Civilization #5: The Yamnaya Conquest of Europe

Okay, so last class, we talked about Maria Kumbotas, who is an anthropologist, and she makes the argument that for the longest time, for most of its history, Europe was egalitarian, peaceful, and artistic. But today, we are a patriarchy, there's a lot of inequality, and we're always at war with each other. So what changed? Okay, and last time, we discussed that old Europe was conquered by a warlike people, who we call today the Yemenite. Okay, so... Three questions I want to answer in today's class is, first of all, who are the Yemenite? Second question is, where did they come from? And the third question is, how did they conquer Europe, okay? Alright, so let's go back in time and look at the world about 10,000 years ago, okay? So we believe that about 11,000 years ago, in the Near East, we developed agriculture. We developed the technology of farming. And as we discussed in

our very first class, it was because humans are a religious people, and farming allows us to celebrate our religion, okay? And the reason why farming was founded in the Near East is, for the longest time, there's an ice age. So you couldn't farm. You had to move around from place to place to hunt and find food, okay? So after the ice age, which ended about 12,000 years ago, the climate became warmer, and the Near East became the area where you could grow crops, the easiest, okay? So Near East is what we call the Middle East today, which includes Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Israel. That's where farming was invented. About 7,000, 8,000 years ago, the weather became a lot cooler, okay? There was another ice age for a very short amount of time, and this forced people to start to immigrate or migrate to look for new land, okay? So people in the Near East, they went off to Europe, and these people were very lucky.

Because the geography of Europe was not that different from the geography of the Near East. So they could take their religion, they could take their technology, move over to Europe, and still be about the same, okay? There were some minor changes, but they were more or less the same, okay? So these people were very lucky. And these people, as Maria Kambuta said, these people have the same religion as the people of the Near East. They worship the Mother Goddess, who gives life to everything, okay? They believe in the ideas of unity. Unity just means that we are the same, okay? Every one of us are the same. We have a responsibility to love each other and to love each other's children. We're the same as animals. We're the same as plants, okay? So we must do our best to protect nature. The farms allows us to eat food, but we should not destroy nature.

We should protect nature because it's all the Mother Goddess, okay? We're all the children of the Mother Goddess. So we also believe in balance and harmony. And this is the religion, as we discussed before, of many indigenous peoples around the world. If you go to Africa, Australia, the Amazon, and you meet these indigenous peoples, they have the same religion. Which is, we come from a Mother Goddess, and we have a responsibility to protect the nature, the earth, because that's the gift from the Mother Goddess. And everyone has a soul. So after we die, our soul still lives on. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? So this is the religion of old Europe. And because of this religion, they were egalitarian, meaning there was no real difference between men and women. In fact, because women had the power to give birth, to give life,

they were considered in many ways superior to men, and the political class was mainly governed by women, okay? They were peaceful. They really didn't have to fight each other because they felt their resources was enough for them, okay? And they were artistic. So they focused their intellectual energies on creating art, to celebrate the Mother Goddess and their religion, okay? So the people in the Near East and the people of Europe were very similar, okay? The problem starts when these people went off to what we call the steppes. The steppes is a huge ocean of grassland that basically extends from Europe into Mongolia, okay? And you know, the Chinese word for this is. Now the problem with the grassland is people can't eat grass. And you cannot grow crops on grassland that easily, okay? So the people on the steppes, they struggle to survive. And the people on the steppes engage in a process we call social evolution, okay?

So you may have heard the term evolution. I want to explain what the term evolution means for our class, because we will refer to it a lot as we progress through human history, okay? So for us, evolution means open, cooperative competition, okay? So this is what evolution means. And evolution has historically been the greatest source of human innovation and creativity, okay? So let me explain why. Open means there's no central authority. There's no great power, okay? There's no hegemon. Everyone's competing against each other. Competition just means these people, these many different people, they're trying to compete to survive, okay? There are very scarce resources in the steppes. It's not as wealthy as the Near East and as Europe, and they're all trying to survive. They all adopt different strategies in order to survive, okay? At the same time, cooperative means they're still communicating with each other. They're still trading. They're still friends.

