What if? Game - Paleoanthropology

[Geopagan]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this.

I'm thinking completely hypothetically and for a lark: but I wonder how Europe would have turned out if agriculture spread from Northeast to South rather than from Southeast to North (the Neolithic).

Imagine if agriculture was spread by prehistoric natives from the Baltic? Population patterns would have been reversed. Italians and Greeks would be the least genetically diverse. "Rome" as we know it would not exist, rather it would have existed in what is now Denmark, Sweden, or northern Germany.

[Electronic God-Man]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this.

I'm thinking completely hypothetically and for a lark: but I wonder how Europe would have turned out if agriculture spread from Northeast to South rather than from Southeast to North (the Neolithic).

Imagine if agriculture was spread by prehistoric natives from the Baltic? Population patterns would have been reversed. Italians and Greeks would be the least genetically diverse. "Rome" as we know it would not exist, rather it would have existed in what is now Denmark, Sweden, or northern Germany.

So would Arthur Kemp's theories about the ancient world have actually had more truth to them? Ancient civilizations might have been created and ruled by a Nordic elite...

[Geopagan]

Or even a Lagodan elite.

Everything would have changed.

[Allenson]

If the climate of the Baltic region was hypothetically conducive to the development of agriculture (as was the 'Fertile Crescent' as history actually happened), one has to wonder if the Middle East and much of the Mediterranean basin would have even been habitable....?

[Thulsa Doom]

Ehh..What "what if"?

Haven´t you lot read the Atlantica by Olof Rudbeck, proper title "Olf Rudbeks Atland eller Manheim dedan Japhetz afkomne slechter ut till hela werlden utgångne äro".

Written 300 years ago it clearly proofs that civilization began in Sweden aka Mannheim aka Atlantis.

[Geopagan]

I haven't read that. Looks interesting.

I was talking though more about prehistoric population movements and their demographic impacts primarily. Neolithic incursions had significant impacts as far as introducing haplogroups into Europe.

[Crimson Guard]

The Neolithic revolution it is "Nordics" ala Arthur Shempenheimer?! Hmm, well neither Ladogans nor Nordics wouldve been present, since one is borrealized and the other depigmented from lack of Sun exposure. So the the environment wouldve produced Mediterraneans in the north, instead of the south then.So would that mean the Norse wouldve came from Italy or Greece and Invaded the Northern Rome? Or maybe there is some unknown microcosm where history begins and ends in the North Pole and the adjacent area? Hey, thank the God for reality, aye?!

So unless you can make the cold come from the south and the warmth from the North, then I dont see how this is a realistic hypothetical notion. You wold have to change the laws of nature and the environment. The North was uninhabitable and covered with ice sheets for much of its existence.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans never created any civilizations either. Civilizations were created in only a few Indo-European speaking lands by Greeks, Italians, Iranians . You would also probably have to assume that people in Northern Europe would be speaking Semitic, since they were the ones that created Babylon and Egypt.

The rise of civilization is a consequence of many factors, environmental, cultural, and genetic. There is no "Mediterranean Culture". It is however better to speak of cultures of the Mediterranean interaction zone which definitely share common elements through their descent from Neolithic agriculturalists of the Fertile Crescent and their subsequent interactions in prehistory and history.

We should furthermore note that the cultures of the Mediterranean interaction zone are indeed related by a common descent (from the Neolithic Age 6-15,000 years ago via West Asia), and by subsequent interactions since,mainly during the Iron Age. This is quite unlike the case of other geographical regions such as Asia or Africa, where such unity of descent and interaction simply does not exist. The laws of nature dictated that Europe would be inhabited by people from the South and not gaunt Albino men from planet Thule by way of the 8th dimension.

Modern Scandinavians are a mix of Nordics, East-Baltics, Alpines, Mediterraneans with small Ladogan/Uralic admixture. The Nordic type is modal in this mix, but not the majority. The Nordic types form a minority even in Scandinavia, and in Central Europe they are a small minority. In southern Europe, the principal types are the Mediterranean, Dinaric and Alpine with a small Nordic presence. So once again, you would have to switch it, as phenotype variation largely also has to do with environmental adaptation.

As for Atlantis, and other Greco-Roman mythological Islands, the story begins and ends in Egyptian and Grecian mythology. It is always funny when authors from other nations during the last few hundred years read and steal other peoples histories and mythologies and lay claim to them. Yet look to their own history and mythology and draw a complete and utter blank and so invent a connection to peoples and cultures not their own but have the more glorious past and whom form the pillars of civilization.

Atlantis wouldve been set in either the eastern or central Mediterranean.

Heck, even Hyperboreans were Sicilians:

Although the Hyperborean legends are mainly connected with Delphi and Delos, traces of them are found in Argos (the stories of Heracles, Perseus, Io), Attica, Macedonia, Thrace, Sicily and Italy (which Niebuhr indeed considers their original home). In modern times the name has been applied to a group of races, which includes the Chukchis, Koryaks, Yukaghirs, Ainus, Gilyaks axed Kamchadales, inhabiting the arctic regions of Asia and America.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Hyperboreans