I realized the other night that I have no clue whatsoever what sort of 'tribes' white people come from. I can't think of a better way to say that, so I'm sorry if it sounds really rude. But like, in school we learn about Indigenous Peoples tribes of North and South America, and I sort of remember at one point learning about where the different tribal regions of Africa were, and it never even occurred to me that there must have been that but with white people in Western Eurasia.
My rambling ADHD attempt to explain what I mean aside, I want suggestions on books about this subject. I feel like reading it out of a book I can annotate will be better for self-study than any website.
by Turbulent-Parsley619
2 Comments
Hmmm, interesting question. I think by “tribe” you mean cultures before nation-states arose. Cultures have risen and fallen for longer than written history had existed, so there is never just one “original culture” in an area. Ancient Europe, like other parts of the world, is characterized by waves of migration and changing dominant cultures.
Here are a few books off the top of my head which might help answer some questions:
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W Anthony – this is a great overview of what we know about the people who spread the early indo-european language. The spread of these people is why languages like Greek and German are related to languages like Sanskrit and Hindi. These ancient steppe people spread out in waves and brought their language and culture to different parts of Eurasia.
The Long Summer by Brian M Fagan – while not strictly about ancient Eurasian cultures, this is a fascinating work by an archaeologist that shows how climate has always affected the rise and fall of human cultures. As a classical archaeologist, Fagan concentrates on the ancient near east and Europe. You’ll get an overview at a variety of times and places of the cultures of ancient Eurasia.
Here are some other topics to look into, without specific book recommendations:
– Check out the Hanseatic League, the mercantile network of alliances that predated a nation-state in Germany
– Look into the late Roman empire and the time after their fall – this was a time when European “barbarian” tribes were in ascendancy
– As an English speaker, you might find the ancient history of England interesting as it’s a place that saw wave after wave of new peoples – Celtic, Germanic, Roman, French, Viking…
– You may also like reading about isolated surviving ancient culture groups like the Basque
Welcome to the world of Pre-history, a state that most tribal groups occupied for a good time even once they came in contact with people that had a written language. This means a lot of what you will find is interpretation of artifacts, sitting in squarely in the realm of archeology. This means there can be great shifts in that interpretation over time, and works can rapidly move from majority consensus to outdated.
Now, not surprisingly, a good amount of the works in English that are also focused on a lay audience target Britain. “Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the Coming of the Romans” by Francis Pryor is a recent and wide survey on Britain’s prehistory. It’s a little dry but the experimental archeology sections are fun. “Europe: A Natural History” by Tim Flannery is more about the land than the people, but they naturally have much to do with each other. “Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings” by Jean Manco is getting a little dated already at being written a decade ago, but covers a lot of ground as it tries to bring archeology, language, and DNA evidence together.
Just be ready for anything you take away to be up for being challenged, as we learn more about the past the farther we move into the future.