trying to emulate @razibkhan & @Irkutyanin1 here - both of whom do incredible deep dives into history.
Eric Clines 1177 BC (which has a new updated edition with the Philistine DNA & the climate studies) was main influence on this piece: amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08KKT…
Check out this thread for what I dug up in January. Currently think that R1b-V88 WHGs conquered EEFs in Iberia in 4400 BC, invaded North Africa, swept across Green Sahara, & reached Sudan by 3700 BC before migrating west along Yellow Nile to Lake Chad by 1000 BC.
Copper to Bronze Age Iberia paper discusses the apparent late 4th or early 3rd millennium BC migrations that spread Zagrosian-like (aka Iran_Neolithic or Ganj_Dareh) ancestry around the Mediterranean. Interestingly they explicitly exclude Minoan origin. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
In supplement they guess that ancestry might be from Italian groups. Would have to be southern Italy origin if they are right since Etruscans didn't have the Zagrosian-like ancestry:
While Indo-European male lineages (R1b-P312) in Iberia almost completely replaced of those of their predecessors, about the same number of men & women migrated to Iberia during the invasion(s) in the 23rd century BC.
Punt was a trade partner of Late Bronze Age Egypt, & was located in Eritrea & Ethiopia. The Queen of Punt in mid-1300s BC was portrayed by the Egyptians as short, having a curved spine, & steatopygous.
According to UNESCO African History series, Semites arrived in northern Ethiopia centuries after that queen lived. Not sure how well the UNESCO history holds up though - was published 1981.
In 2500 BC, Ethiopian Highlands were ruled by a race that today is perhaps half the ancestry of the Omotic-speaking Ari people. They had evolved adaptations for high altitude life. science.org/lookup/doi/10.…
The death of Ivan the Terrible’s son Fyodor in 1598 was followed by Russia’s Time of Troubles, lasting 15 years. The Poles and Jesuits tried to set up a puppet Catholic regime in Moscow with a series of frauds - each claiming to be Dmitry, another of Ivan’s dead sons.
16th century Poles had extensive experience on Western battlefields. They employed substantial numbers of Germans, Czechs, Scots, & Hungarians in their armies. Even some Russians served Poland - 10% of the Cossacks on the 1581 registry were Russians.
Poland-Lithuania suffered numerous Crimean Tatar raids in the 16th century. The raids ranged as far north as Vilnius.
Thucydides on the Greek settlement of Sicily. Interesting to read this with Mycenaean settlement archaeology in Sicily, as well as some DNA on Bronze Age Sicily that looks Minoan.
If Iliad survived as a memory of a Mycenaean war in Ionia, suppose oral traditions from the Bronze Age Greek world could have survived long enough for Thucydides to record them.
Maccabees reference the Spartans and Jews having kinship. Maybe a dim memory of the Philistines being Greeks, and there being some intermarriage with the Jews?
The Zagrosian/Ganj_Dareh/Iran_Neolithic-like people who contributed significant amount of ancestry to Indus Valley Civilization migrated west from Iran prior to 10,000 BC.
* east not west
Perhaps the Tutkaulian culture marks the spread of the the cousins of the Zagrosians into Central Asia (& the Indus?) in the epipaleolithic?