How horse nomads took over Europe 5000 years ago – David Reich

[lilgarbagedisposal]

Barbie (2023) is clearly an allegory about the population exchange in europe during the chalcolithic age. Barbies are coded to be early european farmers, living in a comfortable yet stagnant environment of europe at the tail end of the ice age, with a culture revolving around female fertility (notice the second character introduced is a pregnant barbie). The second sequence shows Ken (Ryan Gosling)’s enterance into the story on a beach, mirroring the arrival of western steppe herder cultures as glaciers in europe retreated.

Once Barbie and Ken venture into the “real world” (prophetic vision of the bronze age), ken adopts advanced technologies like the horse (horse), patriarchy (worship of a male solar deity), and cars (the wheel, expoundable into the horse-driven chariot). His donning of the fringe jacket and cowboy hat stir within the audience a yearning for westward expansion, from the Pontine Steppe through the Pannonia Basin and beyond.

Ken transforming barbieland into the kendom mirrors the replacement of early european farmer (Vinča, Varna cultures etc.) with corded ware and bell beaker cultures, settled iterations of the kens’ previously pastoral culture. The only barbie not assimilated into the new cultural zeitgeist is weird barbie (basques), herself a cultural isolate even compared to other barbies pre-invasion.

The final battle scene between the two Ken factions places particular focus on archery, hallmark of the Mongol civilization, which was the last of the steppe invasions of europe. Notice in this situation, Gerwig’s bravery in correctly having Ken (asian) represent the kingdom of Hungary (asian), whereas Ken (Gosling) is of course the ever-lasting Scythian spirit emanating from the steppe. Some scholars have suggested the light-blue void where the last battle takes place to be a metaphor for Tengri…

[dylankenney]

“Including many of mine” a true scientist bravo 👏👏👏

[squamish]

Horse nomads quickly took over Europe...and were quickly domesticated. Europe ain't no place for nomads. And even when empires were established on large plains, they soon collapsed. The list of short-lived nomadic empires in history is long. "An empire conquered from horseback cannot be ruled from horseback".

[souravjaiswal-jrbj]

Yamnaya people. They were the founders of Indo-European cultures and languages. Thor, Zeus, and Indra (Hindu god) are all descendants of the same group.

[vladimirskala]

Recently, there was a Yamnaya grave excavated in Eastern Slovakia, further reinforcing its presence in the Pannonian Basin.

[Bejunckt]

Hearing 90% makes me think disease could've played a part in that demographic disruption in the settling of those groups from the east

[jakedee]

Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of.
And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow.
It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga.
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

[Adil_Turysbek_TVRC]

I am from Kazakhstan. Hello to my steppe brothers from europe!

[MrLee-cypw]

Hitler believed we came from some sophisticated race of Atlanteans, but really our ancestors were more like the Dothraki.

[artsempai]

The Basques and Chechens, who are the remnants of pre-Indo-European diversity in Europe, are among the last groups unaffected by the population shifts brought by the Yamnaya people. They remained in refuges in the mountains of Iberia and the Caucasus

[LesCish]

What's the term at 0:21 ? "...from the continent bearing ancestry..." Prop majority?

[m-ch]

I'm curious if they brought diseases also. And if that had a similar effect as what happened in the Americas with the indigenous populations.

[jasonhare]

Cavalry is a force multiplier. Especially if the people they're attacking have everything to lose and the cavalry has everything to gain.

[Fu-man-chu]

Fun fact Lithuanian is basically old sanskrith with many sanskrith words .. the Remova of Lithuania
still practice early Vedic indo European rituals

[obstinatejack]

I think it’s easier for cultural practices to spread than genetic exchanges. Meaning the indigenous Europeans learned to ride horses rather than getting replaced by those horse riders from outside

[ReedPearce-xucr]

Many thanks to David Reich for explaining something which has been known for quite a long time now by certain people. Not to nitpick but the thumbnail seems a but misleading but that's not quite what they looked like. The ancestors of modern Germans, northern, and some eastern Europeans. It could be a bit insulting to depict them that way. I don't know how blunt I should be to get my point across. Not brown or dark haired. Tall and blonde. Greek historians described the scythians, eho inhabited the same region of the near east in the same way.

[SG-jsqn]

This influential culture came from the Baltic down toward the Black Sea in multiple migrations, filling that area around c. 5000 BC. Later, the people spread from primarily the Baltic, centered around Lithuania, around 2500 BC, spreading IE language. They SAILED to the British isles and to the Galician coast of Spain. They traveled overland in ox-drawn carts to northwestern China and northern India and Persia. They SAILED across the Black Sea and other waterways to reach Anatolia and Greece. This was following routes they'd already traveled in the past, having previously ventured as far as Mesopotamia and Egypt around 1000 years before the development of IE language. Reich is an old progressive unable to escape his generation's thinking.

[butchilassomething]

To point out the Yamnaya themselves are not the ancestors of indo-european but a later group of indo-europeans present in the region. The ancestors of all indo-european people was present earlier in around the same region.

[afcgeo]

Some of this is a bit difficult to swallow. For example, the comment about Europe being densely populated. It wasn’t, until about the 18th century. When the Mongols invaded around 1240, all of Europe had about 73 million residents, less than 1/10th of today’s population. 5000 years ago the population of Europe was just 7 million.

[Kathy-gi]

There were numerous Goddesses in this pantheon. Artemis, Athena, Atlanta, Nike, warrior Goddesses. And most gods were patterned with a female counterpart.