Chapter V: Preface: 9 (3)

“A certain passivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. This is true all the way from north-western Spain, where Tubino notes its degeneration into morosity in the peasantry, as far as Russia, where the great inert Slavic horde of north-eastern Europe submits with abject resignation to the political despotism of the house of the Romanoffs.... As a rule ... the Alpine type makes a comfortable and contented neighbour, a resigned and peaceful subject.... The most persistent attribute to the Alpine Celt is his extreme attachment to the soil, or, perhaps, better, to locality. He seems to be a sedentary type _par excellence_; he seldom migrates, except after great provocation; so that, once settled, he clings to his patrimony through all persecution, climatic or human. If he migrates to the cities, ... he generally returns home to the country to spend his last days in peace.”

Ripley says that they are socially conservative, and this is true in the sense that they dislike change; but an examination of the constitution of their villages leads one to believe that they are very democratic and, in fact, inclined to communism, though this tendency is usually confined to village affairs, and rarely penetrates national politics. It must be remembered, however, that Soviet Russia is mainly Alpine, and that Marx came from the Alpine zone.

Thus we find that these people were patient, plodding, and hard-working,[181] while the long, snow-bound winters had encouraged habits of thrift, for it was necessary to provide during the summer a sufficient store of food to last through the cold weather. They were not hunters, and in no sense sportsmen, and seem to have been lacking in the spirit of adventure. They feared the waste and its wild inhabitants, and lived in their self-contained villages, with the drawbridge up, and had little contact with their neighbours. As we have seen, they were extremely democratic in their outlook, probably with a strong tendency to communism, and they shared everything in common, perhaps even their wives.[182]

During the early days of these lake-dwellings, in what is known as the Archaic period, there seems to have been little to disturb their peace,[183] for the remnants of Combe Capelle man seem to have become extinct or to have merged with the rest of the population. But towards the close of the second period, that called the Robenhausen, about 3000 /B.C./, or perhaps rather later, there is evidence of the appearance of intruders into this region.

The newcomers were few in number, and seem to have arrived from the north up the Rhine valley. From the skeletons found in the tombs of this period we find that they were tall, long-headed men, with strongly marked eye-brow ridges, and bear a close resemblance to those tall, fair-headed, grey-eyed men, who are still dominant in the north of Europe, and who are known to anthropologists as the Nordic race.[184]

Such were the people of the mountain zone during neolithic times, and it is possible that the inhabitants of Hungary were similar in type, though the long-headed race seems to have appeared here earlier. It is true that we have few remains from the Hungarian plain which we can attribute with certainty to this period, but the broad skull found at Nagy-sap belongs, in all probability, to this time, though a greater age has been claimed for it.[185] Perhaps the few facts available would be better explained by supposing that the Alpines occupied the whole mountain zone, and the mountainous regions surrounding the Hungarian plain, and that about 3000 /B.C./ Nordic intruders entered Switzerland from the Rhine Basin, and the plain of Hungary, perhaps, through the Moravian gate.

As we pass eastwards from the Carpathians the rainfall becomes less and the woodland disappears; we enter the steppe lands which reach far into Asia. This steppe occupies the whole of the Rumanian plain, and north of the Dniester runs in a belt, fifty miles wide, as far west as Lemberg. West of this lie large stretches of glacial sands and gravels, which must have carried an open heath vegetation, and so almost continuous open land stretched at the northern foot of the Carpathians from Odessa by Lemberg and Cracow to Breslau.[186]

In this open region, bounded on the east by the Dnieper and on the north by the Polish forest, we find at the time which we are discussing a very peculiar culture; this has been called the Tripolje culture,[187] from the site near Kief where it was first discovered. The people responsible for this culture lived in pit-dwellings, and set aside certain “areas” for the disposal of their dead. Usually, if not invariably, they burnt their dead and placed the ashes in urns, which they deposited in these areas, but it has been said that they sometimes buried the corpses, though no descriptions of such skeletons have appeared. They made vast quantities of pottery, much of it painted, some of it incised, but they were ignorant of the potter’s wheel. They cultivated the land, at any rate during their later phase, for half-cooked corn has been found among their remains.

This culture is found throughout south-western Russia, south of the Pripet marshes, and west of the Dnieper; it is sometimes found extending, too, east of that river in the governments of Chernigov and Poltava. Southward it is found throughout the steppe region of Rumania, while westward it extends through the open country as far as Breslau. Pottery somewhat resembling that of the Tripolje culture has been found in Serbia, Thrace, Thessaly and the north-west corner of Asia Minor.

POTSHERD FROM KOSZYLOWSCE, GALICIA.]

