Huge thanks to Nebula for sponsoring the video. Consider watching my bonus video on the archaeology of the first (confirmed) stoners go.nebula.tv/stefanmilo
Love to hear if you think the kassites, Mitanni, Hyksos and aryans from the vestas were connected……and if tollenes and sea peoples were connected….perhaps all of them given the space and timing of the steppes and historical record of the domino affects that play out with one nomad group pushing out another and their affect on settled peoples……any video on the sasi movement…..god bless
I simply don't understand why historians and archaeologists don't refer to the 'Beaker people' or 'steppe people' as the Yamnaya culture. The Yamnaya were the Bronze age people who flooded all over Europe at this age. This would be a much more comprehensible concept for those who are not history buffs. Some historians and archaeologists even describe this period as the 'Indo-European invasion,' which refers to the significant linguistic transformation brought by the Yamnaya across Europe. It's like they can't see the forest for the trees.
@@radieschen79 The Yamnaya have different material cultures, so its likely they were culturally dfferent. Like insisting Japan has Chinese culture despiste the various adoptions of it.
@@radieschen79 It wasn't the Yamnaya that arrived in Britain. The culture would have changed through the generations. Also there is the R1b R1a split within steppe related ancestry in Europe. It likely wasn't just the Yamnaya expanding into Europe.
No they lived side by side in some cases. In Britain they Bell-beakers replaced 93 % of the previous population but it took a couple of 100 years and they lived in separate communities close to each other. It is all a bit strange.
@actung. Arriving Anatolian farmers (6,000 YBP aka 4,000 BCE) may have seen that. Or they may have passively (disease) or actively (war, enslavement, etc) killed off the WHG population of Britain. But arriving steppe ancestry people did not see an empty landscape. 70% to 75% of British ancestry today is not steppe, it is by far mostly Anatolian farmer. Anatolian farmer descendants built Stonehenge starting 5,000 . Beaker/Yamniya/Steepp ancestry arrived in British Isles 4500-4,000 YBP
Ooh also! The mediaeval plagues are now thought to have been significantly human-to-human transmitted rather than by fleas due to more work on plague pathology, such as reported symptoms and time until death. Whilst flea spread did occur, cramped mediaeval cities would've been a hotbed for spreading via coughing or contact with infected fluids, given the poor sanitation in Europe at the time.
@@MinnesotaBeekeeper If I remember correctly it is mostly based on (a) models based on known insect transmitted diseases not following the actual spread of the plague (which was way too quick for the models and the models did fit with a mix of flea and human to human transference) and (b) the existing records not really describing the rat population as one would expect if they were a vital link in the spread of the plague. Actual data is bit difficult to come by since the people at the time were not exactly knowledgable and I don't think we actually have the genes of the plague bacteria at that time. So, not exactly solid evidence, but more than just opinions? Mind you, it has been some time ago that I read aboutt it. Might very well have been disproven or strengthened with new evidence by now.
Thinking about those civilizations that just vanished, both from history and the gene pool really fucks with me. I tend to incorrectly think of history as following evolution in some way - one group gradually transitioning into the next. The fact that there are these grouos who arent even anyones ancestors really, but still left such an impact on history is amazing
19:55 Afaik the steppe people were herders, so the reservoir could have been in their herds / flocks. And let's speculate: them trading horses and other beasts with the neolithic people in one year brought the plague there, and as they returned one or a few years later, the villages were empty, so they sent their young to resettle there. The steppe people could already have evolved some immunity to the bacteria common within their herds, however probably to less virulent strains, which would still give them also some resilience against the new, more dangerous strains.
My (limited) understanding is that Y. pestis doesn't form stable enzootics (or perhaps has a much harder time doing so) in herd animals the way it does in rodents. Goats and sheep have been known to be able to get the plague, but as far as I know they aren't known to tolerate the infection in the way that rodents do-where levels of plague infection build up in the population and at a certain point catalyze a rapid die-off/epizootic disease event. it's when the rodents die off that the infected fleas seek out new hosts-if you don't have the capacity in a species for an epizootic disease event like that to catalyze a human epidemic, I don't think a species can be said to be a suitable plague reservoir. See Epidemiology section of "Plague" (2009) by David T. Dennis in Tropical Infectious Diseases. Of course, people are now saying rodent populations, despite being the most likely non-human flea/plague vector candidate, couldn't have spread fast enough through Europe to cause the second pandemic. That's reasonable, and given that turn in understandings of medieval plague, it makes sense that scientists like Pooja Swali might tentatively lean towards a human transmission hypothesis as well for these potential outbreaks which date to much earlier. This kind of goes out the window if, as you suggest, the Y. pestis of the time is different enough from the historical strains we're more familiar with, but at that point it goes way above my head. It's not just about it being less virulent the further back you go, I don't think-one would have to prove somehow that that evolution of the bacteria was capable of enzootics in herd animals. Which seems unlikely to me, but there's so much new research into the evolution of plague that has come out in the past ten years or so that there's a lot up in the air right now! Definitely over my head.
Modern archaeology and genetics tell us that the Beaker People arrived in Ireland about 4,500 years ago and largely (but not completely) replaced the farming people that were there, but not how. Irish Gaelic mythology tells us that the last ancestors of the Irish arrived about 4,000 years ago, and replaced the previous people, the magical Tuatha de Danaan. The stories tell of battles and such, but some stories mention that the Tuatha began dying off from a mysterious illness ...
Interesting! Do you have a source for that? The mysterious illness that is. I haven't come across it my reading. Or maybe I'm not as well read as I like to think.
Hi Stefan, hi Tony. Um, yes and no. The stories are recorded in the 11th Century compilation 'The Book of Invasions (of Ireland)' (Leabhar Gabhála Éireann), of which there are a number of versions, all compiled from earlier books, and some are also in another ancient text from Wales whose name escapes me for the moment. The references to the illness I found in a commentary on one of the versions, but I don't remember where! I wish I could be more specific, sorry, but I will keep looking and get back to you if I can find it. I love your work Stefan, very informative, entertaining and dare I say important. I'm making my third trip to Peru next month, wish you could come 🙂
Honestly yours is my favorite youtube channel, hands down. This video is no exception. The part about how the plague of the ancient past wasn't necessarily just as lethal as the version we know is so obvious when stated, but not something I had ever stopped to consider! Thanks so much for setting up such compelling interviews and helping lay people like myself better understand these studies.
Epidemiomolgy is so wildly unpredictable. I just recently learned that the spanish flu actually had three waves of closely related viruses, which behaved quite differently in the victim. With the last one being the most deadly at nearly 30% lethality, while the first and second one seem to have been far mor infectious but well surviveable. And doctors at the time did indeed describe the first and third wave as possibly different ilnesses because the symptomitics where so different.
I really appreciate how Stefan will openly acknowledge the alternative theories and the uncertainty in a subject. It's refreshing to watch a video that isn't screaming at me to agree with it. This is just a person who enjoys the topic and is sharing the current information about it. Stefan is excited so he's sharing it with us.
The part about not being able to say if the "pit" people died of the plague made me think of Monty Python and the "bring out your dead!" "But I'm not dead yet!" but throws him in the pit instead of the wagon.