Maybe they'll exchange wives, exchange presents, okay? So this is a process of social evolution that has created the most innovation in human history. So in Chinese history, this most resembles what period in Chinese history? In Chinese history. Which part of Chinese history does this process where you have many different people in open competition with each other but still learning from each other? This period in Chinese history is called? Exactly, right? And that's where most of Chinese innovation and creativity came from, from that period. Confucius came from that period. Laozi, okay? A lot of major intellectual breakthroughs came from that period, okay? But not only the of China. As we move on, we will also look at two other major periods where there was a major outburst of innovation and then very similar social structure as like this, okay? So we will also be studying the Greek city -states. In fact, we will spend a

lot of time on the Greek city -states like Athens and Sparta and Thebes because before, we actually thought the origin of Western civilization were the Greek city -states, okay? We no longer believe that, but for the longest time, we believe Western civilization came from the Greek city -states. And when we look at the Greek city -states, you will discover the system they had back then is very similar to this system, okay? We will also look at the Sumerian city -states, okay? Which is very similar to the Greek city -states. Yes, okay? So we will be studying these different periods, okay? But I want you to remember the first important principle is whenever there is an open cooperative competition, tremendous innovation happens, okay? That's the first principle I want you to remember. The second principle I want you to remember is eventually someone triumphs in this competition, okay? And the group, the people that triumphs are the people who are most open to adopting innovation in order to destroy others, okay?

Does that make sense? They are the most ruthless in adopting all innovations for the sole purpose of destroying others and becoming the sole hegemon, okay? So we saw this with the Greek city -states where for hundreds of years they were in competition with each other. And then there was a people called the Macedonians who weren't actually Greek, okay? They were marginal. They were marginal to the Greek city -states. And the Greeks didn't really consider the Macedonians part of their civilization. But they were on the outskirts and they observed all the innovations that the Greek city -states were creating, especially in terms of military innovation, adopted all innovations for their purposes, and then conquered the city -states before they moved on and conquered Persia and Egypt, okay? And the leader of the Macedonians was called, do you guys know? Who was the leader of the Macedonians who conquered the Greek city -states?

I'm sure you know who he is, but you may not know he was Macedonian. Who's the most famous Greek you've heard of? Yeah, he was actually Macedonian, okay? Alexander the Great, okay? And what's amazing is we see the same pattern play out with the Sumerian city -states where for hundreds of years the city -states were in competition with each other. They were all trying to conquer each other without success. And then an outside people, a neighbor called the Akkadians, the Akkadians, they adopted all the innovation and technology of the Sumerian city -states and then they conquered the Sumerian city -states and established the first great world empire called the Akkadian Empire. And the founder of that empire, we will learn, is called Sargon the Great, okay? Sargon the Great. And Sargon the Great is considered the world's very first empire builder. So even though

we know almost nothing about what was happening here, from our knowledge of the Greek city -states and the Sumerian city -states and what happened to them, we can guess or hypothesize the same process played out here where these different tribes, these different groups, were creating all sorts of different innovations. Then one outside group came in, adopted all the innovations, and then conquered everyone, okay? And these people are what we call the Anaya, who originated, we believe, in Ukraine, okay? So let's now discuss the innovations that these people created, okay? And the innovations were pretty incredible because they forever transformed human history. Okay, so the first innovation they adopted was a pastoral economy, okay? A pastoral economy, basically raising cattle, raising or herding cattle, or cows. All right, so we cannot eat grass, okay? But cows and sheep and goats can eat grass, and then we can eat the cows, the goats, and the sheep, okay?

Does that make sense? So what we realized what these people realized is they can take the cows, the goats and the sheep, from the farmers, okay? Because there was a lot of trading back then, and then raise them in the steppes, and because there's so much grass, they'll grow very fast, and then you can use that as the source of your food, okay? So they created a new economy. What the second innovation is, what then they realized is, you know what? We can also drink their milk, okay? Dairy. And this is important because for most of human history, we cannot drink milk because we're lactose intolerant, okay? In fact, most people in the world today are still lactose intolerant. But they developed the enzymes, the peptides, in order to drink milk, okay? They became lactose tolerant. So that's their second big innovation, the ability to drink milk, okay? And now, if you're able to eat protein and you drink milk a lot, what happens to your body?

What happens to your body? Exactly, okay? You become very tall, very strong, okay? So because of these two innovations, the people in the steppes were on average, okay, just average, 20 centimeters taller than the farmers in the Near East and in Europe. 20 centimeters is a lot, guys, okay? The reason why is the farmers didn't drink milk, they could not eat meat, mostly, and they could not drink milk. They ate vegetables, okay? So the third big innovation is the domestication of the horse. The reason why is the grassland is huge and they needed to travel huge distances to trade, to communicate, okay? So they started to domesticate the horse. And it's very hard to domesticate the horse because horses are trained, or horses are programmed, hardwired, to run away from humans, right? If they see a threat, they run away. So this process, we believe, took at least 3,000 years, okay?