The Tripolje culture is of two types, known as A and B. Judging by the pottery, and the terracotta figures of women, which are fairly common on both types of sites, the B culture is the more advanced. On the other hand no metal has been found on these sites, while copper axes and perforated stone axes are not uncommon on the sites exhibiting A culture.

BOWL, DECORATED WITH RED LINES, DISCOVERED IN THE GREAT “THOLOS” OF HAGHIA TRIADA.

(From Mosso’s “Dawn of Mediterranean Civilisation.”)]

When this culture was first discovered, it was believed by some that here we had the origin of the early painted wares of Greece and Crete,[188] but later on the discoveries at Cnossos showed that at that place painted pottery had developed from plain and incised wares; it was also noticed that the shapes of the pots at these sites were fundamentally different. So all idea of a connection between these two industries was abandoned. There is, however, in the Newbury Museum a potsherd of Tripolje ware, from Koszylowsce in Galicia, which bears a very striking resemblance to another of the second early Minoan period, from the _tholos_ at Haghia Triada in Crete, figured by Mosso.[189] It may be, after all, that, while the suggestion that the Tripolje ceramic is ancestral to that of Crete is erroneous, there may have been some connection and mutual borrowing. This resemblance and the presence of copper axes during period A suggests that there had been trade relations, either direct or indirect, between Crete and the north-western shore of the Euxine, between 2600 and 2400 /B.C./, and this fits in very well with the trade between Egypt and Transylvania, about 3200 /B.C./, to which reference was made in chapter III. The Tripolje settlements of Type A belong, therefore, to a period which closed certainly as early as 2400 and perhaps as early as 2600 /B.C./ For some reason, it would appear, this trade came to an end about this time, and the importation of copper axes ceased. The cause of this interruption is uncertain, but it is perhaps permissible to suggest that the inhabitants of Hissarlik II., like their successors in Hissarlik VI., held the straits and so restricted the traffic through it as to kill it. The disappearance of the type A culture must certainly be equated approximately with the rise of Hissarlik II., for, as we shall see, the disappearance of Type B. culture practically synchronises with the destruction of that city.

As we have seen this people usually, and perhaps invariably cremated their dead, for the skeletons referred to by M. Chvojka,[190] may not have belonged to this period; in any case they have not been described. We have, therefore, no direct evidence of their physical characters and racial affinities. Some years ago Sir Arthur Keith,[191] discussing the origin of the “Bronze age invaders of Britain,” a people which I shall describe in the next chapter by the name of the Beaker-folk, argued with much force that they must have set out from Galicia. As they reached Britain about or perhaps before 2000 /B.C./, they must have left Galicia still earlier, that is to say about the time that Tripolje settlements of type B. came to an end. For this reason I argued in 1916[192] that the Tripolje culture was due to the Beaker-folk, and I see no reason to-day to change my mind.

Now the Beaker-folk, often called Bronze Age or Round Barrow men, are rather tall, strongly built, and with rather broad heads. They have often been termed Alpine, but as Keith has shown, they differ in many important particulars from the typical Alpines in the mountain zone. The difference lies mainly in this: they are taller, more robust, their cranial index is lower, seldom rising above 84, while the conspicuous flattening of the occiput is absent.[193]

These characters suggest a cross between the Alpine and Nordic types, and this is a possible solution, as they lie midway between the Alpines of the mountain zone and another people, to be described next, who occupied the steppe lands to the east, and who closely resemble the Nordic type. On the other hand the Beaker-folk type seems to have remained fairly uniform, so that, if it is a cross, it is a stable cross, which suggests that it is one of long standing. It may be, then, that we should consider it rather as a cross between the broad-headed Ofnet type, and some long-headed palæolithic race, such as that of Combe Capelle.

On the steppe lands east of the Dnieper, and stretching thence to the confines of Asia, and apparently beyond into Turkestan, we find evidence of another people, who are of great importance to our problem.[194] Unfortunately we know less of them than we could wish, for many of their remains have come to light as the result of unscientific digging, and the few results of expert exploration have been meagrely published in very unaccessible proceedings. These people buried their dead in barrows, or kurgans, and for this reason they have been called Kurgan people.[195] This name, however, is open to objection, as several other folk at different times have buried in kurgans throughout this region. The chief peculiarity of the people I am dealing with is that they buried their dead in a contracted position, and that skeletons have been found thickly covered with red ochre. For this reason some writers have called them red skeleton men or nomad red men.[196] This again is not quite a satisfactory term, and I have suggested in its place steppe-folk or nomad steppe-folk.[197]

The graves of these men were poorly furnished. They contained usually a few stone or bone implements and a certain type of pot with a hemispherical base. The evidence available a few years ago led to the belief that they were in a neolithic condition and totally ignorant of the use of metal, but some recent discoveries at Maikop, in the Koban basin, disclosed a considerable number of objects of gold and silver. From this and similar finds Rostovtzeff[198] has argued that these steppe-folk were responsible for a considerable civilisation; but, taking into account the poverty displayed by most of their burials, I am disposed to think of them as still living in a neolithic state, but sometimes raiding the richer and more advanced civilisations to the south, which had long reached a chalcolithic stage. Rostovtzeff is probably right in attributing the Maikop discoveries to the early part of the third millennium, which brings them within the period we are discussing.