Wow, I'm early. Fantastic video, as always! I wrote an Archaeology Magazine article about this, on the possible significance of the kerbed 'ring cairn' it was found in at Levens Park. That style of monument is very specific to the earliest Bronze Age (c. 2500BC), and emerged dramatically ALL OVER the landscape of northern England / Wales. They're also always found to be full of cremated remains and jumbled bones - a veritable mass grave enclosure. Most 'stone circles' are, actually, ring cairns! Interestingly, ring cairns evolved to become 'concentric stone circles', of which Stonehenge is the most famous example! Could be a sort-of microbacterial dominoe effect!
Yo Adam, thank you for the footage of Levens Park! Everyone reading this go check out Adam's channel there's a link in the description, he makes great stuff honestly.
This is without a doubt, not just one of the best educational channels I have seen, but one of the best educational documentary series ever put out, I havent seen a TV series remotely close to this level of detail and quality.
Just my 2 cents: If you see prevalent plague in the last generation of buried people, it's safe to assume there was at least one more generation which buried them. It could be that survivors stopped burying people, at least in the same tombs, if they associated them with the untimely demise of their ancestors. Maybe they kept on living, but either moved away from the "infected areas" or changed their burial practices to something that we can't track as much.
Hey Stefan, loved the video! I'm a geologist (so NOT an epidemiologist just a survivor of COVID like the rest of us). In my geoscience opinion both plague epidemics seen in the archaeological record that you presented can be explained by the climate changing rapidly (probably because of a volcanic eruption with enough ash ejected to block the sun and cause volcanic winter). In written history a volcanic winter is the prelude to almost every plague epidemic. The most profound and best recorded was 535-541AD (plague of justinian) had 3 seperate eruptions in (probably) iceland and the americas (we know 3 separate volcanoes erupted 3 seperate somewheres during this time period because of geochemically distinct ash layers in arctic and antarctic ice it's just hard to pinpoint where globally they came from but those locations are the most supported by evidence) to cause a almost 10 years long volcanic winter causing mass famine and unrest (see: King Arthur). Close behind comes the Plague of Justinian and a massive migration period in europe and asia. The climate changes, people move, the steppe people have a natural immunity to plague because that's where it comes from (Tibetan plateau), the indigenous peoples die, the population genetic makeup changes rapidly. In order for plague to get into your bones it has to be septicemic plague, which has almost a 100% death rate. So if just one person's bones in a mass grave has plague, it's safe to assume almost all of them did. (I mean not safe enough for a scientific paper but for common sense yes)
@@benwinter2420 It came, it killed about 1.2mill. in USA alone, (don't know about the rest of the world), it then mutated into a more benign type and stayed. These are only facts, not conspiracy lies.
Regardless of the overall impact, it's at least cool to have proof that plague was an additional pressure at the time. I'm sure it'll help enrich a lot of different theories!
I agree Pneumonic plague kills much quicker, as quick as 24hr so there would be a a shorter sepsis episode, or even no septic episode, the victim dies of Acute Respiratory Failure as opposed to a multi organ failure that comes from a greater systemic disease, this would have an effect on the global bacterial load in the body ie the teeth. A society’s response to pandemic before our more enlighten world was very harsh to households, villages, people locked up in their houses, rounded up, even killed, some societies saw the victims as cursed, marked by their Gods for punishment, who’s to say that once a member of a household had it, all the run had to die too, it’s interesting with the site where the bodies had trauma by being thrown into the cave perhaps shows a lack of religious / burial consideration for the victims. Fascinating stuff
One issue discussed in this video has to do with sensitivity vs. specificity of finding Y. pestis DNA in dental pulp. It's accepted that specificity is very high, sort of close to 100%, meaning there are no false positives (finding Yp DNA in a person who died of something else. Sensitivity means how likely it is for a test to detect a disease when present. DNA denaturation, and other technical problems suggest that it's considerably less than 100%. It should be noted that bacteremia is much more severe in pneumonic plague (bacterial count more than 1000 times higher), so residual "true positives" would be more likely.
Fantastic video as always! And the pronounciations were fine, you didn't get easy pickings 😝 The swedish graves you were discussing are actually around the area I grew up in, so reading the rapports back when they came out was a bit extra interesting than they already were! Looking forward to your next vid / a swedish archaeologist
fun thing is that imho they had to have had a sort of global education system in the stone age, since stone working and other techniques were shared. same for metal(bronze) working
Great stuff as always. The information that genetic studies are bringing us (fragmentary & in need of thoughtfull/humble intepretation as it is) is truly astounding. Thanks for covering it.
OMG! As soon as I heard the discussion about "animal reservoirs" I started thinking what we all shouted at the end of the "Aliens" movie: "IT'S IN THE DOG!". BTW, you're the first creator that might induce me to subscribe to Nebula. Another wonderful video!
@boskysquelch111 uh no. It was a cat in Alien. No furrys in Aliens. There WAS a dog/bull (depending on the version) in the Alien movie on the prison planet.
@stripeytawney822 Nope. Jonesy was in Aliens..all be it briefly. He was sharing the cryo-chamber with Ripley on the Narcissus, when they were found by the Tripast Salvage; then received by the Gateway Station. 😆
I love these videos so much!! You seem to always provide all points of view you can think of and the interviews with professionals give great insight. Thank you for these videos Stefan!
I like the informative and elaborating on education rather than entertainment style! I hope you help me save my attention span, Mr! Various of people interviewed, so very convincing overall! Thank you!
This was my favorite video in a long time and I love ALL YOUR VIDEOS!!! I would love a deep dive into the family tree paper- I’m so interested in that, the relationships between the individuals
The entire Christ caper is an older Mars cult . . yeah the elephant in room mysterious of planets worshipped that are just pricks of light now . . sound of crickets from the mask wearers
How many times we had "visit" of Black Plague from Asian steppe to Europe? BTW, Chinese know for centuries that plague is rat disease. And when you have agriculture, and no cats, it will be hard to get rid of rats. Also, there is interesting question: Were steppe people more resistant to plague, and did plague moved with their migration, or it only conveniently opened space for their migration? I see you contemplated that too... Fortunately advances in genetics might give an answer to that question in our lifetime.
In the middle ages steppe people were exposed to plague repeatedly and had possibly developed some resistance. Mongols even used plague as a weapon in Europe or the Near East. So it's natural to speculate that the same was true in the Bronze Age.
Stefan if you wanna walk in the woods in every video, then go ahead and do it. I personally love walking in the woods, and if you're like me and love to walk in the woods, and that helps you make a better video, then that's a win for everyone
9:40 Only listening to the audio I had to run over to my computer to hear more about the Kernosivsky Idol...how had I never heard of a PIE-era monument that is 120 meters tall! I missed the correction to "cm" on the screen.
RUclips chopped off the end of your comment, so I was going to ask if it was the "willy, pointing upwards" that had you racing to the computer, but then I saw the rest of it 😂
I've been going over your "old" videos - essentially looking for 'the man with a spoon' videos that I so enjoyed some years ago; you da man. That drew a blank, but this one particularly tweaked my "Oh my god" synapses: you have interviewed/included Pooja Swali! She will undoubtedly be a massive influence on genetics of ancient European people. Many other influential historians/archaeologists/science informers refer to her in very, very glowing terms - see Prof Alice Roberts as an example
I have been watching your videos for the last year an a half after my obsession with prehistory began. You make great videos about interesting topics that scratch my brain’s need for discovery. You are genuine and knowledgeable, and make it easy and entertaining for me to learn about our history. Thank you, and keep it up.
