and bananas did not grow well but millet grew very well.

Bantu populations continued to expand in these various areas for another 500 years, during which time they came into contact with animal herders who had migrated from further north and come into contact with the indigenous Khoisan people of the region, who were hunter-gatherers.  These Khoisan people had controlled all of southern Africa at the time, but the animal herders had pushed them off their land, and forced them to move further south.

But the Bantus got along fine with the animal herders, and traded with them, exchanging root crops, iron tools, salt and other things that they obtained from their extensive trade network for meat, hides and other animal products.  Perhaps the Bantus avoided selling them their their best weaponry -- blades of hardened steel that were stiff and would hold a keen edge.

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But then tragedy struck the Bantus.

Parallel events around the Mediterranean Sea

While the Bantus were expanding demographically in parts of Africa, several Mediterranean civilizations, including Egypt and the Mycenean Greek city states came under siege by a "Sea Peoples" that consisted of various people from around the Mediterranean Sea who themselves come under seaborne assaults.  Out of the "dark age" that followed emerged the Mediterranean civilizations with which we are more familiar, including Athens, Sparta and other city states of Greece.  The Nuragic Civilization also was much changed when it re-emerged, and in its place was the Etruscan Civilization on the mainland and a remnant of the Nuragic Civilization on Sardinia.  Phoenicia emerged in the Levant, and established a series of trading stations along the North African coast out of which Carthage rose to dominance while Rome deposed its Etruscan king and challenged Etruria and then Carthage.  The First Punic War set up the conditions that enabled Rome to take Sardinia away from Carthage, and then the Romans sacked Carthage itself in the Second Punic War and replaced it with a Roman city.

Augustus Caesar established Rome as an Empire that controlled nearly all shores of the Mediterranean Sea, but then the western Roman Empire suffered a series of reverses while Constantine consolidated control of the eastern part of the Empire.  Then, during the reign of Justinian, the Bubonic Plague which originated further east, struck Byzantium just as Justinian prepared to reclaim territory that had been lost in the west to barbarians who had overrun Rome itself as well as North Africa.

Justinian started off with North Africa, which had been overrun by the Vandals.  Ships were dispatched to North Africa loaded with soldiers, military equipment and grain; but unfortunately rats came along with the grain, the rats were infested with fleas, and the fleas were carriers of the deadly bubonic plague.  This was the Justinian Plague, which had its source in parts of South Asia.  Subsequently, the plague spread throughout the Roman Empire and into Africa.  In Africa, the Bantus were particularly hard-hit.

Trouble in Africa and recovery

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When grain shipments to feed Roman soldiers arrived at African ports, the grain was accompanied by rats, fleas and bubonic plague. The plague was then passed on to flees that infested rats that were native to Africa, and spread throughout Africa, and especially to Bantu villages. The hunter-gatherers of Africa were less affected because they were less inclined to store food in their homes.

Like the population of the Roman Empire at that time, the Bantus were hard hit, because this was the first time they had been exposed to bubonic plague, and many villages were abandoned after the plague wiped out most of the people.  However, the Bantus eventually recovered, and as their populations again started expanding they increasingly came into contact with the Khoisan hunter-gatherers of southern Africa whose linguistic and genetic roots are deeper than those of any other people anywhere.  This is because of the long period of relative stability in southern Africa, going back hundreds of thousands of years.  These ancient people have click consonants in their speech which might have originated as imitations of the percussive signals that once enabled Homo sapiens hunting groups to communicate with each other.

By the way, modern Americans sometimes use simple signals reminiscent of the earliest percussive signals.  For instance, two short groans with the mouth closed and beginning with stops can signal dismay, but if the second groan begins with an aspiration, it signals confirmation.  "Oh, oh" signals that something has gone awry but "Oh ho!" signals discovery.  "Ah ha!" signals enlightenment and "Oh!" signals surprise.  Warnings and emergencies are signaled in a variety of ways.

The Bantus traded iron products for ivory, meat, hides and other resources that could be obtained by the Khoisan, intermarried with the Khoisan, and in some cases integrated some click consonants  into their own languages.  But as Bantu populations kept growing some Khoisan were forced to abandon their hunting grounds and retreat to hilly or drier areas that were less suitable for agriculture.

The Khoisan sometimes responded by raiding Bantu villages, and the Bantus responded in kind, and sometimes, as hostilities escalated, the Khoisan would join together in alliances to force the Bantus to abandon their villages.  In response to these escalations, Bantu blacksmiths began to fashion more effective weapons to counter the long spears of the Khoisan warriors.

The Bantus no longer used wrought iron to produce knives for their own use -- wrought iron blades would not hold a sharp edge, and could easily bend and break.  Instead, they used blades of carbonized steel that were stiff and would hold an edge.  After some experimentation the blacksmiths came up with a weapon design based on such a blade, by attaching the blade to the end of a stick of hardwood.  This weapon was known as an assegai. named after the hardwood that was used in its construction.

The long spears of the Khoisan warriors were no match for the assegai, except on hilly ground (which was usually unsuitable for agriculture), and the Khoisan were forced to retire to dry and hilly lands to the north and west of their favorite hunting grounds.

Ongoing evolution?

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For the most part, Bantu-speaking peoples have triumphed, in general, among the other indigenous peoples of Africa.  They have triumphed militarily. economically and demographically.  For instance. about half of all Africans now learn a Bantu-based language in infanthood, presumably from their mothers, before they learn any other language.

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The many Bantu languages have evolved, in the course of time, from a language that was spoken by only a few people who lived in a small area near the "armpit" of Africa, three or four thousand years ago.  Although not all Bantu-speaking people are direct descendants of the small original Bantu population, the popularity of Bantu languages today indicates that evolution is still ongoing among Homo sapiens.  

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The Bantus have always been quick to adopt new ideas.  For instance, they didn't invent the smelting of iron, nor did they invent blacksmithing, but somehow they came into early contact with early pioneers of smelting and working with iron, and took up those arts with alacrity.  Moreover, yams (African yams), bananas and millet, all native to Africa, were domesticated by others before the Bantus began growing them.  Bantus took up the herding of cattle as they moved into areas which were too dry for farming, and then came to dominate cattle herding in southern Africa, and they were (and are) the merchants and shopkeepers of Africa.  Bantus have been at the leading edge of new things in Africa for more than three thousand years, and that is how they came to dominate the most productive parts of Africa south of the Sahara Desert.

The Bantu expansion illustrates how competition among different ancestral groups drove hominin evolution for at least two million years, and it still is driving our evolution.