Lower Danube Civilization 5K years ago - exhibit in NY

[JSteen]

I got the catalog for this exhibit for xmas. It's gorgeous - a huge hardback with tons of color pics and many long chapters of info. I thought $50 was a bit pricey until I received it. Well worth the money and apparently the biggest compilation in English of info on "Old Europe" - specifically the lower Danube of 6-3500K BC.

The culture descibed is pretty fascinating stuff. Very complex and advanced for the time. I'm still in the first chapters and am already bogged down by questions there are no answers to. Well, there are probably answers but who to ask? You guys, obviously. : )

They talk about the cultures in question disappearing quickly - within a period of two hundred years or less. 600 villages in one area burned to the ground. There is some evidence that some of the people built much smaller villages nearby. Also some evidence of invasion of horse-nomadic cultures moving in. There isn't real evidence that invaders killed everyone and burned the villages down but that is the working conclusion for now. Theories of impact of climate change etc aren't convincing for a number of reasons.

My question is, why not disease? Short period of time, villaged burned down, small settlements of much lower population elsewhere. Wouldn't you say that some sort of plague spread through? The survivors knew enough to burn down the infected villages and build elsewhere? Arguing against it I guess is that while there is some continuity of culture, much is not continued - there is a real change in styles. Or maybe not - that section was confusing (contradictory?) and I need to read it again more carefully.

Anyway, is there a reason that archaeologists dismiss disease as a reason why cultures/civilizations disappear? The Anasazi, Hohokam and others in the US southwest also come to mind. This description of Old Europe really screams plague or a smallpox-type disease to me in particular. A few mass burials were discovered in the burned down villages - the archaeologists call them "massacres" but there is no discussion of injuries, nothing. Would quick, nasty infectious diseases have left evidence on the skeletons?

[Rokcet Scientist]

[...] They talk about the cultures in question disappearing quickly - within a period of two hundred years or less. 600 villages in one area burned to the ground. There is some evidence that some of the people built much smaller villages nearby. Also some evidence of invasion of horse-nomadic cultures moving in.

The Huns did that in the 5th century. And the Mongols in the 11th or 12th, if I recall. So invading horse-nomadic cultures seem to have been a recurring scenario in that corner of Europe. Possibly over millennia.

There isn't real evidence that invaders killed everyone and burned the villages down but that is the working conclusion for now. Theories of impact of climate change etc aren't convincing for a number of reasons.

My question is, why not disease? Short period of time, villaged burned down, small settlements of much lower population elsewhere. Wouldn't you say that some sort of plague spread through? The survivors knew enough to burn down the infected villages and build elsewhere? Arguing against it I guess is that while there is some continuity of culture, much is not continued - there is a real change in styles. Or maybe not - that section was confusing (contradictory?) and I need to read it again more carefully.

Anyway, is there a reason that archaeologists dismiss disease as a reason why cultures/civilizations disappear? The Anasazi, Hohokam and others in the US southwest also come to mind. This description of Old Europe really screams plague or a smallpox-type disease to me in particular. A few mass burials were discovered in the burned down villages - the archaeologists call them "massacres" but there is no discussion of injuries, nothing.

I agree completely. Epidemic disease may explain many disappeared peoples yet. It already does, just about, the north-American and Amazonian Indians virtual disappearance (95% gone already). The same process is in full progress of doing exactly the same to sub-Saharan Africans. We're seeing it happen in front of our eyes: AIDS.
Only AIDS takes a century to consume its target people. A slow pandemic maybe, as pandemics go, but a damn real hard-core pandemic nevertheless!

Would quick, nasty infectious diseases have left evidence on the skeletons?

I doubt it. But I'm no medical scientist. I can imagine long term diseases leaving traces in DNA. But I also understand DNA deteriorates with age. And these peoples were, what, 8,000/9,000 BP?