Terrific show Stefan keep up the good work! Prehistory is so interesting exciting and leaving us wanting more. Your show is so brilliant for us trying to understand it all. Totally fascinating!
Another banger (not the sausage type of banger) of a video Stefan!!! I'm in my 60s and never had much interest in archeology BUT your videos are changing that! Thanks for what you do!!
If the plague was transmitted by rats it will hurt farmers more than steppe pastoralists as the grain stores would attract rats to farmsteads. And they didn't had domestic cats back then. Nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists would not have a similar rat problem as they moved about with their herds. I've heard this theory in the context of the Plague of Justinian and how it probably hurt romans more than it hurt lombards leading to roman losing Northern Italy.
Not only did it hurt the metropolitan Romans and Persians more than the Lombards, but more importantly it hurt the Romans and Persians more than the Pastoral and Nomadic Arabs. One can largely attribute the rapid rise of Islam to the Justinianic Plague 30-50 years earlier.
I love that stefan may have just given one of the researchers an idea for more research, even just as a youtuber it's still not impossible to contribute some tiny bit to science
It's generally held that aurochs became extinct in the British Isles around 3500 years ago (1627 in Central Europe). At that point, if oral histories are to be believed, it's likely the language across the British archipelago was a form of proto-Celtic (I've no clue whether p and q Celtic had become distinct at that time, so I'll resist any urge to call it 'proto-Brythonic'). Infuriatingly, the initial 'aur' syllable of the noun seems common to both Celtic and German Germanic language groups ... which sort of makes sense as these things were widespread, big and dangerous! Whatever the proto-Celtic plural for this creature was, I suspect we can safely rule out the typically Germanic "-en". I'm tending towards something with a nasal mutation as safer when avoiding these stroppy cows on steroids in close woodland!! Now *thats* pedantry!! 🙂
I loved this video, Stefan! There is not that much information in the public realm about the Neolithic to Bronze Age transition in Europe, compared to Mesopotamia. You do a lot to rectify that. Thanks also to Pooja and Frederik for explaining their work so clearly and easy to understand. I’ll go check out that video of yours on nebula.
I saw a fascinating documentary on a town in Britain where the people had a gene that protected them from either getting the plague or from dying of it (depending if you had the gene from both parents or just one respectively). This makes sense if plague was with humanity in Britain for thousands of years. It also appears to be the same gene that prevents people from getting HIV or from developing AIDS. I am wondering when that gene actually showed up in Britain. Was it always in people and who originally had it. It is fascinating how well evolution and genetic diversity can make us less vulnerable as a species. Thank you for this documentary. It was fabulous!
I love your channel because the content is intelligent and you are so genuine. I like listening to you talk about any topic because you are both calm and excited about the significance of the topic. It’s also fun to see you at all the local haunts. You rep us portlandians well my sir.
This is an awesome video. It opened my eyes to an area of science and history I had no idea of. Fascinating that we are able to understand what happened so far back in our history.
The one thing that makes me wonder now is why the waves in the 14th century were so deadly. Usually diseases tend to get less fatal over time, partially because the host species becomes more resistant (or rather, only the more resistant ones survive and have offspring, spreading those resistant genes), partially because it's useful to keep the host alive, so less fatal strains tend to do better in the long run. A good example are flu strains. Those that are around tend to have a very low mortality, while xenoinfections tend to be extremely dangerous. Both the virus and we as a host sort of learned to live together. The same could even be seen throughout the pandemic. First a rather high mortality. Later on much less lethal, but more infectious. It adapted to us.
It's quite simple, actually. Both disease and the host evolve together, host getting immunity and disease increasing efficiency. In most of cases of high mortality disease spreads (black plague, European arrival to America, and this one possibly) disease probably arrived with/from distant population with big genetic difference. In case of the black death it was strain from China to which Europeans had no immunity to. Same thing few hundred years later (with different disease) happened in America. If steppe population had relative immunity to this plague, and transmitted it to neolithic population which didn't have before (at least not new evolved strain) it could've been quite deadly.
That's because it's not the same pathogen (e.g., Pathogen B) infecting the population that was infected before (by Pathogen A). Also, Pathogen A may have been so lethal that any members of the population that got hit by Pathogen A may not even have been infected at all, hence their survival. There being no host to evolve to become less lethal, the surviving population may not have the genes to develop any immunity so when a new plague came in, Pathogen B infects and kills just as much as Pathogen A did to the population.
As someone with a high degree of ancestry from indigenous Americans, I also couldn't help but think of the Columbian exchange throughout this video. I wonder if an archeologist thousands of years from now would see a similar phenomena in the genetics of populations in the Americas (especially the USA). I wonder what life was like for those last groups of Neolithic farmers, watching outsiders come in and take the lands your ancestors have been living on for thousands of years.
Columbian exchange shows us it's not an either/or-- both disease and violence were involved. I often see European archeologists make lofty assertions that only one factor was in play in these sorts of events, yet in recorded history it's always messy like this.
It would have been highly unlikely that your ancestors had been living on that land for thousands of years. Various tribes took it and lost it over time, fighting wars and taking slaves just like in Europe. Your ancestors were not a monolith, but a diverse people with highly divergent cultures, languages and religious beliefs. It would not have been anything very unusual to them aside from the physical appearance and technology of the newcomers. They were accustomed to war and conquest.
The arrival of English convict settlers in Australia resulted in a documented 99% mortality (196 died with 2 survivors) of the native population at Botany Bay within two years of landing from Smallpox, Measles, Influenza etc caught from the prisoners being landed.
There are some new studies that some viruses might live in the cells of our tissues even after you have survived from that. Then sometimes it might have a possibility to flare up again, this is to be studied later. Think about an autoimmunity disease and then it just comes back, maybe evolves with some contact to other pathogens (dunno if that can happen) and then start to spread in some intervals when situation is right for it.
Archaeologist Raksha Dave (formerly on Time Team) hosted a great BBC miniseries on the 1665 plague where modern researchers have found human lice can transmit bubonic plague as easily as rat fleas can. This is significant, because it lets plague travel with humans AND RIDERS, explaining times when it crossed Europe much faster than rats and their fleas can spread, when it traveled with caravans or couriers or over land where a rat (especially a dead one) in a saddlebag would be hard to miss, and when it seemed to jump from bedding, clothes, or the deceased at wakes during the most recent 1900 outbreak in San Francisco and Dublin. So, could the Neolithic plague have been spread by human lice, which were a fact of life up until the 20th century? You mention that researchers have found a gene in y Pestis that makes it possible for it to be carried in the stomach of rat (or rodent, since it infects marmots) fleas. So now the question is, can they find a gene that links it to human lice? The experiment I mentioned above simply infected a rabbit with y. pestis, then put human lice in the VERY carefully sealed chamber with the rabbit, then transferred some of those lice to a chamber with an uninfected rabbit, which I suppose human lice will bite if no human is handy. Sure enough, rabbit B became infected through blood transferred by the lice, and it didn't take long or much of a bacterial load. But that test only established human lice CAN transmit y. pestis, not that they DID, although circumstantial evidence like the number of miles per day at which the plague spread across Europe over land is highly suggestive.
Mind-blowing! So if I am reasoning correctly, if the plague didn’t clear the way for the Yamnaya, which were responsible for the spread of indo-european languages, people in Europe and possibly America would use a completely different set of languages. The fact that this video is in English boils down to the archaic plague!
