https://t.me/thechadpastoralist/2869
A thought I have been pondering recently is the idea that some Germanic myths originated with the indigenous hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia. Namely,
the creation of man from trees, as explored in the Vǫluspá.
We do know that pre-literate cultural groups such as the Anglo-Saxons were certainly capable of reciting 12 generations of ancestors (namely, King Penda), which is about 350 years if we assume that the average generational gap back then was 20-30 years. Thus, we can infer that their ancestors (who originated in Scandinavia and northern Germany) were capable of this, too.
In the case of the
East Scandinavian cluster, we know that they had emerged somewhere in East Sweden around 2600 BC and went on to replace the West and South Scandinavian genetic clusters in Denmark and Norway by 2000 BC. It is this population, the East Scandinavians, that formed the "predominant ancestry source for later Iron and Viking Age Scandinavians", and most Germanic peoples, as explored
here.
Given that the majority of ancient Europeans were primarily patrilineal (which we can infer based on
archaeological and genetic evidence), it seems likely that the East Scandinavians were as well. Given that the predominant Y-haplogroup amongst them was I1, it seems possible that they understood themselves to have been directly descended from hunter-gatherers indigenous to Sweden about 400 years prior to their emergence (in the form of patrilineal stories of their ancestors, etc.).
By 2000 BC, the East Scandinavian cluster was already admixed with steppe ancestry for about 400-600 years, but again, their male lineages were not of steppe origin and their burial customs were stone cists, not kurgans (until they incorporated them into their own tradition and became the elite of the Nordic Bronze Age). Their steppe ancestry technically came from their mothers while their main side came from their hunter-gatherer fathers. So I think it is hypothetically possible that they may have brought some form of myth of man's creation from trees with them into Denmark, which ultimately would have come from their patrilineal hunter-gatherer ancestors.
The Chad Pastoralist: HistoryEnvironmental changes in Mesolithic to Late Neolithic Scandinavia
An interesting observation in the Population Genomics in Stone Age Eurasia paper by Allentoft et al (2022) is the significant environmental changes that occurred based on the lifestyle of different cultural groups that existed in Scandinavia across time.
In the Mesolithic, when Western and Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer peoples lived, vegetation was dominated by primary forest trees (Tilia, Ulmus, Quercus, Fraxinus, Alnus, etc.). No significant deforestation took place, suggesting that the hunter-gatherer peoples of Scandinavia lived in a symbiotic relationship with nature.
By the Neolithic, during the Funnelbeaker culture phase (c. 4300-2800 BC) and the onset of agriculture in Scandinavia, forests were repeatedly cleared by fire to give room for pastureland, followed by regrowth. This suggests that the Early European Farmer inhabitants of Scandinavia created temporary open spaces of pasture before allowing them to regrow.
With the onset of the…