That these people were nomads seems clear from the little evidence we possess and from the poverty of their tombs and the absence of dwelling sites. We have, in one grave at least, evidence that they possessed the horse,[199] and since the grassy steppe lands are the home of wild cattle, we shall not be far wrong in believing that they were by this time passing from a hunting to a pastoral stage. They were, in fact, owners of large bands of cattle, which, like cow-boys, they drove from pasture to pasture.

Professor Myres has argued for a very wide distribution of these people, in fact from the Elbe to Tobolsk, and southwards to Bosnia and Thrace.[200] Some of these extensions seem, as we shall see, to date from a later period, and during the time which we are discussing, roughly the period of Hissarlik II., the bulk of them seem to have been restricted to the steppe regions east of the Dnieper, though they roamed the belt of parkland lying to the north, and perhaps even penetrated the dense woodland beyond. How far they had extended eastward is uncertain, but, as we shall see in the next chapter, their more distant excursions in this direction may well have been later.

We know something of their physical type. Bogdanov tells us that they were a robust race, with a large and long head, an elongated face, and, according to some examples, with hair more or less fair.[201] The colour of the hair has been disputed, as there is a tendency for hair in graves to become pale. The cranial index is not quite certain. Sergi states that it varies from 65 to 81,[202] but it seems likely that among his collection of kurgan skulls are some of other types. Bogdanov tells us that in the kurgans to the west of the area several broad skulls occur, but with less robust skeletons, and the average index is higher. This may be due to admixture with Alpine or Beaker types. In the north, too, as one approaches the middle valley of the Volga, the broad type appears also; in this case I have suggested that it is due to admixture with a Mongoloid type which was already occupying this region.[203] From the kurgans at Souja,[204] in the government of Kursk, where the steppe lands reach further north than elsewhere, came twenty-three skulls which showed singular uniformity; nineteen of these were markedly long headed, and the remainder, belonging to three women and a child, only a trifle less so. It is possible that a considerable variation of head-form existed among these people, especially on the outskirts of their region, where they seem to have come into contact with more broad-headed neighbours. But Bogdanov is probably right in concluding that the pure type was a long-headed one, though the skulls seem not to have been so narrow as was frequently the case among the Mediterranean peoples of the west. Normally the length-breadth index seems to have varied from 73 to 76 though both higher and lower indices have sometimes been found.

The most striking feature about this people is the custom of covering the skeleton, or the body, with red ochre.[205] It has been suggested that this arose from the body being buried in clothes and cap of skin, deeply impregnated with this pigment. This custom is widespread, and, as we have seen, was not uncommon in the upper palæolithic age, being found at the beginning of the Aurignacian period in the case of the Grimaldi skeletons found buried in the _Grotte des enfants_. We seem here to be in the presence of the survival of a custom which dates from the times of Aurignac.

It will be remembered that during the closing phases of the Aurignacian period the Combe Capelle type makes its appearance in western Europe, and about the same time arrived the horse, which was hunted for food. A little later, when steppe conditions had become better established in the west, we have the great Solutrean invasion which drove the artistes of the Dordogne to the Pyrenees. The Combe Capelle type seems to have been predominant during this period, and the Brünn skeletons, one of which was of this type, were covered with red ochre.[206] As the climate deteriorated, and tundra conditions prevailed, the Solutrean invaders departed, apparently to the east.

Until a large number of the skulls of our steppe-folk, found in the kurgans, can be compared with the relatively few crania of the Combe Capelle type which have survived from the upper palæolithic age, it would be dangerous to come to any conclusion, but the evidence cited above makes it reasonable to suggest that perhaps the long-headed hunters of the horse, with their fine laurel-leaf spears, may have retreated to the steppe lands of South Russia and Turkestan, and there converted the animal which they had hunted and ate into a means whereby they could roam with greater ease and rapidity over the grassy plains. The subjugation of the horse would have rendered easier the domestication of cattle, which in turn changed them from hippophagists to beef-eaters. Their robustness and long-headedness, combined with their roaming instincts and devotion to the horse, which will become clearer as we proceed, have convinced me that we are here dealing with that tall, fair, long-headed type, now dominant in northern Europe, which we term the Nordic race.[207]