Too much emphasis is placed on the possibility of plague in this. Having horses, wheels and bronze weapons as well as superior size and physical strength and a total warrior culture would have made them utterly invincible to people who had none of those things. Perhaps the plague did help clear some people out but it would have been irrelevant to their ultimate success.
7:10 Maybe those beakers were vases for flowers? And they were buried next to such a vase, filled either with physical or with ghost flowers? They are clearly to big and unwieldy to drink from them, especially with such a curved edge making you spill half of the beverage if trying it. Maybe they had simply some sense for flower aesthetics... 🙃😇
My paternal haplogroup is Ice Age hunter gatherer (I-M223) and my maternal haplogroup is neolithic farmer (K1c2) so neither group could have entirely disappeared.
K1c2 Mt DNA is also related to the spread of R1a Y DNA. And I2a2-M223 comes from hunters gathers I, yes, but lately. Some old haplogp (like some Caucasian G2a) are thought to be mixed in R1 population before steppe herders migration. Even if ancients local DNA didn't completely disappear.
Yours really is the number 1 channel on YT worth watching, science or otherwise. Thank you, smart guy, you are truly appreciated in these dark days of argument & falsehood....
Hey man, long time fan here, I have a question, do you have plans of uploading on any of the podcast apps? I would love to hear your videos on the way to work but youtube consumes too much data in my country lol. Audio only apps are so good for people with long commutes that have to drive and cant watch the videos and its also super economical. Hope you consider it.
40:41 MAN I was honestly considering writing my thesis on that in a couple years 😭😭😭. Every time I mention the archaeology of weed to someone they’re like “huh I’d never thought of that before”. It’s super funny that one of my fav RUclipsrs had the same idea.
Great content Stefan. I love seeing people who specialize im a particular field of research share their knowledge and continual learning journey whether that medicine, history, philosophy etc. I'm aiming to achieve a more contemplative life and it's channels like these that are helping myself and others achieve this. Thank you.
wow, I grew up not too far from Falköping and had no idea there were so many of these graves there, thanks for educating me! and huge thanks for all of your content, it's really the best on yt.
I'm guessing and speculating wildly now, but I think it was spread by semi travelling birds that lived close to humans and occasionally -deleted- might have contaminated human dwellings, from feces or possibly from transferring bird fleas. EDIT wooot I'm Swedish and living in that area, we have some kind of burial mound (unmarked) right where I take my summer lake swims.
That's a great theory, and super cool that you live near a burial mound. But I have to burst your bubble, the black plague only affects mammals, since it's spread by fleas. HOWEVER, there is some evidence predatory birds may have been responsible for transporting the animals that were already infected by the plague.
Birds can't transmit the plague, the fleas that affect them don't carry it. HOWEVER, predatory birds could have transported small animals that were already infected.
great video! i really appreciate the depth of research you presented. however, i can't help but wonder if some of the conclusions are a bit too speculative. it's fascinating to think about, but could we be overemphasizing the impact of this plague on prehistoric societies? would love to hear others' thoughts on this!
I would love if you could make a video on the Basque people of western France/spain. They have a non Indo-European language and all the words for cutting implement are related to the word stone!!
Huge thanks to Nebula for sponsoring the video. Consider watching my bonus video on the archaeology of the first (confirmed) stoners go.nebula.tv/stefanmilo
Love to hear if you think the kassites, Mitanni, Hyksos and aryans from the vestas were connected……and if tollenes and sea peoples were connected….perhaps all of them given the space and timing of the steppes and historical record of the domino affects that play out with one nomad group pushing out another and their affect on settled peoples……any video on the sasi movement…..god bless
The first stoners? My ancestors 🥹💚
@@Samuel-q7t9e😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Not so glad with the background music 😢
Looking good mate!
The idea of Bronze Age people finding a new and empty landscape filled with inexplicable monuments is very Ray Bradbury-esque kinda of a tale.
I simply don't understand why historians and archaeologists don't refer to the 'Beaker people' or 'steppe people' as the Yamnaya culture. The Yamnaya were the Bronze age people who flooded all over Europe at this age. This would be a much more comprehensible concept for those who are not history buffs. Some historians and archaeologists even describe this period as the 'Indo-European invasion,' which refers to the significant linguistic transformation brought by the Yamnaya across Europe. It's like they can't see the forest for the trees.
@@radieschen79 The Yamnaya have different material cultures, so its likely they were culturally dfferent. Like insisting Japan has Chinese culture despiste the various adoptions of it.
@@radieschen79 It wasn't the Yamnaya that arrived in Britain. The culture would have changed through the generations. Also there is the R1b R1a split within steppe related ancestry in Europe. It likely wasn't just the Yamnaya expanding into Europe.
No they lived side by side in some cases. In Britain they Bell-beakers replaced 93 % of the previous population but it took a couple of 100 years and they lived in separate communities close to each other. It is all a bit strange.
@actung. Arriving Anatolian farmers (6,000 YBP aka 4,000 BCE) may have seen that. Or they may have passively (disease) or actively (war, enslavement, etc) killed off the WHG population of Britain. But arriving steppe ancestry people did not see an empty landscape. 70% to 75% of British ancestry today is not steppe, it is by far mostly Anatolian farmer. Anatolian farmer descendants built Stonehenge starting 5,000 . Beaker/Yamniya/Steepp ancestry arrived in British Isles 4500-4,000 YBP
Ooh also! The mediaeval plagues are now thought to have been significantly human-to-human transmitted rather than by fleas due to more work on plague pathology, such as reported symptoms and time until death. Whilst flea spread did occur, cramped mediaeval cities would've been a hotbed for spreading via coughing or contact with infected fluids, given the poor sanitation in Europe at the time.
Yes but is there any transfer data or just opinions? Thanks.
I thought the latest (that I've heard) research is that it's transmitted human-to-human transferred by human fleas?! Or is that a fringe theory?
@@MinnesotaBeekeeper If I remember correctly it is mostly based on (a) models based on known insect transmitted diseases not following the actual spread of the plague (which was way too quick for the models and the models did fit with a mix of flea and human to human transference) and (b) the existing records not really describing the rat population as one would expect if they were a vital link in the spread of the plague. Actual data is bit difficult to come by since the people at the time were not exactly knowledgable and I don't think we actually have the genes of the plague bacteria at that time. So, not exactly solid evidence, but more than just opinions? Mind you, it has been some time ago that I read aboutt it. Might very well have been disproven or strengthened with new evidence by now.
@@pietersleijpen3662 oh we do. As we have plague DNA from the Neolithic even, Middle Ages are "recent" by comparison.
@@MinnesotaBeekeeper Transfer Data ??? ---- Human females are known to prefer Hard Disk Drives over Floppy disks...😉🙂😊
This one was so good I could have sat through 5 hours more!!! Thanks for your splendid work, Stefan.
Yes, we need The Stefan Milo Experience
Yesss we demand a 5 hour video!!!!
Love when you contextualize findings into what life actually “felt” like back then, very humanizing, please do more
Thinking about those civilizations that just vanished, both from history and the gene pool really fucks with me. I tend to incorrectly think of history as following evolution in some way - one group gradually transitioning into the next. The fact that there are these grouos who arent even anyones ancestors really, but still left such an impact on history is amazing
Sometimes it's kind of overwhelming to think about the sheer magnitude of what has been lost to time, and what we will never even know has been lost..
