October 07, 2013

Migration from Sweden to Poland during the Early Bronze Age

Proof of human migration from Sweden to Poland during the Early Bronze Age
During the Early Bronze Age there was a very high level of territorial mobility of the Únětice culture in Silesia, a large community inhabiting the south western territories of Poland approximately 4 000 years ago. This is found in a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg which also conclusively confirms the first case of human long-distance overseas journey to Silesia from Scandinavia, probably from southern Sweden.

'Over 3800 years ago, a young male, possibly born in Skåne, made a journey of over 900 kilometers south, to Wroclaw in Poland. He died violently in Wroclaw, killed by Úněticean farmers, possibly due to romance with two local females, who were murdered together with him. This 'Bronze Age love story', with no happy end today is the first case of Swedish-Polish contacts in history ever', concludes archaeologist Dalia Pokutta, author of the thesis.
Here is the thesis, titled:  Population Dynamics, Diet and Migrations of the Únětice Culture in Poland.

7 comments:

eurologist said...

"Migration from Sweden to Poland during the Early Bronze Age"

That and "...is the first case of Swedish-Polish contacts in history ever" seem quite sensationalistic. Nothing here indicates mass migrations, this is prehistory, and Sweden and Poland did not exist, yet.

Also note that Unetice is Bohemian, Central German, and Silesian by location - and many people think this outgrowth of Corded Ware started the development of Germanic languages from IE. So, on the flip side, long-standing contacts like these (when not ending fatally ;)) could have introduces Germanic to Scandinavia. Swedes tend to migrate south during cold times, for obvious reasons, and then, during warm times the area was sometimes partially re-settled from the much more populous south (Jutland, nowadays Northern Germany, Northern Poland, and the other southern Baltic countries).

andrew said...

The full paper is full of juicy synthesis about what we know about Bronze Age Europe as well.

eurologist said...

Hopefully the full thesis will be available online, shortly. I have only found a link to a couple of papers in her profile.

Grey said...

Fantastic stuff

Davidski said...

Unetice had nothing to do with Germanics.

Preliminary DNA results from German Unetice are here...

http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/73014

Their Y-DNA will be R1a.

eurologist said...

Unetice had nothing to do with Germanics.

Preliminary DNA results from German Unetice are here...


And your point is ???

Unetice is almost 3,000 years before Slavic cultural and language expansion in an area that is very far away from anything early Slavic - but closely related to the origin of Germanic cultural traits and language, by the view and interpretation of the vast majority of researchers, pretty much a consensus view for the past half a century.

You simply can't ignore that the first documented and deduced contact is that of Germanic languages and Uralic, and Uralic and Indo-Iranian. Baltic-speaking people then, a bit later, expanded NW and drove a wedge between Germanic and Uralic speakers.

This is all rather well documented in loanwords. Finally, just about 1,500 ya, Slavic speakers started to dominate E Europe and pushed W (and E and NE), partially mixing with E Germanic tribes which had just moved further east from what is now Poland into ~Ukraine.

R1a has been the main y-DNA haplogroup of (what can later be identified as) east-Germanic people for probably more than 4,000 years.

Conversely, the particular R1a (and I2a) subgroups of Slavic expansion can easily be identified as of very recent origin, and also not exceeding more than 10%to 15% in most of E or N Poland.

Unknown said...

eurologist

If you see germans 3000 bc you are just hit by some XIX propaganda. It's genetical nonsense. How do you refer to recent genetic research done in 2014 on R1a in Poland... Blonde light skin people originated in Central-Eastern Europe and spread to your 'heimat'. At least Slavs got own haplogroups, when Germans are just mixture of Slavs, Scandinavians and Celts... Please do not repeat nonsense rascist propaganda from XIX century.