Recent discourse on the Indo-Europeanization of Europe has been dominated by the steppe hypothesis, which posits a large-scale migration of Indo-European-speaking populations from the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 3000 BCE, associated with the Yamnaya culture and subsequently the Corded Ware complex. This model has gained traction largely due to advances in archaeogenetics, offering compelling evidence of population replacement and mobility. However, Rune Iversen's archaeological analysis titled “Issues with the Steppe Hypothesis: An Archaeological Perspective—Iconography, Mythology, and Language in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Southern Scandinavia” introduces a critical perspective on this narrative by examining the southern Scandinavian region through the lens of iconography, mythological structures, and material culture transitions.
Iversen begins by observing that Neolithic iconography in southern Scandinavia, prior to the 2nd millennium BCE, was largely aniconic, favoring abstract, geometric forms akin to those found in the megalithic art traditions of western Europe. This visual language contrasts starkly with the anthropomorphic imagery—notably the statue menhirs—that emerged in other parts of Europe from the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE. These standing stones, featuring stylized human forms and sometimes weaponry or costume details, are thought to convey emerging social hierarchies, elite identities, and potentially religious or mythological content.
What is striking is the absence of such iconography in contemporaneous southern Scandinavian contexts, despite the region's increasing contact with steppe-derived cultural elements such as Corded Ware pottery, burial traditions, and domestic technologies. This absence suggests that early steppe-related influences did not immediately introduce Indo-European cosmological structures or human representations into Scandinavian symbolic systems.
Iversen's core argument revolves around the timing and nature of cultural transformations. He identifies the Early Nordic Bronze Age (beginning ca. 2000 BCE) as a decisive phase in which southern Scandinavia begins to exhibit both anthropomorphic imagery and motifs that may align with Indo-European mythological themes. This shift is particularly evident in rock carvings, metalwork, and burial practices that imply personification of deities, narratives of divine twins, solar symbolism, and warrior ideologies—hallmarks of reconstructed Indo-European belief systems.
This temporal disconnect—between the arrival of steppe-related material culture (~2800 BCE) and the emergence of Indo-European mythological expression (~2000 BCE)—forms the crux of Iversen’s critique of the single-wave model of Indo-Europeanization. He contends that a more nuanced, multi-phase process must be acknowledged. Rather than a singular migratory event initiating a full suite of cultural, linguistic, and religious transformations, Iversen posits at least two significant waves of steppe innovation affecting southern Scandinavia. The first wave brought material and technological shifts without substantive changes in symbolic and cosmological systems. Only in the second phase, during the Early Bronze Age, do we see the full integration of Indo-European ideologies into the local cultural matrix.
Furthermore, Iversen's work suggests that iconographic and ideological changes are essential to understanding cultural transformation—particularly the spread of Indo-European languages and religious systems. The archaeological record, when read in conjunction with linguistic and genetic evidence, offers a more intricate narrative of how Indo-European culture expanded: not as a uniform diffusion, but as a complex process of adoption, adaptation, and resistance.
In summary, this research provides a critical archaeological counterpoint to prevailing genetic interpretations of the steppe hypothesis. By demonstrating the diachronic disparity between early steppe cultural influences and later Indo-European ideological expressions in southern Scandinavia, Iversen underscores the need for interdisciplinary approaches that account for both biological and symbolic dimensions of human migration and cultural change.