19:55 Afaik the steppe people were herders, so the reservoir could have been in their herds / flocks. And let's speculate: them trading horses and other beasts with the neolithic people in one year brought the plague there, and as they returned one or a few years later, the villages were empty, so they sent their young to resettle there. The steppe people could already have evolved some immunity to the bacteria common within their herds, however probably to less virulent strains, which would still give them also some resilience against the new, more dangerous strains.
That's a pretty reasonable idea I think
Yeah, nice theory. we should consider a far more diverse pattern of coming & going.
@Hellemokers it's not a theory it's a hypothesis.
@@StefanMiloit’s basically what Europeans did to North America
My (limited) understanding is that Y. pestis doesn't form stable enzootics (or perhaps has a much harder time doing so) in herd animals the way it does in rodents. Goats and sheep have been known to be able to get the plague, but as far as I know they aren't known to tolerate the infection in the way that rodents do-where levels of plague infection build up in the population and at a certain point catalyze a rapid die-off/epizootic disease event. it's when the rodents die off that the infected fleas seek out new hosts-if you don't have the capacity in a species for an epizootic disease event like that to catalyze a human epidemic, I don't think a species can be said to be a suitable plague reservoir. See Epidemiology section of "Plague" (2009) by David T. Dennis in Tropical Infectious Diseases. Of course, people are now saying rodent populations, despite being the most likely non-human flea/plague vector candidate, couldn't have spread fast enough through Europe to cause the second pandemic. That's reasonable, and given that turn in understandings of medieval plague, it makes sense that scientists like Pooja Swali might tentatively lean towards a human transmission hypothesis as well for these potential outbreaks which date to much earlier. This kind of goes out the window if, as you suggest, the Y. pestis of the time is different enough from the historical strains we're more familiar with, but at that point it goes way above my head. It's not just about it being less virulent the further back you go, I don't think-one would have to prove somehow that that evolution of the bacteria was capable of enzootics in herd animals. Which seems unlikely to me, but there's so much new research into the evolution of plague that has come out in the past ten years or so that there's a lot up in the air right now! Definitely over my head.
Modern archaeology and genetics tell us that the Beaker People arrived in Ireland about 4,500 years ago and largely (but not completely) replaced the farming people that were there, but not how. Irish Gaelic mythology tells us that the last ancestors of the Irish arrived about 4,000 years ago, and replaced the previous people, the magical Tuatha de Danaan. The stories tell of battles and such, but some stories mention that the Tuatha began dying off from a mysterious illness ...
Interesting! Do you have a source for that? The mysterious illness that is. I haven't come across it my reading. Or maybe I'm not as well read as I like to think.
Wow very interesting. I'd love to know if you have a source for that mythology.
Hi Stefan, hi Tony. Um, yes and no. The stories are recorded in the 11th Century compilation 'The Book of Invasions (of Ireland)' (Leabhar Gabhála Éireann), of which there are a number of versions, all compiled from earlier books, and some are also in another ancient text from Wales whose name escapes me for the moment. The references to the illness I found in a commentary on one of the versions, but I don't remember where! I wish I could be more specific, sorry, but I will keep looking and get back to you if I can find it.
I love your work Stefan, very informative, entertaining and dare I say important. I'm making my third trip to Peru next month, wish you could come 🙂
This is truly fascinating, please get back to us, would love to peek at the perception of the plague through the lens of the ancient mythos!
Yes. Fascinating. Keep us posted!
Honestly yours is my favorite youtube channel, hands down. This video is no exception. The part about how the plague of the ancient past wasn't necessarily just as lethal as the version we know is so obvious when stated, but not something I had ever stopped to consider! Thanks so much for setting up such compelling interviews and helping lay people like myself better understand these studies.
Not even joking, i think i fall in sleep for the last 🤔 2 years with this mans voice 😂😂 it's getting pretty scary
Epidemiomolgy is so wildly unpredictable.
I just recently learned that the spanish flu actually had three waves of closely related viruses, which behaved quite differently in the victim.
With the last one being the most deadly at nearly 30% lethality, while the first and second one seem to have been far mor infectious but well surviveable.
And doctors at the time did indeed describe the first and third wave as possibly different ilnesses because the symptomitics where so different.
I’m in agreement, him and Scott Manley
I really appreciate how Stefan will openly acknowledge the alternative theories and the uncertainty in a subject. It's refreshing to watch a video that isn't screaming at me to agree with it. This is just a person who enjoys the topic and is sharing the current information about it. Stefan is excited so he's sharing it with us.
Superb work, Stefan.
It's always a bit surreal when big youtubers comment on other big youtubers' videos. All the best, love your work Rob! (Rob is a good strong name:) )
No way RobWords! I love your videos boss and your podcast!
The family struggling against generations of plague bummed me out. We don't normally get such a personal look at people from the stone age
The part about not being able to say if the "pit" people died of the plague made me think of Monty Python and the "bring out your dead!" "But I'm not dead yet!" but throws him in the pit instead of the wagon.
I'm getting better! I feeeel happyyy! 😂😂😂
‘Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.’ 😂
Really excellent. Too many science videos try to give pat, simple explanations. Yours does a great job of dealing with inherent uncertainty.
this title and thumbnail is gold stefan
Wow, I'm early. Fantastic video, as always!
I wrote an Archaeology Magazine article about this, on the possible significance of the kerbed 'ring cairn' it was found in at Levens Park. That style of monument is very specific to the earliest Bronze Age (c. 2500BC), and emerged dramatically ALL OVER the landscape of northern England / Wales. They're also always found to be full of cremated remains and jumbled bones - a veritable mass grave enclosure. Most 'stone circles' are, actually, ring cairns!
Interestingly, ring cairns evolved to become 'concentric stone circles', of which Stonehenge is the most famous example! Could be a sort-of microbacterial dominoe effect!
Yo Adam, thank you for the footage of Levens Park! Everyone reading this go check out Adam's channel there's a link in the description, he makes great stuff honestly.
@ Cheers Stefan, very kind of you!
The final 'thought' was a really fascinating speculation and very haunting
This is without a doubt, not just one of the best educational channels I have seen, but one of the best educational documentary series ever put out, I havent seen a TV series remotely close to this level of detail and quality.
So glad you are covering this! I saw something on it on a different channel that I didn’t trust as much and really wanted your take.
You are the Cherry on what was one of the most positive day's in my life. Much Love Stefan!
Your positivity is infectious. We could use an epidemic of it when you have the time.
Just my 2 cents: If you see prevalent plague in the last generation of buried people, it's safe to assume there was at least one more generation which buried them. It could be that survivors stopped burying people, at least in the same tombs, if they associated them with the untimely demise of their ancestors. Maybe they kept on living, but either moved away from the "infected areas" or changed their burial practices to something that we can't track as much.
Or, they buried them and then died and had nobody to bury them. So, the last generation in the tomb is the 2nd last generation.
Farms require a certain amount of labor so if too many people died the survivors would pretty much be forced to move on.