But they kept on trying because the ability to ride horses was very important for their society and their economy. And so now they have the ability to ride horses. That's the third big innovation. Then they invented the wheel. Okay? And what is important is if you have the horse and the wheel, you can create the wagon, okay? If you have the wagon, it means you are no longer stuck in one place. You can move from place to place. And so this is what we call the nomadic pastoral economy, okay? Does that make sense? They're able to move from place to place because, basically, what happens is you have a lot of cows, they're going to eat all the grass, right? Okay? Now you have to move somewhere else for them to eat the grass, okay? Does that make sense? Now, the problem with this is what?

If you move from place to place and the cows are eating all the grass, what happens usually? Conflict, right? Because you are now in competition for what we call grazing rights. Grazing rights. If your cows go into a grassland and they eat all that grass, well, that's preventing other people from going in and having their cows eat that grass, okay? So now they're fighting over land and grazing rights, okay? What else are they now going to fight over? How about cows, right? Because in this economy, one way to survive is to feed your cows. What's another way to survive? What else can you do in this economy, in this world? Steal other people's cows, right? Does that make sense? Okay. So the protection of the cows meant there was a greater emphasis on men, okay? So remember, in this society, in the Near East, in Europe, these are agricultural societies, and for them, what mattered was life -giving, giving birth, and maintaining a harmonious society.

So women were more important. But in this society, where there's a lot of violence, there's a lot of conflict, men became more important, okay? So with these innovations, they start to change their economy, their society, and their religion, okay? Economy, society, and religion. Okay, so in terms of the economy, the first major change from this society is the idea of private property. Private property, okay? Because cows are private wealth, and you have to protect that wealth, okay? So that's the first major innovation, the idea of private property, where this belongs to you, and only you, and not to society or to the mother goddess, okay? And that's very different from the farmers in Europe who had no concept of private property. From the idea of private property, the society changes and becomes a patriarchy, okay? Where men are in control, and in a patriarchy of private property, the problem now is one of inheritance, right?

So let's just say I have 10 sons, and I have 100 cattle, and I die. Who gets my cattle? Who gets my wealth? It has to be the older son. Why? The eldest son, why? Exactly, okay? So we need 100 cattle to survive as a family. If I start splitting the wealth up between the 10 sons, we become a lot poorer, right? The 10 sons have 10 sons, then by the third generation, everyone has one cattle. So everyone's now poor, okay? So the only way to solve this problem is if I, the patriarch, the father, give everything to the eldest son, okay? And this is what we call primogeniture. So this is a new innovation, primogeniture, where the eldest inherits everything, okay? Now the problem is, what happens to the other nine sons? Exactly, okay? So the eldest son gets everything, and the nine other sons, too bad.

You have to go build your own wealth. And that means basically stealing cows from other people, okay? So this creates a war culture, a war culture, right? So does that make sense? That's your society. This is a society which honors men above women, which has private property and celebrates private property, which encourages young men to go out and expand their civilization and fight wars, okay? So if you're making these changes, you now have to change the religion, okay? The religion. So their religion makes major changes to the mother goddess religion, okay? So the first major change is who's now God? Who do they now worship? A man, right? Because men fight wars. So they worship someone called the Sky Father, and he's the source of who the Greeks call Zeus, the thunder god, okay? And who the Romans call Jupiter, also the thunder god. So the first god is called the Sky Father, okay?

That's the first change. The second change is whereas the mother goddess gave us everything, right? Nature. The Sky Father gave us cows, cattle, money, and wealth, okay? So the third change is whereas the mother goddess asked us to love everything and protect everything, the Sky Father asked us to fight each other for the right to have wealth. Does it make sense? That's now their new religion, okay? And so they adopt this new religion. Okay, so these are all major changes and major innovations, okay? And again, the one group who comes in and adopts all these innovations are called the Yamnaya. And so if you're a group and you adopt most of these innovations but not all these innovations, then you're going to lose to the group called the Yamnaya who adopt all the innovations, okay? Does that make sense to you guys? This is what we call social evolution, okay?

