The Seima-Turbino phenomenon is a pattern of
burial site
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
s with similar bronze artifacts dated to ca. 2300-1700 BC (2017 dated from 2100 BC to 1900 BC, 2007 dated to 1650 BC onwards) found across northern
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...
, particularly
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
and
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...
, maybe from
Fennoscandia to
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
,
Northeast China
Northeast China or Northeastern China () is a geographical region of China, which is often referred to as "Manchuria" or "Inner Manchuria" by surrounding countries and the West. It usually corresponds specifically to the three provinces east of ...
,
Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admin ...
,
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
, and
Japan.
The homeland is considered to be the
Altai Mountains. These findings have suggested a common point of cultural origin, possession of advanced metal working technology, and unexplained rapid migration. The buried were
nomad
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the po ...
ic warriors and metal-workers, traveling on
horseback or two-wheeled
carts.
The name derives from the
Seyma cemetery near the confluence of the
Oka River and
Volga River
The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchme ...
, first excavated around 1914, and the Turbino cemetery in
Perm
Perm or PERM may refer to:
Places
*Perm, Russia, a city in Russia
** Permsky District, the district
**Perm Krai, a federal subject of Russia since 2005
**Perm Oblast, a former federal subject of Russia 1938–2005
**Perm Governorate, an administra ...
, first excavated in 1924.
[A Dictionary of Archaeology, edited by Ian Shaw, Robert Jameson, page 517]
Origin
Seima-Turbino (ST) weapons contain
tin bronze ore originating from the
Altai Mountains region (central
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
and southern
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
), with further ST discoveries pointing more specifically to the southeastern portions of the Altai and
Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
. These sites have been identified with the origin of the mysterious ST culture.
Artifacts and weapons
The bronzes found were technologically advanced for the time, including
lost wax casting, and showed high degree of artist input in their design. Horses were the most common shapes for the hilts of blades. Weapons such as spearheads with hooks, single-bladed knives and socketed axes with geometric designs traveled west and east from Xinjiang.
Dispersal
The culture spread from these mountains to the west and to the east.
These cultures are noted for being
nomad
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the po ...
ic forest and
steppe societies with metal working, sometimes without having first developed
agricultural methods. The development of this metalworking ability appears to have occurred quite quickly.
ST bronzes have been discovered as far west as the
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...
and the
Borodino treasure in
Moldavia
Moldavia ( ro, Moldova, or , literally "The Country of Moldavia"; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ; chu, Землѧ Молдавскаѧ; el, Ἡγεμονία τῆς Μολδαβίας) is a historical region and for ...
.
Theories
Transmission into Southeast Asia
It has been conjectured that changes in climate in this region around 2000 BC and the ensuing ecological, economic and political changes triggered a rapid and massive migration westward into northeast Europe, eastward into
China, and southward into
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
(
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
and
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
) across a frontier of some 4,000 miles. Supposedly this migration took place in just five to six generations and enabled people from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east to employ the same metal working technology and in some areas,
horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...
breeding and riding.
[
]
However, further excavations and research in
Ban Chiang
Ban Chiang ( th, บ้านเชียง, ) is an archaeological site in Nong Han district, Udon Thani province, Thailand. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992. Discovered in 1966, the site first attracted interest due to its ...
and
Ban Non Wat (both Thailand) argue the idea that Seima-Turbino brought metal workings into southeast Asia is based on inaccurate and unreliable
radiocarbon dating at the site of Ban Chiang. It is now agreed by virtually every specialist in
Southeast Asian prehistory, that the
Bronze Age of Southeast Asia occurred too late to be related to ST, and the cast bronzes are quite different.
Uralic urheimat
The same authors conjectured that the same migrations spread the
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
across Europe and Asia.
[
The existence of Uralic Samoyedic and Ob-Ugrian groups like the Nenets, the ]Mansi people
The Mansi ( Mansi: Мāньси / Мāньси мāхум, ''Māńsi / Māńsi māhum'', ) are a Ugric indigenous people living in Khanty–Mansia, an autonomous okrug within Tyumen Oblast in Russia. In Khanty–Mansia, the Khanty and Man ...
and the Khanty
The Khanty ( Khanty: ханти, ''hanti''), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (russian: остяки) are a Ugric indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, togethe ...
, anchor the Uralic languages
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
in Asia.
Notable is the similarity between the range of haplogroup
A haplotype is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent, and a haplogroup (haploid from the el, ἁπλοῦς, ''haploûs'', "onefold, simple" and en, group) is a group of similar haplotypes that share ...
N3a3’6, especially in the western part of Eurasia and the distribution of the Seima-Turbino trans-cultural phenomenon during the interval of 4.2–3.7 kya. Carriers of N3a1-B211, the early branch of N3a, could have migrated to the eastern fringes of Europe by the same Seima-Turbino groups. However earlier migrations cannot be ruled out either; a study of ancient DNA revealed a 7,500-year-old influx from Siberia to northeast Europe.[Illumäe et al., Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup N: A Non-trivial Time-Resolved Phylogeography that Cuts across Language Families. The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 99, Issue 1, 163-173]
Another subclade
In genetics, a subclade is a subgroup of a haplogroup.
Naming convention
Although human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) haplogroups and subclades are named in a similar manner, their names belong to completely separate sy ...
of Y- haplogroup N, N1a2b-P43 (TMRCA 4,700 5,600">5% CI 3,800 <-> 5,600ybp[Haplogroup N YTree v8.09.00 as of 08 October 2020](_blank)
/ref>), reaches some of its highest frequencies among the Uralic-speaking Nenets, Nganasan, Khanty
The Khanty ( Khanty: ханти, ''hanti''), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (russian: остяки) are a Ugric indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, togethe ...
, and Mansi
Mansi may refer to:
People
* Mansi people, an indigenous people living in Tyumen Oblast, Russia
** Mansi language
* Giovanni Domenico Mansi
Gian (Giovanni) Domenico Mansi (16 February 1692 – 27 September 1769) was an Italian prelate, theolog ...
peoples in western Siberia. Haplogroup N1a2b-P43 is also often observed among the members of many Uralic- or Turkic-speaking ethnic minorities of European Russia, but it is very rare among the Baltic Finnic and Samic peoples of Northern Europe. Estimated to be approximately 4,700 years old, N1b spread north and westwards from its original locus in Southern Siberia, exactly as Seima-Turbino migration did.
Citations
Further reading
*
*
*
*
{{Prehistoric Asia
Burials
Altai Mountains
Nomadic groups in Eurasia
Archaeology of Central Asia