Barcelona Part 4: The Chalcolithic or Copper Age

Otzi the Iceman, as he may have looked in life. Otzi's mummy was  discovered in 1991 under a melting glacier in Italy's Otzal Alps. He died about 5,300 years ago, killed by an unknown assailant who shot a flint arrowhead into his back. This happened early in the transition from the Neolithic (New Stone) Age to the Bronze Age. The period is called the Chalcolithic (Copper) Age and it marked the beginning of metallurgy, a major step in the development of civilization. 

People had been killed in similar ways to Otzi since the bow was invented 7,000 years previously. Who killed him and why are still a mystery, but robbery was not the apparent motive. Otzi's possessions were still scattered about him when his body was discovered, including several stone tools and weapons. Also found nearby was his hand-axe, tipped with a valuable copper blade (see above). 

While Otzi probably never lived in or even visited Iberia, he was typical of the inhabitants there and throughout most of early Chalcolithic Europe. While copper smelting began in the Balkans about 7,000 years ago, this technology didn't arrive in northeastern Iberia until about 5200 years ago. The Chalcolithic era in Iberia ended about 1000 years later, when people began alloying copper with arsenic and tin to create bronze. 

Life in the Chalcolithic Era

Model of the fortified town of Los Millares in southern Iberia. Otzi and the overwhelming majority of other Chalcolithic people lived in hamlets and small villages like their Neolithic forebears. However, during the middle of this transitional period, large fortified towns like Los Millares began to appear. About a thousand people lived in the town in circular-shaped dwellings. Also present were workshops for smelting copper, gold, and silver, making Los Millares an important trade center. 

The town was occupied from about 5000 to about 4000 years ago and its economic activity seems to have made it a target for raiders. Los Millares was positioned on a hill and protected by a series of defensive walls, buttressed by multiple bastions. The main gate is a small fort in itself. All this indicates that the Chalcolithic period was a time of rising organized violence. However, attackers armed only with bows and spears would have found it difficult to overcome these defenses. 

Stone tools were still employed during the Chalcolithic period. The artifacts above were found near the town of Berga, north of Barcelona. The two tools on the left are for cutting, while the one on the right is probably the tip of a spear. The manufacture and use of stone tools continued long after copper was first smelted in the Balkans. 

In some areas of Europe, stone tools were in use well into the Bronze Age, just as horses have continued to be used as work animals long after the invention of the internal combustion engine and typewriters were still widely used for many decades after computers were developed.

People in a fortified town using Chalcolithic technologies. Two men on the left are pouring molten copper into a mould while the man in the center hammers a copper object into its final shape. The man standing in front of a tall kiln is smelting copper while the boy to his right feeds wood into the fire. The woman to their right is spinning wool. The boy seated in the foreground is starting a fire using a bow drill. 

 Copper won't melt until it reaches 1084C (1983F), but cooking fires burn at much lower temperatures. So, the first smelting probably have occurred by accident in a potter's kiln, since it was the only source with sufficient heat. Once released from the ore, copper is highly malleable, particularly in a liquid state. A potter could easily have crafted moulds to create a variety of shapes which were then hammered and polished. Small axes, like the one carried by Otzi, were probably the earliest manufactured objects.

Selection of early copper and bronze tools. These were found in Catalonia, at sites north and west of Barcelona. The small copper ax head on the right is the oldest, possibly from the period around Otzi's time. Moving toward the left, the tools are progressively more recent, ending with a Middle Bronze Age spear point on the far left.The first uses of copper and bronze were probably utilitarian, i.e. to create tools and weapons. Objects for personal adornment no doubt came later.

Various pottery used for food storage and preparation. The Chalcolithic person's diet depended upon geographic location, but was pretty much the same as his Neolithic predecessors. When scientists examined Otzi's stomach contents, they determined that his last meal was heavy in the high-energy animal fat required by his Alpine lifestyle. 

Archeologists have sometimes found food traces from storage or cooking in pottery like that shown above. Included were cultivated crops such as wheat and barley, as well as natural plants such as berries and nuts and traces of various animal fats. 