And when they adopt all these innovations, then what happens is their religion becomes aligned with their society, which becomes aligned with their economy, okay? And so this is a people who are obsessed with collecting wealth and fighting wars and expanding into new territories. And so what happens is over a process of a few thousand years, they conquer the steppes, okay? Their culture spreads throughout the steppes. It doesn't mean they're one people. It means they're one culture. They practice the same beliefs, okay? Does that make sense? Any questions so far? So these are the Yamnaya people. This is what they believe. This is where they came from. This is how they behave. Next thing I'm going to look at is, fine, how do these people conquer Europe, okay? Now, I already said the Yamnaya are stronger and bigger and more militaristic than the farmers of old Europe, right? But what advantage do the people of Europe have? Over the Yamnaya?

What's the major advantage that Europe has? If you have farming, what happens to your population? It grows very fast, right? So in other words, Europe has more population than the steppes. Does that make sense? Okay? So in theory, okay, well, yeah, the Yamnaya, they have this warlike religion. They're extremely militaristic. They're very strong. But in theory, Europe could have withstood the assault of the Yamnaya because Europe has more people, okay? So the question now is, how did the Yamnaya conquer Europe? So what's a problem with people who live on farms? What's their ultimate problem? Thank you, the plague, okay? Do you understand? Because you're living next to pigs and rats, and there's a lot of garbage around, okay? So it's very easy for diseases to spread, okay? So we believe two things happened to reduce the population of Europe significantly. The first thing that happened was the plague, okay? And this wiped out entire communities.

Now the thing is, though, the plague spread around the world. Okay? Because remember, what's important to remember is, these people in the steppes, in the Near East, in Europe, were all in contact with each other because they were trading with each other, okay? So the plague, we know from DNA research, was in Europe, the Near East, and the steppes. Why did it wipe out the population of Europe but not the population of the steppes, even though the plague was everywhere? Why? The answer is, because the people in Europe were living in one place, right? Whereas the people in the steppes were moving from place to place. Does it make sense? So even though the plague did impact the people in the steppes, the impact was far greater in Europe. In fact, we believe that most of the people were wiped out by the plague in Europe, okay? So that reduced the population significantly, okay?

So that's the first thing that happened in Europe. The second thing that happened in Europe is what we call climate change. So about four, sorry, yeah, about, let me do the math, about 5,000, 6,000 years ago, there was a mini ice age in Europe. And if you're a farmer, that's really bad for you, okay? Because you can't grow crops. And it's bad for you if you live in the steppes because a lot of your crops will die, but not as bad, okay? And the other thing is that now, the ice age, because of climate change, people in the steppes are now forced to expand further into Europe, okay? So this is what we think happened. Three things, okay? That destroyed Europe. The first thing is the plague. That's actually the most important thing because it wiped out most of the people, okay? So think of when Europe conquered North and South America. What killed most people in North and South America?

Was actually the plague, right? Europeans had these diseases they brought over and that killed most of the local population, okay? So the plague was the main culprit that destroyed all Europe. Then climate change, and then finally the Yemenite people who came into Europe and started to colonize Europe and destroy the local population, okay? So let me now explain why the Yemenites decided to kill Europe. The people, the farmers of Europe, okay? So let's just say that in Europe you have a village. Maybe a hundred men, a hundred women. You have a hundred men, young men, who have no wealth and no wives, okay? So what do they want to do? If you're a young man and you have no wife and you have no wealth, what do you want to do? Yeah, you want to steal other people's wife and property, right? So they came in, okay?

And what do they do? You have a hundred men and a hundred women in this village. So what do you do? No, yeah, but... Yeah, they kill the men, okay, guys? Okay? And then they married all the women. And that's what happened, okay? Now, there were some circumstances when the Yemenite came in. Because again, this is a culture. This is not one people. It's a culture of people. And they adopted different strategies. Some of them decided to come in and said, listen, we'll take all the women and we'll let the men go. And what did these men do in return, in response? What would you do? Yeah, so they went to get their neighbors, got a thousand of them, came back and killed everyone, okay? So this was actually a violent process with violence on both sides, okay? But eventually, what happened was the Yemenite conquered all of Europe, okay? And they even got to England.

They conquered England, okay? And then not only did they conquer Europe, then they went to conquer India and Iran. So this spread everywhere. And even Mongolia, okay? But not to China. Why didn't it impact China? What were the reasons why the Yemenite could not conquer China? What's between India and China? They conquered India, right? Why could they conquer China? If you have horses, okay? You can't cross the Himalayas, okay? So that's what saved China, the geography. Also, China had a huge population, right? So even if the Yemenite came, the population could have repulsed the attack, okay? But China was not conquered by the Yemenite. So China, for most of its history, was isolated from the rest of the world, okay? Does that make sense? So, but this conquest meant now there's a common language among all these people in India, in Iran, in the steppes, basically Russia, in the Near East, and in Europe, okay?