Hey Stefan, loved the video! I'm a geologist (so NOT an epidemiologist just a survivor of COVID like the rest of us). In my geoscience opinion both plague epidemics seen in the archaeological record that you presented can be explained by the climate changing rapidly (probably because of a volcanic eruption with enough ash ejected to block the sun and cause volcanic winter). In written history a volcanic winter is the prelude to almost every plague epidemic. The most profound and best recorded was 535-541AD (plague of justinian) had 3 seperate eruptions in (probably) iceland and the americas (we know 3 separate volcanoes erupted 3 seperate somewheres during this time period because of geochemically distinct ash layers in arctic and antarctic ice it's just hard to pinpoint where globally they came from but those locations are the most supported by evidence) to cause a almost 10 years long volcanic winter causing mass famine and unrest (see: King Arthur). Close behind comes the Plague of Justinian and a massive migration period in europe and asia. The climate changes, people move, the steppe people have a natural immunity to plague because that's where it comes from (Tibetan plateau), the indigenous peoples die, the population genetic makeup changes rapidly. In order for plague to get into your bones it has to be septicemic plague, which has almost a 100% death rate. So if just one person's bones in a mass grave has plague, it's safe to assume almost all of them did. (I mean not safe enough for a scientific paper but for common sense yes)
Tell us about this (((covid)))
@@benwinter2420 antisemitic dog whistle, this comment needs cleanup
@@cedaremberr Hell yeah
@@benwinter2420 It came, it killed about 1.2mill. in USA alone, (don't know about the rest of the world), it then mutated into a more benign type and stayed.
These are only facts, not conspiracy lies.
still waiting for your fast fourier transform, buddy
Regardless of the overall impact, it's at least cool to have proof that plague was an additional pressure at the time. I'm sure it'll help enrich a lot of different theories!
I agree Pneumonic plague kills much quicker, as quick as 24hr so there would be a a shorter sepsis episode, or even no septic episode, the victim dies of Acute Respiratory Failure as opposed to a multi organ failure that comes from a greater systemic disease, this would have an effect on the global bacterial load in the body ie the teeth.
A society’s response to pandemic before our more enlighten world was very harsh to households, villages, people locked up in their houses, rounded up, even killed, some societies saw the victims as cursed, marked by their Gods for punishment, who’s to say that once a member of a household had it, all the run had to die too, it’s interesting with the site where the bodies had trauma by being thrown into the cave perhaps shows a lack of religious / burial consideration for the victims.
Fascinating stuff
One issue discussed in this video has to do with sensitivity vs. specificity of finding Y. pestis DNA in dental pulp. It's accepted that specificity is very high, sort of close to 100%, meaning there are no false positives (finding Yp DNA in a person who died of something else. Sensitivity means how likely it is for a test to detect a disease when present. DNA denaturation, and other technical problems suggest that it's considerably less than 100%. It should be noted that bacteremia is much more severe in pneumonic plague (bacterial count more than 1000 times higher), so residual "true positives" would be more likely.
Another great video mate.
Out of all of the RUclipsrs I watch regularly, I think you're the guy I'd like meet and chat with the most.
I visited Ireland this summer, went to so many neolithic sites, i loved every one. My wife complained i just liked rocks.
From Ireland and retiring soon, on my bucket list to visit as many sites as I can.
Rocks are fascinating.
Rocks are elemental
I see new Stefan video, I click...
Fantastic video as always! And the pronounciations were fine, you didn't get easy pickings 😝
The swedish graves you were discussing are actually around the area I grew up in, so reading the rapports back when they came out was a bit extra interesting than they already were!
Looking forward to your next vid
/ a swedish archaeologist
I learn more here than I do at school. Keep up the excellent work.
Edit: I wasn’t expecting that awesome looking spear at 1:06.
(Posting this here so I don’t get rid of the heart) I have to visit these sites one day.
LOVE the spear!
fun thing is that imho they had to have had a sort of global education system in the stone age, since stone working and other techniques were shared. same for metal(bronze) working
@lichtbewolkt yeah. They used jets to fly around to teach stone work.
Shamcrock has ruined your ability to think.
@@lichtbewolktTell me you are joking mate. I don't want to start disparaging you.
Great stuff as always. The information that genetic studies are bringing us (fragmentary & in need of thoughtfull/humble intepretation as it is) is truly astounding. Thanks for covering it.
thank you for another great episode Stefan. Your content is top tier! It’s Quality over Quantity I see 👍🏼 I’m here for it all 🔥🍿
OMG! As soon as I heard the discussion about "animal reservoirs" I started thinking what we all shouted at the end of the "Aliens" movie: "IT'S IN THE DOG!". BTW, you're the first creator that might induce me to subscribe to Nebula. Another wonderful video!
Aliens had a dog in it?
@stripeytawney822 yeah it was a cat in Aliens... the dog-alien was in the Thing.
@boskysquelch111 uh no.
It was a cat in Alien.
No furrys in Aliens.
There WAS a dog/bull (depending on the version) in the Alien movie on the prison planet.
@stripeytawney822 Nope. Jonesy was in Aliens..all be it briefly. He was sharing the cryo-chamber with Ripley on the Narcissus, when they were found by the Tripast Salvage; then received by the Gateway Station. 😆
@boskysquelch111 yeah, you are correct. Strange you don't comment on the OP's 'IT'S IN THE DOG!' assertion though.
I love these videos so much!! You seem to always provide all points of view you can think of and the interviews with professionals give great insight. Thank you for these videos Stefan!
I LOVE that your last two videos have been out in the field chatting with active scientists. Your recent chat with the geneticist was purely awesome ❤
I love your content Stefan, thanks for making it
I like the informative and elaborating on education rather than entertainment style! I hope you help me save my attention span, Mr! Various of people interviewed, so very convincing overall! Thank you!
Love all the last minute additions - truly a contentious topic! 😀
This was my favorite video in a long time and I love ALL YOUR VIDEOS!!! I would love a deep dive into the family tree paper- I’m so interested in that, the relationships between the individuals
Jesus christ, amazing video, Im so glad you have collabed with Miniminuteman, otherwise I'd never be exposed to this amazing content, thank you
Jesus does Levant centric content.
Stefan Milo has a more euro-centric focus.
I'm here from the other Milo too!!!
The entire Christ caper is an older Mars cult . . yeah the elephant in room mysterious of planets worshipped that are just pricks of light now . . sound of crickets from the mask wearers
If you want content focused on the Levant I think historywithcy is a better option.
How many times we had "visit" of Black Plague from Asian steppe to Europe? BTW, Chinese know for centuries that plague is rat disease. And when you have agriculture, and no cats, it will be hard to get rid of rats. Also, there is interesting question: Were steppe people more resistant to plague, and did plague moved with their migration, or it only conveniently opened space for their migration? I see you contemplated that too... Fortunately advances in genetics might give an answer to that question in our lifetime.
In the middle ages steppe people were exposed to plague repeatedly and had possibly developed some resistance. Mongols even used plague as a weapon in Europe or the Near East. So it's natural to speculate that the same was true in the Bronze Age.
I'm glad I found your channel. You bring great content plus a passion.
Thank you for your hard work on these. Great precursor to a Dan Davis. 😀
Stefan if you wanna walk in the woods in every video, then go ahead and do it. I personally love walking in the woods, and if you're like me and love to walk in the woods, and that helps you make a better video, then that's a win for everyone
9:40 Only listening to the audio I had to run over to my computer to hear more about the Kernosivsky Idol...how had I never heard of a PIE-era monument that is 120 meters tall! I missed the correction to "cm" on the screen.
Truly one of the grandest monuments in history!