Iberia's Chalcolithic people raised pigs, sheep, cattle, and goats for meat, and sometimes supplemented this with protein from wild game. The cattle and goats also provided milk, as well as hides for clothing, tools, and weapons. Sheep's wool was spun into yarn that was then woven into clothing.

The Bell Beaker Phenomenon

Artist's conception of a Bell Beaker man. The drawing follows closely the clothing, weapons and other artifacts found in a Bell Beaker grave. Scientists have fiercely debated the significance of the Bell Beaker phenomenon ever since grave goods from the culture were discovered from southern Iberia to northern Britain and from the Atlantic Coast as far east as Poland. 

The oldest artifacts have been dated to 4,500 years ago and were found in southern Iberia. Archeologists initially thought that they represented the remains of a great migration out of the Iberian Peninsula to far-flung areas of Europe. The difference between the oldest and most recent artifacts stretched over a period of only a few hundred years. The finely crafted grave goods included the distinctive pottery that gave the culture its name. 

Pottery in the Bell Beaker style. These pots were found in a cave called Cova de Toralla, northeast of Barcelona. Trace remains have been found inside many Bell Beaker pots. Tests show that they were used as kitchen utensils, funeral urns, copper melting crucibles, and as containers for alcoholic beverages such as mead and beer. The pottery is usually found next to finely crafted copper daggers and arrowheads, as well as stone bracelets for archers. Other typical grave goods are prestige items like gold ornaments and V-perforated bone buttons. 

However, something was quite odd about these finds. For one thing, the direction of the supposed Bell Beaker migration was unusual. Paleolithic Homo sapiens had moved out of Africa, then headed north and west, finally arriving in Iberia. Neolithic farmers had begun in the Middle East and also moved north and west, then south into Iberia. Pastoralists from the Russian steppes again moved west, ending up in Iberia and finally in Britain. 

New technologies such as farming, metallurgy, and wheeled vehicles accompanied these migrations. However, in the case of the Bell Beaker phenomenon, the movement was in the opposite direction, out of Iberia and then north and east. In addition, Bell Beaker graves were not located in broadly contiguous areas, as normally occurred in migrations. Instead, there were small concentrations of burial sites in widely-scattered areas. 

Copper axe, called a halberd, found at a Bell Beaker site. In recent decades, archeologists have begun using DNA and genome-tracing in their work. When they applied these to the human remains in Bell Beaker graves, more questions arose. Most of the remains in the scattered sites were not genetically related to those found in southern Iberia. Further, the DNA in the different areas to which the supposed migrations extended also did not match each other. 

It seems that large numbers of Bell Beaker people were not moving around. On the other hand, Bell Beaker goods and ideas were traveling widely, apparently transported by long-distance traders. We should remember that when iPhones or Beatles songs rapidly spread around the world, they were not accompanied by large migrations of Americans or British people. These hugely popular cultural icons were quickly adopted by local people who had access and could afford them.

Map showing the distribution of Bell Beaker sites in Europe. After beginning in the Iberian Peninsula, the phenomenon spread relatively quickly into central and northern Europe before finally crossing over into Britain. The Bell Beaker cultural package contained what we would now describe as "high-end" goods. Not surprisingly, the burials in which Bell Beaker goods have been found tend to be those of the high-status people who could afford them. 

Then, just about the time when the Bell Beaker phenomenon reached central Europe, it encountered an actual mass migration which was moving in the traditional east-to-west direction. These were the the Yamnaya pastoralists, who would bring massive social and technological changes to the Neolithic/Chalcolithic cultures of Europe.

The Yamnaya migration

Yamnaya warriors were well-armed with copper weapons.  The Yamnaya probably originated as Neolithic farmers who moved north from Anatolia to the Eurasian river valleys. Yamnaya is a Russian word that refers to the pits they used to bury their dead. They were a culture that developed in the Eurasian steppes north of the Black Sea. These great grasslands were not suitable for farming, given the technology then available, but were ideal for pasturing herd animals. 

