The Khvalynsk culture was a Middle Copper Age ("
Eneolithic
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often v ...
") culture (c. 4900 – 3500 BC) of the middle
Volga
The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the List of rivers of Europe#Rivers of Europe by length, longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Cas ...
region. It takes its name from
Khvalynsk
Khvalynsk ( rus, Хвалы́нск, p=xvɐˈlɨnsk) is a river port town in Saratov Oblast, Russia, located by the Volga River. Population: 16,000 (1974). It is located on the right bank of the Volga, at the foot of the Khvalynsk Mountains, ...
in
Saratov Oblast
Saratov Oblast (russian: Сара́товская о́бласть, ''Saratovskaya oblast'') is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the types of ...
. The Khvalynsk culture extended from the
Samara Bend
The Samara Bend (''Samarskaya Luka''; ) is a large hairpin bend of the middle Volga River to the east where it meets the Samara River. It is situated in the Samara region of Russia.
As the Volga enters its middle course it reaches the Zhiguli ...
in the north (the location of some of the most important sites such as
Krivoluchye) to the
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...
in the south, from the
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov ( Crimean Tatar: ''Azaq deñizi''; russian: Азовское море, Azovskoye more; uk, Азовське море, Azovs'ke more) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, ...
in the west to the
Ural River
The Ural (russian: Урал, ), known before 1775 as Yaik (russian: Яик, ba, Яйыҡ, translit=Yayıq, ; kk, Жайық, translit=Jaiyq, ), is a river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan in the continental border between Europe and Asia ...
in the east. It was preceded by the Early Eneolithic
Samara culture
The Samara culture was an Eneolithic (Copper Age) culture that flourished around the turn of the 5th millennium BCE, at the Samara Bend of the Volga River (modern Russia). The Samara culture is regarded as related to contemporaneous or subseque ...
, from which it came, and succeeded by the Late Eneolithic, Early
Yamna culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture (russian: Ямная культура, ua, Ямна культура lit. 'culture of pits'), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archa ...
, into which it developed.
The Khvalynsk culture is associated with speakers of an early stage of the
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
.
Dating
A number of calibrated C-14 readings obtained from material in the graves of the type site date the culture certainly to the approximate window, 5000–4500 BCE. This material is from Khvalynsk I, or Early Khvalynsk. Khvalynsk II, or Late Khvalynsk, is Late Eneolithic. Asko Parpola regards Khvalynsk culture to be c. 5000 to 3800 BCE.
Nina Morgunova regards Khvalynsk I as Early Eneolithic, contemporary with the second stage of
Samara culture
The Samara culture was an Eneolithic (Copper Age) culture that flourished around the turn of the 5th millennium BCE, at the Samara Bend of the Volga River (modern Russia). The Samara culture is regarded as related to contemporaneous or subseque ...
called Ivanovka and Toksky stage, which pottery was influenced by Khvalynsk culture, as calibrated period of this second stage of Samara culture is 4850–3640 BCE.
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis ...
, however, believed Samara was earlier and placed Khvalynsk I in the Developed Eneolithic.
Not enough Samara culture dates and sites exist to settle the question. After c. 4500 BCE, Khvalynsk culture united the lower and middle Volga sites keeping domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and maybe horses.
[Anthony, David W., 2019. "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard", in The Journal of Indo-European Studies Vol. 47, Nos. 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2019), p. 13 87]
Sites
![MolKurgan2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/MolKurgan2.jpg)
The Khvalynsk type site is a cemetery, 30 m by 26 m, containing about 158 skeletons, mainly in single graves, but some two to five together. They were buried on their backs with knees contracted. Twelve of the graves were covered with stone cairns. Sacrificial areas were found similar to those at Samara, containing horse, cattle and sheep remains.
An individual grave was found in 1929 at Krivoluchie with
grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.
They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...
and the remains placed on
ochre
Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...
, face up, knees contracted. A 67 m high earthen kurgan at
Nalchik, approximately thirty metres in diameter, contained 121 individual graves of remains placed face up, knees contracted, on ochre with a covering of stone.
Artifacts
Khvalynsk evidences the further development of the
kurgan
A kurgan is a type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses. Originally in use on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central As ...
. It began in the Samara with individual graves or small groups sometimes under stone. In the Khvalynsk culture one finds group graves, which can only be communal on some basis, whether familial or local or both is not clear. With the advent of better methods of recovering
ancient DNA
Ancient DNA (aDNA) is DNA isolated from ancient specimens. Due to degradation processes (including cross-linking, deamination and fragmentation) ancient DNA is more degraded in comparison with contemporary genetic material. Even under the bes ...
, perhaps someday it will be.
Although there are disparities in the wealth of the grave goods, there seems to be no special marker for the chief. This deficit does not exclude the possibility of a chief. In the later kurgans, one finds that the kurgan is exclusively reserved for a chief and his retinue, with ordinary people excluded.
This development suggests a growing disparity of wealth, which in turn implies a growth in the wealth of the whole community and an increase in population. The explosion of the kurgan culture out of its western steppe homeland must be associated with an expansion of population. The causes of this success and expansion remain obscure.
We do know that metal was available both in the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
and in the southern
Urals
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
. The Khvalynsk graves included metal rings and spiral metal rings. However, there is no indication of any use beyond ornamental. The quality of stone weapons and implements reaches a high point. The Krivoluchie grave, which Gimbutas viewed as that of a chief, contained a long flint dagger and tanged arrowheads, all carefully retouched on both faces. In addition there is a porphyry axe-head with
lugs and a haft hole. These artifacts are of types that not too long after appeared in metal.
