![]() The Battle Axe culture emerged in the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula about 2800 BC. ![]() The Nordic Bronze Age has, in turn, been considered ancestral to the Germanic peoples. It co-existed for a time with the hunter-gatherer Pitted Ware culture, which it eventually absorbed, developing into the Nordic Bronze Age. It is thought to have been responsible for spreading Indo-European languages and other elements of Indo-European culture to the region. The Battle Axe culture was an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture, and replaced the Funnelbeaker culture in southern Scandinavia, probably through a process of mass migration and population replacement. Good thing it’s not the battle ax that’s doing the talking.Southern Scandinavian Peninsula and southwest Finland.Ĭorded Ware culture, Funnelbeaker culture, Pitted Ware culture The Atlas Project is seeking to do what any good atlas does-reveal something remarkable, and tell people about it. “By analyzing data from more prehistoric individuals in the future, we aim at further increase the knowledge of dispersal, interaction, and admixture between prehistoric groups.” “With the new knowledge on the ancestry of the Battle Axe Culture people, we have come one step further toward the goal of the Atlas Project, to understand the demographic history of Stone Age Scandinavia,” Malmström says. Both groups and their distinctive genetics and cultural signatures-the grave goods-are connected genetically with the slightly older Yamnaya Culture of the Pontic Steppe, north of the Black Sea. The Battle Axe Culture appears to share common ancestry with the Corded Ware Culture, which ranged more widely across Europe. Courtesy Jonas Karlsson // Östergötlands Museumīesides being distinct from the other groups, the genetic information pointed researchers to the people’s roots. They were buried with pots and other items. The family buried at Bergsgraven, as displayed at the Östergötlands Museum, includes the family dog. The Pitted Ware Culture are known of the gouges they made in their pots before firing, so let’s not speculate on which one would win in a fight. “We have thus far unraveled three genetically distinct groups, the Battle Axe Culture, the Funnelbeaker Culture, and the Pitted Ware Culture, ” Malmström says. They analyzed genetic material from the grave as a part of The Atlas of a Thousand Ancient Genomes Project, which is attempting to track the arrival, dispersal, and interrelations of ancient Scandinavians through genetic analysis. ![]() Bergsgraven was a natural place for Malmström and her team to target in their quest to learn more. The Funnelbeaker Culture, which occupied Central Europe about 2,000 years earlier, liked their pots with wide tops.īecause of glaciers, Scandinavia was colonized much later than many other parts of Europe, and as a result, its Neolithic people-and their genetic signature-are distinct. The Corded Ware Culture, also active in the third millennium BC, were named for the decorative imprints on their ceramics, which resemble pressed cords. Graves are a key source of information for this study, because how people were buried and what they were buried with can be so distinctive. Scientists have long been interested in how people dispersed across Europe, and the cultures they developed in different places. “It is a very well-preserved, school-book example of a Battle Axe burial.” The Swedish town of Linköping, where a Neolithic family grave is adding to the understanding of human migration. “We have been interested in the Bergsgraven burial for a long time,” says Helena Malmström, a bioarchaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of the study. To determine how the Battle Axe Culture (great name for a band) was related to other European cultures of the Neolithic, researchers recently turned to DNA, and published their findings in a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Over the years, more graves in the region have been found and their dead are now believed to be distinct from other European cultural groups at the time, due to one particular type of item they were often buried with: battle axes. The grave came to be known as Bergsgraven (“Mountain Grave”) and offered a glimpse at a population that little was known about. Woman, man, child, and dog emerged during an archaeological investigation that also turned up a variety of grave goods. In 1959, a 4,500-year-old family and their battle ax turned up in Linköping, in southern Sweden.
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