The Neolithic culture had always included animal herding. However, once the Yamnaya had become mobile through their invention of wagons, they moved out onto the steppes to become full-time pastoralists. This highly mobile and nomadic lifestyle produced a hierarchal social structure based on chiefs. Looking for wealth and glory, groups of young young men went on raids to capture animals and women. From this, the Yamnaya developed a warlike culture not unlike that of the Huns and Mongols of later eras.

Scale model of a wagon found in a Yamnaya grave. As with metallurgy, a pottery shop in Mesopotamia was probably the site where the first wheel was invented about 6,200 years ago. The potter didn't do it to transport people or cargo, but as an easier way to make pots. Around 5,500 years ago some Yamnaya had the bright idea of turning the potter's horizontal wheel on its side. By mounting it on an axle with a wheel on the other end, this new device could then carry a load. 

Inventing wagons was a huge technological achievement because it involved solving a variety of difficult problems. These included inventing the composite wheel, figuring out whether to use fixed or moving axles, and how to break cattle to the harness. The first wagons were probably pulled by oxen (castrated bulls), although there is some evidence that the Yamnaya also rode horses. However, ancient horse DNA shows that they were not widely used until later times.

Although these early wagons were slow-moving, they set the Yamnaya population free to wander the steppes. Instead of carrying everything on their backs, they could now haul their shelter, equipment, and families as they followed their herds. They no longer needed fixed villages because their food, as well as supplies of leather and wool, were all "on the hoof". In fact, the health and stature of the pastoralists improved over that of their Neolithic farmer forebears because of their improved diet. 

The Yamnaya spread rapidly into all parts of Europe. Neolithic farmers took about 4,500 years to reach Iberia from the Middle East. By contrast, the Yamnaya's mobile lifestyle and lack of attachment to any particular place allowed them to cover about the same distance within 500 years or so. And, as they encountered more and more farm settlements, their warlike organization enabled them to dominate the people in them. 

Conflict and violence had certainly increased among the farmers of the Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods, but nothing really prepared them for the aggressive and fast-moving tactics of the newcomers. When the Yamnaya reached central Europe, they encountered the Bell Beaker phenomenon and quickly incorporated its technological advances--particularly in metallurgy and weaponry--into their culture. This further strengthened their ability to dominate local people wherever they went, both militarily and culturally. 

The Yamnaya society of male warriors ruled by chiefs was strongly hierarchal and patriarchal. They introduced the idea of personal ownership of property and its transmission through male lineage. The status of women had gradually deteriorated from the end of hunter-gatherer times through the Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods. With the arrival of the Yamnaya, the patriarchy became ascendant, and remained so for the next 4,500 years.

Yamnaya man's face re-constructed from skeletal remains.Their migration can be traced both through DNA and language. Recent studies have shown that the DNA of Neolithic males (but not females) disappeared in most of Europe only a few hundred years after the Yamnaya arrived. Even today, most European DNA traces back to the steppe pastoralists. Some have suggested that this points to a prehistoric genocide, but no archeological evidence has been found to support the claim. 

It is more likely that the dominant social, political, and cultural position of the Yamnaya men would have made them more desirable to the local women. In fact, the average male/female ratio among the Yamnaya who initially migrated into Europe was 10/1. All those young male warriors would certainly have been looking for women with whom to mate. As recently as WWII, many European women gravitated toward German soldiers when the Nazis seized the continent. 

The other major cultural artifact of this great migration is language. The Yamnaya spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the father of nearly all European languages. Although most of these languages are today mutually unintelligible, they all derive from PIE. The language of the Neolithic/Chalcolithic farmers survives only in a few tiny enclaves, like the Basque region of northern Spain.

This concludes Part 4 of my Barcelona series. Hope you found it interesting and enlightening. If you have any thoughts or questions, please leave them in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question, please include your email address that I may respond in a timely fashion.

Hasta luego, Jim