Climate Factor in Cultural Transformations of Eurasia in the Mid-4Th – Mid-3Rd Millennia BC, and Possibilities of Creating an Absolute Chronology

Abstract

Climate changes were the most important factor that stimulated migration in antiquity. It was they which led to the appearance of monuments of the megalithic tradition in the Northwestern Black Sea region (Usatovo), in the North Caucasus (Novosvobodnaya), in the Urals, and in Central Asia (Chemurchek) in the 4th – 3rd millennia B.C. This also caused the spread of the tradition of Yamnaya culture to Central Europe, the appearance of the Corded Ware cultures and many other changes. However, the general process of climate change could not be a trigger for migrations. These were short-term drastic climatic changes, which are recorded by dendrochronology. The latter can also be used as chronological markers, making it possible to create the Eurasian chronology independent of radiocarbon analyses, which have too wide confidence intervals. This approach made it possible to determine the date of the Yamnaya migration to the Carpathian Basin and the formation of the Corded Ware cultures ca. 2850 B.C., and the date of the Fatyanovo migration from Europe to the east ca. 2564 B.C. Unfortunately, the dates of the appearance of megaliths in the east are not determined with a similar accuracy, due to the impossibility to verify this with alternative sources. Their appearance can be dated to ca. the mid-4th millennium B.C. in Eastern Europe, in the last quarter of the 4th millennium B.C. in the Urals, and in the 24th century B.C. in Central Asia.