@@LDProductionsClass I'm not saying it was aliens, but...
RUclips chopped off the end of your comment, so I was going to ask if it was the "willy, pointing upwards" that had you racing to the computer, but then I saw the rest of it 😂
lmaoooo me too
Awesome!!! A Stefan video after a Dan video.!!
and perfect timing on both! Wow.. best thing about the whole day!
Thank you Stefan!!
I just came from Dan's video 😊
thank you man loved this video, very interesting and great editing and narration.
your beard around 13:45 looks great on you! Oh, and as always an amazing video! lots of love from Denmark
I've been going over your "old" videos - essentially looking for 'the man with a spoon' videos that I so enjoyed some years ago; you da man.
That drew a blank, but this one particularly tweaked my "Oh my god" synapses: you have interviewed/included Pooja Swali! She will undoubtedly be a massive influence on genetics of ancient European people. Many other influential historians/archaeologists/science informers refer to her in very, very glowing terms - see Prof Alice Roberts as an example
1:21 Updated spoon mike?
I have been watching your videos for the last year an a half after my obsession with prehistory began. You make great videos about interesting topics that scratch my brain’s need for discovery. You are genuine and knowledgeable, and make it easy and entertaining for me to learn about our history. Thank you, and keep it up.
Terrific show Stefan keep up the good work! Prehistory is so interesting exciting and leaving us wanting more. Your show is so brilliant for us trying to understand it all. Totally fascinating!
The thumbnail, brother!😂😂😂😂 Love this channel. Carry on.
Great video, love your channel, congrats on the kitty! I’m rushing over to Nebula now
Another banger (not the sausage type of banger) of a video Stefan!!! I'm in my 60s and never had much interest in archeology BUT your videos are changing that! Thanks for what you do!!
If the plague was transmitted by rats it will hurt farmers more than steppe pastoralists as the grain stores would attract rats to farmsteads. And they didn't had domestic cats back then. Nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralists would not have a similar rat problem as they moved about with their herds.
I've heard this theory in the context of the Plague of Justinian and how it probably hurt romans more than it hurt lombards leading to roman losing Northern Italy.
Not only did it hurt the metropolitan Romans and Persians more than the Lombards, but more importantly it hurt the Romans and Persians more than the Pastoral and Nomadic Arabs. One can largely attribute the rapid rise of Islam to the Justinianic Plague 30-50 years earlier.
People in India kept snakes. Perhaps to kill rodents?
@@micahbonewell5994Interesting idea.
Your videos are always so fascinating, thanks for posting
SUBBED making an expert geneologist say "Yea that is a good point" is totally worth watching more videos 36:19
I really enjoyed this episode, what an intriguing concept. Now as a cat lover/cat foster mom, thank you for adopting such a lovely looking tabby.
I love that stefan may have just given one of the researchers an idea for more research, even just as a youtuber it's still not impossible to contribute some tiny bit to science
Oh a beaker beer test is definitely in order lol
Cheers 🍻
120 meters would have been a huge achievement!
Like Spinal Tap Stonehenge in reverse
Stefan the word "aurochs" is singular, the plural is also "aurochs" or "aurochsen". Sorry to be pedantic ! Excellent video - thanks.
It's generally held that aurochs became extinct in the British Isles around 3500 years ago (1627 in Central Europe). At that point, if oral histories are to be believed, it's likely the language across the British archipelago was a form of proto-Celtic (I've no clue whether p and q Celtic had become distinct at that time, so I'll resist any urge to call it 'proto-Brythonic').
Infuriatingly, the initial 'aur' syllable of the noun seems common to both Celtic and German Germanic language groups ... which sort of makes sense as these things were widespread, big and dangerous!
Whatever the proto-Celtic plural for this creature was, I suspect we can safely rule out the typically Germanic "-en". I'm tending towards something with a nasal mutation as safer when avoiding these stroppy cows on steroids in close woodland!!
Now *thats* pedantry!! 🙂
I loved this video, Stefan! There is not that much information in the public realm about the Neolithic to Bronze Age transition in Europe, compared to Mesopotamia. You do a lot to rectify that. Thanks also to Pooja and Frederik for explaining their work so clearly and easy to understand. I’ll go check out that video of yours on nebula.
I saw a fascinating documentary on a town in Britain where the people had a gene that protected them from either getting the plague or from dying of it (depending if you had the gene from both parents or just one respectively). This makes sense if plague was with humanity in Britain for thousands of years. It also appears to be the same gene that prevents people from getting HIV or from developing AIDS. I am wondering when that gene actually showed up in Britain. Was it always in people and who originally had it. It is fascinating how well evolution and genetic diversity can make us less vulnerable as a species. Thank you for this documentary. It was fabulous!
I love your channel because the content is intelligent and you are so genuine. I like listening to you talk about any topic because you are both calm and excited about the significance of the topic. It’s also fun to see you at all the local haunts. You rep us portlandians well my sir.
This is an awesome video. It opened my eyes to an area of science and history I had no idea of. Fascinating that we are able to understand what happened so far back in our history.
Another banger. Thank you.
For me, you are a trustworthy source. Many thanks.
Great Video Stafen! You always find the most interesting topics. It is beyond fascinating, thanks for helping me procrastinate my work!!
Yes!!!! I'm here early for a Stefan Milo video. Now his dolcet times will immediately improve my day thanks Stefan 🎉🎉😂😂😂
The one thing that makes me wonder now is why the waves in the 14th century were so deadly.
Usually diseases tend to get less fatal over time, partially because the host species becomes more resistant (or rather, only the more resistant ones survive and have offspring, spreading those resistant genes), partially because it's useful to keep the host alive, so less fatal strains tend to do better in the long run.
A good example are flu strains. Those that are around tend to have a very low mortality, while xenoinfections tend to be extremely dangerous. Both the virus and we as a host sort of learned to live together.
The same could even be seen throughout the pandemic. First a rather high mortality. Later on much less lethal, but more infectious. It adapted to us.
It's quite simple, actually. Both disease and the host evolve together, host getting immunity and disease increasing efficiency. In most of cases of high mortality disease spreads (black plague, European arrival to America, and this one possibly) disease probably arrived with/from distant population with big genetic difference. In case of the black death it was strain from China to which Europeans had no immunity to. Same thing few hundred years later (with different disease) happened in America. If steppe population had relative immunity to this plague, and transmitted it to neolithic population which didn't have before (at least not new evolved strain) it could've been quite deadly.
Flu is viral, plague is bacterial. Modern cities with cramped living made the 14th century plague more deadly.
That's because it's not the same pathogen (e.g., Pathogen B) infecting the population that was infected before (by Pathogen A). Also, Pathogen A may have been so lethal that any members of the population that got hit by Pathogen A may not even have been infected at all, hence their survival. There being no host to evolve to become less lethal, the surviving population may not have the genes to develop any immunity so when a new plague came in, Pathogen B infects and kills just as much as Pathogen A did to the population.
As someone with a high degree of ancestry from indigenous Americans, I also couldn't help but think of the Columbian exchange throughout this video. I wonder if an archeologist thousands of years from now would see a similar phenomena in the genetics of populations in the Americas (especially the USA). I wonder what life was like for those last groups of Neolithic farmers, watching outsiders come in and take the lands your ancestors have been living on for thousands of years.
