Greetings fyahman, and iyah,

giving thanks for the reasoning and discourse,

Iyah, i am intrinsically suspicious of what i would view as being simplistic explanations of complex historical forces. There is no doubt, for example, that peoples such as the sythians and their pre-decessors, and indeed subsequent pastoral peoples made incursions into europe. However this would not have ever covered the whole area, and was probably more of a piece meal process that occured in waves over time, with some areas being occupiied and overrun, and others being left unscathed.

In terms of the diffusion of patriarchal sky god worship, it is far mpre likely that this occured through a combination of occasional military incursions, trade, and social transitions from small scale agriculture to larger societal entities, an evolution that is generally accompanied by a similar re-ordering of the religous system, as the state centralises, so does the pantheon, as warfare becomes more organised, the war god gets more worship etc.

An example of this thing is the spread of celtic culture throughout europe. Genetic surveys seem to show that rather than this being a case of actual physical movements of large numbers of people, it was more a case of small population changes, which may or may not have been miltary, followed by a gradual cultural change to an existing population. A similar situation is happening today with the spread of US culture. they dont have to actually move phyisically to a place to spread their culture there.

But, i would point out that all of this is very conjectural, and that i am just representing one particular perspective, as are yourself and others here, and i am very much learning from the continued interchange on this issue...

Fyahman,

to return to the genetic surveys that have been done in europe. While i am sure that african folk ventured very much further north (and for that matter east and west) than is conventionally accepted, if they lived in large concentrations in parts of what is now europe, you would expect to see some evidence of this in the gene pool. As far as I am aware there isnt any.

love and life
paul