There is also plenty of evidence of personal jewelry: beads of shell, stone and animal teeth, bracelets of stone or bone, pendants of boar tusk. The animals whose teeth came to decorate the putative
Indo-Europeans are boar, bear, wolf, deer and others. Some of these teeth must have been difficult to acquire, a labor perhaps that led to a value being placed upon them. Whether they were money is not known.
The hard goods leave no record of any great richness. There is some evidence that wealth may have consisted of perishable goods. In fact, in many similar cultures of later times, wealth was reckoned in livestock. A recent study of the surface of the pottery (also of many cultures), which recorded contact with perishable material while the clay was wet, indicates contact with cords and embroidered woven cloth, which the investigators suggest were used to decorate the pot.
Physical type
Examination of physical remains of the Khvalynsk people has determined that they were
Europoid
The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...
. A similar physical type prevails among the
Sredny Stog culture
The Sredny Stog culture (, romanized: ''Serednʹostohivsʹka kulʹtura'') is a pre-Kurgan archaeological culture from the 5th millennium BC. It is named after the Russian term for the Dnieper river islet of today's Seredny Stih, Ukraine, where ...
and the
Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture (russian: Ямная культура, ua, Ямна культура lit. 'culture of pits'), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archa ...
, whose peoples were tall and powerfully built. Khvalynsk people were however not as powerfully built as the Sredny Stog and Yamnaya. The people of the
Dnieper-Donets culture further west on the other hand, were even more powerfully built than the Yamnaya.
Genetics
Recent genetic studies have shown that males of the Khvalynsk culture carried primarily the paternal
haplogroup R1b, although a few samples of
R1a,
I2a2,
Q1a and
J have been detected. They belonged to the
Western Steppe Herder
In archaeogenetics, the term Western Steppe Herders (WSH), or Western Steppe Pastoralists, is the name given to a distinct ancestral component first identified in individuals from the Chalcolithic, Eneolithic steppe around the turn of the 5th mi ...
(WSH) cluster, which is a mixture of
Eastern Hunter-Gatherer
In archaeogenetics, the term Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), sometimes East European Hunter-Gatherer, or Eastern European Hunter-Gatherer is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents descent from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers o ...
(EHG) and
Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) ancestry. This admixture appears to have happened on the eastern
Pontic–Caspian steppe
The Pontic–Caspian steppe, formed by the Caspian steppe and the Pontic steppe, is the steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) to the northern area around the Caspian Sea. It extend ...
starting around 5,000 BC.
Mathieson et al. (2015, 2018) found in three
Eneolithic
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often v ...
males buried near Khvalynsk between 5200 BC and 4000 BC the Y-haplogroups
R1b1a and
R1a1
Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup which is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to southern Siberia and South Asia.
While R1a originated c. 22,000 to 2 ...
, and the mt-haplogroups
H2a1,
U5a1i, and
Q1a and a subclade of
U4.
A male from the contemporary
Sredny Stog culture
The Sredny Stog culture (, romanized: ''Serednʹostohivsʹka kulʹtura'') is a pre-Kurgan archaeological culture from the 5th millennium BC. It is named after the Russian term for the Dnieper river islet of today's Seredny Stih, Ukraine, where ...
was found to have 80% WSH ancestry of a similar type to the Khvalynsk people, and 20%
Early European Farmer
Early European Farmers (EEF), First European Farmers (FEF), Neolithic European Farmers, Ancient Aegean Farmers, or Anatolian Neolithic Farmers (ANF) are names used to describe a distinct group of early Neolithic farmers who brought agriculture to E ...
(EEF) ancestry. Among the later
Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture (russian: Ямная культура, ua, Ямна культура lit. 'culture of pits'), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archa ...
, males carry exclusively R1b and
I2. A similar pattern is observable among males of the earlier
Dnieper-Donets culture, who carried only
R and
I and whose ancestry was exclusively EHG with
Western Hunter-Gatherer
In archaeogenetics, the term Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), West European Hunter-Gatherer or Western European Hunter-Gatherer names a distinct ancestral component of modern Europeans, representing descent from a population of Mesolithic hunter-gat ...
(WHG) admixture. The presence of EEF and CHG
mtDNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA ...
and exclusively EHG and WHG
Y-DNA
The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes (allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or abse ...
among the Yamnaya and related WSHs suggest that EEF and CHG admixture among them was the result of mixing between EHG and WHG males, and EEF and CHG females. This suggests that the leading clans among the Yamnaya were of EHG paternal origin. According to
David W. Anthony, this implies that the
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
were the result of "a dominant language spoken by EHGs that absorbed Caucasus-like elements in phonology, morphology, and lexicon" (spoken by CHGs)
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
J. P. Mallory, "Khvalynsk Culture", ''
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
'', Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
*
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis ...
, "The Civilization of the Goddess", HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, or
*
External links
Bronze Age Textiles of the Caspian Sea Maritime Steppes
{{Neolithic Europe
Archaeological cultures of the Caucasus
Archaeological cultures in Russia
Chalcolithic cultures of Europe
Nomadic groups in Eurasia
Indo-European archaeological cultures
Archaeological cultures of Eastern Europe
5th millennium BC
Prehistoric Russia