Who are the WHGs - The Western Hunter Gatherers?
Many people have heard of the three sources of European ancestry - the Anatolian EEF farmers, the steppe pastoralists and the forager-fisher WHGs. But who are they?
My last thread covered the Magdalenians, the Palaeolithic Europeans who recolonised the continent after the last glacial maximum.
WHG is a recent term which describes the distinctive genetic characteristics of these post glacial foragers. Before WHG archaeologists defined these cultures by their artefacts, with names like Azilian, Ahrensbergian and Creswellian. We'll integrate both in this thread.
Approx 14.5kya there was a major shift in the climate, a rapid period of warming known as the Bølling–Allerød interstadial. The temperature jumped, plants, animals and people moved northwards, reaching Scandinavia and Britain. But it wasn't to last...
Into these new areas came Magdalenian and Epigravettian people, following prey animals and exploring new territories. In Britain these late Magdalenians are known as 'Creswellians', and in northern Europe they are the 'Hamburgians'
The Hamburgian Culture (15,500-13,100kya) was spread across northern Europe, following new reindeer migration routes. Typified by the new shouldered points used for hunting.
The British Creswellian Culture (13,000- 11,800kya) is considered an independent but v closely related group, associated with the Creswell Crags cave system and their own distinctive flint blades.
There is great confusion as to how the following cultures developed during the rapid warming and then cooling. To my mind northern Europe begins to diversify, creating a number of new groups - Tjongerian, Tarnowian, Witowian etc.
These can be grouped under the umbrella culture of the Federmesser, itself obviously connected to the Hamburgian and Creswellian and to the Azilian in the south. The fluid, highly mobile and genetically generally homogeneous nature of these groups makes them hard to separate.
The Federmesser is identified by their use of small backed arrowhead blades.
The warmer weather was not to last. Around 12,900ya, the temperatures plummeted back to glacial conditions. This was the Younger Dryas, a miserable time for those foragers who had settled in the northerly regions of Europe.
In southern Europe the artistically rich Magdalenians seem to collapse, in their wake came the Azilian. Although these are genetically the same people, their culture was a shadow of its former self. No longer hunting herds of reindeer, the Azilians stalked shorelines and forests
Their large groups gave way to smaller highly mobile bands, roaming the Franco-Cantabrian mountains and beaches, who produced cruder and smaller flint, bone and antler tools.
Most famously the high peak of Magdalenian cave art devolved to the Azilian pebble painting tradition.
There have long been attempts to find a structured syntax within the different symbols on the pebbles, but nothing definitive has ever been proven.
In northern Europe the Younger Dryas provoked a change from the Federmesser/Hamburgian cultures to the final stages of the Palaeolithic - the Ahrensberg Culture and its neighbours.
The Ahrensberg Culture and to the north the Bromme Culture are near contemporaries and share a similar but not identical arrowhead tradition. Some researchers have suggested they be merged into one overarching culture, but, recent genetics may suggest an alternative...
A mystery of the Ahrensberg, and the 'tanged point' cultures in general is the possibility that they emerged along the Dnieper in Belarus/Ukraine. The Grensk Culture has been suggested as the ancestor to both the Bromme and Ahrensberg.
A huge genetics paper published this month showed that the Danish and Swedish Mesolithic foragers derived from different post glacial populations. The Danes from the Magdalenian/Epigravettians and the Swedes in part from a Ukrainian derived migration.
You can read my summary of the paper and links to the main article here:
stoneageherbalist.substack.com
stoneageherbalist.substack.com
Afaik noone has linked these two evidence streams together, it could be the case that the Bromme and Ahrensberg people, although sharing a continent wide tradition of tanged points, originated in different places.
I'll split this thread in two here and next time cover the transition cultures which move through the end of the Younger Dryas and begin to exploit the new temperate ecosystems.
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