Columbian exchange shows us it's not an either/or-- both disease and violence were involved. I often see European archeologists make lofty assertions that only one factor was in play in these sorts of events, yet in recorded history it's always messy like this.
It would have been highly unlikely that your ancestors had been living on that land for thousands of years. Various tribes took it and lost it over time, fighting wars and taking slaves just like in Europe.
Your ancestors were not a monolith, but a diverse people with highly divergent cultures, languages and religious beliefs.
It would not have been anything very unusual to them aside from the physical appearance and technology of the newcomers. They were accustomed to war and conquest.
The arrival of English convict settlers in Australia resulted in a documented 99% mortality (196 died with 2 survivors) of the native population at Botany Bay within two years of landing from Smallpox, Measles, Influenza etc caught from the prisoners being landed.
0:18 Minor correction: "aurochs" is singular; cf "ox". The plural is aurochsen, though you'll also see aurochs, or aurochses.
Ah, like oxen
I was about to comment the same thing :)
🙄
There are some new studies that some viruses might live in the cells of our tissues even after you have survived from that. Then sometimes it might have a possibility to flare up again, this is to be studied later. Think about an autoimmunity disease and then it just comes back, maybe evolves with some contact to other pathogens (dunno if that can happen) and then start to spread in some intervals when situation is right for it.
Absolutely fascinating.
0:04 Charnel House Warren more likely, by the looks of it...
Fascinating topic.
Cheers.
Archaeologist Raksha Dave (formerly on Time Team) hosted a great BBC miniseries on the 1665 plague where modern researchers have found human lice can transmit bubonic plague as easily as rat fleas can.
This is significant, because it lets plague travel with humans AND RIDERS, explaining times when it crossed Europe much faster than rats and their fleas can spread, when it traveled with caravans or couriers or over land where a rat (especially a dead one) in a saddlebag would be hard to miss, and when it seemed to jump from bedding, clothes, or the deceased at wakes during the most recent 1900 outbreak in San Francisco and Dublin.
So, could the Neolithic plague have been spread by human lice, which were a fact of life up until the 20th century?
You mention that researchers have found a gene in y Pestis that makes it possible for it to be carried in the stomach of rat (or rodent, since it infects marmots) fleas. So now the question is, can they find a gene that links it to human lice?
The experiment I mentioned above simply infected a rabbit with y. pestis, then put human lice in the VERY carefully sealed chamber with the rabbit, then transferred some of those lice to a chamber with an uninfected rabbit, which I suppose human lice will bite if no human is handy. Sure enough, rabbit B became infected through blood transferred by the lice, and it didn't take long or much of a bacterial load. But that test only established human lice CAN transmit y. pestis, not that they DID, although circumstantial evidence like the number of miles per day at which the plague spread across Europe over land is highly suggestive.
honest review:; the thumbnail almost made me NOT click on it till i remembered your name.
Me too.
Love your videos. Between you and Flint and Miniminuteman I get my daily dose of prehistoric archeology.
MY FAVOURITE RUclipsR HAS POSTED!!!!!
Thankyou Milo. It's an extremely interesting watch and I learned a lot.
Mind-blowing! So if I am reasoning correctly, if the plague didn’t clear the way for the Yamnaya, which were responsible for the spread of indo-european languages, people in Europe and possibly America would use a completely different set of languages. The fact that this video is in English boils down to the archaic plague!
Too much emphasis is placed on the possibility of plague in this.
Having horses, wheels and bronze weapons as well as superior size and physical strength and a total warrior culture would have made them utterly invincible to people who had none of those things.
Perhaps the plague did help clear some people out but it would have been irrelevant to their ultimate success.
The thought provoking nature of your approach is mostly what attracts me to your channel.
I absolutely love your enthusiasm in your videos. I'm glad I stumbled upon this channel.
You should do a video on bhimbedka cave system someday.
7:10 Maybe those beakers were vases for flowers? And they were buried next to such a vase, filled either with physical or with ghost flowers? They are clearly to big and unwieldy to drink from them, especially with such a curved edge making you spill half of the beverage if trying it. Maybe they had simply some sense for flower aesthetics... 🙃😇
Maybe they used them to roll dice when playing games?
My paternal haplogroup is Ice Age hunter gatherer (I-M223) and my maternal haplogroup is neolithic farmer (K1c2) so neither group could have entirely disappeared.
K1c2 Mt DNA is also related to the spread of R1a Y DNA. And I2a2-M223 comes from hunters gathers I, yes, but lately. Some old haplogp (like some Caucasian G2a) are thought to be mixed in R1 population before steppe herders migration. Even if ancients local DNA didn't completely disappear.
Yours really is the number 1 channel on YT worth watching, science or otherwise. Thank you, smart guy, you are truly appreciated in these dark days of argument & falsehood....
Thanks! The best thing one can do is teach, and you definitely taught me something today. Never heard about plague at that time before.
Hey man, long time fan here, I have a question, do you have plans of uploading on any of the podcast apps? I would love to hear your videos on the way to work but youtube consumes too much data in my country lol. Audio only apps are so good for people with long commutes that have to drive and cant watch the videos and its also super economical. Hope you consider it.
Thank you for sending me down a youtube rabbit hole about the research of neolithic plagues!
Thank you for your amazing work, Stefan! Every bit as engaging and entertaining as a large scale production.
Copper Age!!!
No Bronze Age in most of Europe until after Bell Beaker.
40:41 MAN I was honestly considering writing my thesis on that in a couple years 😭😭😭. Every time I mention the archaeology of weed to someone they’re like “huh I’d never thought of that before”. It’s super funny that one of my fav RUclipsrs had the same idea.
Great content Stefan. I love seeing people who specialize im a particular field of research share their knowledge and continual learning journey whether that medicine, history, philosophy etc. I'm aiming to achieve a more contemplative life and it's channels like these that are helping myself and others achieve this. Thank you.
oh my god frederik's paper is so cool, we're living in such a golden age for prehistoric knowledge
wow, I grew up not too far from Falköping and had no idea there were so many of these graves there, thanks for educating me! and huge thanks for all of your content, it's really the best on yt.
#300!!! I learned sooooo mich today. Thx Milo
I'm guessing and speculating wildly now, but I think it was spread by semi travelling birds that lived close to humans and occasionally -deleted- might have contaminated human dwellings, from feces or possibly from transferring bird fleas.
EDIT wooot I'm Swedish and living in that area, we have some kind of burial mound (unmarked) right where I take my summer lake swims.
That's a great theory, and super cool that you live near a burial mound. But I have to burst your bubble, the black plague only affects mammals, since it's spread by fleas.
HOWEVER, there is some evidence predatory birds may have been responsible for transporting the animals that were already infected by the plague.
Birds can't transmit the plague, the fleas that affect them don't carry it. HOWEVER, predatory birds could have transported small animals that were already infected.
Seeing that family tree was so interesting, definitely gonna be reading Frederik’s paper after this video.
great video! i really appreciate the depth of research you presented. however, i can't help but wonder if some of the conclusions are a bit too speculative. it's fascinating to think about, but could we be overemphasizing the impact of this plague on prehistoric societies? would love to hear others' thoughts on this!
I'm actually a little shocked that guy never considered it like the European invasion of the Americas. It's such an obvious comparison.
I would love if you could make a video on the Basque people of western France/spain. They have a non Indo-European language and all the words for cutting implement are related to the word stone!!