"Out of the east, the morning behind them, rode the Anses into the world." (II, p. 557)
The Anses are the Aesir whom we know as Odin, Thor etc. The Wanes or Vanir resist them before making peace.
Jens Ulstrup, Patrol ethnographer, explains to Everard and Floris that the Indo-Europeans:
"'...brought their characteristic warlike, masculine sky-gods, the Anses or Aesir. Dim memories of the conflict between cultures survived in myths of a war between the two divine races, which was finally settled by negotiations and intermarriage.'" (11, pp. 565-566)
Poul Anderson's text presents both a version of the mythical war and an ethnographer discussing that war. In Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, time travellers supervise the integration of Indo-European invaders into Northern Europe and the intermarriage of the pantheons so we wind up viewing the same events from different angles.
13 comments:
Though the Indo-Europeans had plenty of female deities of their own, btw.
Kaor, Paul!
It's far more likely the invaders exterminated the original inhabitants.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Exterminated all of them? Then why were there myths of intermarriage?
Paul.
Sean: no, they didn't. The genetic evidence is quite clear that there was extensive intermarriage -- mostly between Indo-European males and local females, increasing with distance to the west. Except for the British Isles; there there was a 93%+ turnover in both male and female lines.
In southern Europe, the Yamnaya contribution was smaller. Tho' in Iberia, they completely replaced the male lines of descent.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Very well, Stirling corrected me. It was more a conquest by warlike invaders, not extermination. Except in the British Isles/Iberia.
Mr. Stirling: I sit corrected!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, but the first IE-speaking migrants to the British Isles had already incorporated hunter-gatherer and Anatolian-farmer genes. For some reason, there was very little survival of the pre-IE population in the British Isles. Some, but not much.
For some reason the Anatolian-farmer and Western Hunter-Gatherer populations in Europe remained separate for a long time. Then they began to merge. That was pretty much over by the time the IE-speakers arrived.
One thing ancient DNA has revealed is that spread of cultural elements without actual migration does occur sometimes, but it's not the way to bet. Usually migration is an indispensable element of culture-change.
Boy, did that torque off archaeologists, who'd been prey to an anti-migrationist theory of cultural diffusion for about two generations! I was smiling happily at that, since I'd always been a migrationist.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Possibly the invaders of the British Isles had enough of their own women with them that they had little interest in local women, except as victims of casual rape.
Maybe late Neolithic farmers and non-IE hunter gatherers were still too few to often have contact with each other?
Until true states and empires arose capable of keeping out unwanted foreigners it makes sense to me to think migrants and invaders was a major factor in cultural diffusion.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup. Tho' 'no stranger on my tribe's land' is a basic human reflex.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Those who want unlimited, out of control immigration have no one to blame but themselves for the outraged opposition they now face in the US and UK.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, that was predictable. As was the imposition of strict immigration controls in the 1920's in the US, which lasted until the 1960's.
But there is very far from being unlimited, out of control immigration now and the outraged opposition is itself opposed.
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