Section 3
2 000 BC - 1500 BC
The Bronze Age
THE PROTO-DINARIC
BEAKER PEOPLE
EMERGE FROM THE
VUCEDOL CULTURE IN SERBIA
AND INTRODUCE METAL WORKING TO EUROPE
The Bell
Beaker people are thus named because of their pottery consisting of bell
& beaker shaped vessels. These people brought two new things to Europe:
Dinaric morphology & metallurgy. It is on the grounds of the latter that
Coon can rightly call them culture-bearers in the true sense. These men were
proto-Dinarics.
This new (Bell Beaker) type was tall, round headed and frequently planoccipital; its nose was prominent and narrow; its face triangular and of moderate length. In its associated morphological features, it forecast the appearance of the Dinaric race.
Carleton Stevens Coon
Races of Europe
(Chapter V, section 13)
Summary and conclusions
Macmillam Press
1939
The
Bell Beaker group is more extreme in many ways; the browridges are often heavy,
the general ruggedness frequently greater. The faces are characteristically
narrow, the orbits medium to high, the nasal skeleton high and aquiline; the
occiput frequently flat. The stature for six males reached the high mean of 177
cm.
Carleton Stevens Coon
Races of Europe
(Chapter V, section 7)
The Copper Age in Europe North of the Mediterranean
Lands: Danubian Movements and Bell Beakers
Macmillam Press
1939
Next
Coon discusses the origins of the Beaker people. Writing in 1939, Coon
concludes that pending further evidence, it was best to assume that the
original homeland of this population were in the Syrian highlands. From this,
he also hypothesizes that the Beaker people followed a westward route of
migration via N. Africa and across Gibraltar into Europe. :
These Dinarics did not come from central Asia, nor
from Mesopotamia or Egypt. Facially, they resemble the dolichocephalic
residents of Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean coastlands of the period
during which they first appeared, in that both have in common a high-bridged,
high-rooted nose, high orbits, and a sloping forehead. Until further
evidence is found, it is safer to hold that the culture-bearing Dinarics of the
Bronze Age developed in the Syrian highlands, where a similar type of
brachycephaly is now present...
As the Bell Beaker people, these newcomers traveled
from Spain to the Rhineland and to central Europe, where they were the
first disseminators of metal. Having appeared in the Rhineland in
considerable numbers, they mixed with the older Borreby sub-stratum, which
had remained there since the Mesolithic, and with Corded people coming
from the east. This triple combination moved bodily down the Rhine and
across the North Sea to Britain.
Carleton Stevens Coon
Races of Europe
(Chapter V, section 13)
Summary and conclusions
Macmillam Press
1939
Colin
Renfrew, writing 50 years later with better evidence, locates the origin of the
Beaker people in modern Serb lands:
A succession of Kurgan waves of expansion was set out,
the fourth influencing the Vucedol culture of Yugoslavia. This was significant
for the further 'Kurganization' of Europe by the Bell Beaker people.
The Bell Beaker complex, an offshoot of the Vucedol
Bloc, continued Kurgan characteristics. The Bell Beaker people of the second
half of the 3rd millennium BC were vagabonding horse riders and archers in much
the same way as their uncles and cousins, the Corded people of northern
Europe and the Catacombe Grave people of the North Pontic region. Their
spread over central and Western Europe to the British Islands and Spain, as
well as the Mediterranean Islands terminates the period of expansion and
destruction.
(Marija Gimbutas, 1973)
Colin Renfrew
Archaology and Language
Chapter 3: Lost Languages &
Forgotten Scripts
Page: 39
Penguin
1987
According
to Renfrew and Gimbutas, they fused with the Nordic Corded people. The genetic
impact of this population on Europe as a whole will be discusses in the next
section, where it will be shown that the majority of the Beakers left the
Vucedol area to spread over central and Western Europe to the British
Islands and Spain, as well as the Mediterranean. Many others stayed and
went on to sire a progeny that accounts for a sizeable portion of the
population of Serbia and Montenegro.