This language is what we call Proto -Indo -European. That's a language they spoke, okay? Now they have a common religion. So from this point on, this world, okay, stretching from Europe all the way to India, was in constant communication from, was in constant communication with each other, trading ideas, people, and gods, okay? And this is what we call today the West, okay? And it's distinct from China, which was isolated from this world. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, any questions? Yeah? The Mongolian people are descended from the Yemenite, yes. And if you think about it, the Mongolian people are very similar to the Yemenite, right? The Mongolians are also nomadic pastoral people who are also very much warlike, okay? And in fact, what we will learn later on is that Genghis Khan adopted very similar policies as the Yemenite, okay? So we'll see a lot of similarities between Genghis Khan and his conquest and the Yemenite conquest of the world.

Okay, let's talk about the plague, okay? The plague, yes. It killed most Europeans, yes. Because Europeans were living on farms, right? So they were living together. Yeah, because it reduced the population of Europe, so they were less able to resist the invasion. Okay, all right. So the plague was all around the world, okay? And this is actually the bubonic plague, okay? The bubonic plague. It's spread by rats. And we have DNA of this plague, okay? So we know the bubonic plague has been with us for the longest time, okay? So the plague kills people who live closely together. Do you understand? Because then it's easier to transmit the disease, okay? So if you live closely together, you're much more likely to catch the disease and die. Does it make sense? But if you live far apart, then you're less likely to catch the disease. So in Europe, people were living on farms.

And there's like 10,000 people who might live on a farm, okay? That's a lot of people who live very closely together. They're also living with animals. So it's very unclean. But if you're living in the steppes, okay? First of all, you're living far apart. That's the first thing. Second thing is your life is much more hygienic, okay? Because you're not living with pigs and rats. And the third thing is your body is a lot stronger. You're drinking milk, okay? You're getting a lot of physical exercise. Does that make sense? So these people are less likely to die from the plague. All right. Any more questions? Exactly, yes. Okay. So basically, everyone in Europe, except for a few, few people are the descendants of the Yamnaya, okay? The Indian people, the Iranian people also consider descendants of the Yamnaya. Now, when the Yamnaya came, these farmers in Europe, okay, there were maybe three major responses, okay?

The first response is, let's fight them. And then they got killed. The second response is, let's try to cooperate with them, okay? The third major response is, let's move somewhere else. So the people who moved to islands, okay? So for example, there's an island called Sardinia, okay? In Italy, okay? It's an island. They survived against the Yamnaya, and they have less Yamnaya DNA than other people, okay? But if you can't run off to an island, you're going to get wiped out, okay? But basically, all of Europe was conquered by the Yamnaya. And later on, I will show you the DNA evidence. When you look at that evidence, it's pretty stark, okay? All right? That's a great question, okay? Thank you. All right. So this process took a long time, hundreds of years, okay? And during this time, this is a spread of a culture. So it's not one people. It's not one nation.

So what's happening was, as they conquered different territories, they had to adapt themselves to that territory because the geography is different, okay? So in the steppes, you're leading a, nomadic pastoral lifestyle. And at first, they tried that. So for example, we have evidence that in Norway, which is in North Europe, they burned down all the forests because they were trying to replicate their homeland, okay? But then eventually they discovered, this is not going to work, okay? It's too hard. So then they start to mix their lifestyle with the local lifestyle, and they became more focused on agriculture, okay? Does that make sense? All right. And as it kept on spreading, they also stole the technology of the local people. So even though the Yamnaya people had no shipbuilding technology, they couldn't sail the seas, they were able to conquer people here off the coast who did have access to the sea and who did have boats, okay?

And then they stole the technology. They killed the people, and they learned the technology, okay? Once they had the technology, then they sailed off to England and killed everyone in England. Does that make sense? Okay, so it's a very slow process. And these are different groups of Yamnaya, okay? Okay, but that's a very good question. Any more questions? Are you guys clear about this? Okay? All right. All right. Absolutely clear? Okay, good. So when we come back from the break, okay, we will discuss the new world that this creates, okay? Because when you think of Western civilization, the Greeks, the Romans, well, they all come from this world, okay? So basically what the Yamnaya do is they create a new history for humanity. Before the Yamnaya, humans were egalitarian, peaceful, and artistic, okay? And now with the Yamnaya, you have patriarchy. You have war. You have money. But before, we didn't have these concepts.

So this marks a new history for humanity. When we come back from the break, we'll start exploring this history, okay?