/Chapter VI/

MANY INVASIONS

That large tracts of Asia have been subject to a gradual process of desiccation has been made clear to us by the reports of the successive explorations of Sir Aurel Stein, who has shown us that regions, which are now uninhabited desert, once held a flourishing population. It has been suggested by Ellsworth Huntington,[208] who accompanied the Pumpelly expedition to Turkestan, that the process of desiccation has been neither continuous nor progressive, but has been subject to intermittent action and the alternation of dry and wet periods. The evidence which he has adduced of the rise and fall of the level of the Caspian sea seems to bear out his thesis, which has been further strengthened by his later observations in Palestine and on the shores of the Dead Sea.[209]

It is part of Ellsworth Huntington’s hypothesis that during these periods of drought, or light precipitation, the population of the steppe lands, which had grown in numbers during the previous years of heavier rainfall, have found it difficult to obtain adequate pasturage for their flocks and herds, and have in consequence dispersed to more favoured regions. To this he attributes the great raids from the steppe and desert into the more fertile zones adjoining them, which have been so marked a feature in the history of the Near East. He points out that a relatively small diminution of rainfall may make all the difference between a sufficient and inadequate crop of grass, and should the crop be insufficient, the flocks and herds, the sole means of support for the steppe-folks, would inevitably perish unless driven to moister regions. How serious even one dry year may be has recently been brought home to us by the Russian famine in 1921.

This thesis has been severely attacked, especially by Peisker.[210] Still, though Huntington’s conclusions may require modification in detail, his main contention seems to have withstood the attacks made upon it. Mr. Brooks[211] has recently shown us that the climate of Europe has passed through considerable changes since the ice age, and that such changes come down to relatively recent times and may yet be in progress. He attributes these largely to changes in coast line, and to the relative masses of land and water. The Pumpelly reports[212] show that considerable changes of level have taken place in Turkestan, and but small changes are needed to connect the Aralo-Caspian basin, by means of the Obi valley, with the Arctic Ocean. All this tends to show that we may expect considerable variation in the climate of this region, while Huntington’s evidence of changes in the level of the Caspian Sea seems to prove that such variations have not been always in the same direction. Mr. Cook is, however, inclined to see in this the destruction of forests and their conversion into grass-lands by the primitive process of cultivation which he terms Milpa agriculture.[213]

It is to periods of light rainfall that Huntington attributes the four great irruptions from the Arabian desert which have been recognised by Semitic scholars,[214] the last of which spread the doctrine of Islam over the Near East; to the same cause he attributes, too, the various movements of the Huns and Tartars. One may reasonably add to this that even one dry year during the period of light rainfall may be sufficient to account for such an exodus.

Now, as I have endeavoured to show on a previous occasion,[215] such a period of light rainfall seems to have occurred between 2400 and 2200 /B.C./, though it may have been of somewhat longer duration. I further gave reason for believing that about 2225 /B.C./, or perhaps a little earlier, an invasion of nomads took place from the Russian steppes. It would seem that about this time the Tripolje culture came suddenly to an end, and from the evidence at Khalepje,[216] Minns was inclined to believe that it had been destroyed by the steppe-folk, who had buried one of their dead on the site formerly occupied by a Tripolje “area.” This destruction has recently been questioned, and it has been suggested that the Tripolje people may have abandoned this region, driven out rather by drought than by the attacks of the steppe-folk.

Be this as it may, for further excavations are needed before the question can be determined, there is no doubt that these nomads disappeared from the steppe for a time and were found in the Tripolje region. Further we have evidence that a people resembling them appeared soon afterwards in Thessaly, bringing with them pottery which appears to be derived from that of the Tripolje culture.[217] Others of this type seem to have been responsible for the destruction of Hissarlik II.,[218] while pottery, which also shows affinities with that of Tripolje, occurs later at Hissarlik and at Yortan on the Caicus.[219] Moreover, the kurgans, characteristic of these steppe-folk, have been found all over Thrace and even over Asia Minor from the Hellespont southwards to Lydia and Caria, as well as eastwards up the Sangarius into the plateau of Phrygia.[220] Thus we seem to be dealing with an advance of a steppe people, comparable with the various irruptions from the Arabian desert which did so much to change the course of history in Mesopotamia, and destroyed the Old and Middle Kingdoms in Egypt.

A further corroboration comes from Turkestan, from the mounds of Anau. In the south kurgan, the lower layers belonged to the period known as Anau III., which contained a copper culture and a three-sided seal,[221] which Mrs. Hawes recognised as having Middle Minoan affinities.[222] This settlement, which seems to have been in touch with the Elamite culture of Susa,[223] came suddenly to an end at a date which Pumpelly fixes at about 2200 /B.C./[224] Whether the settlement was destroyed or merely abandoned is not quite clear, but what is important for our purpose is that two agricultural communities on the edge of the steppe, those of Tripolje and Anau, came to an end at exactly or almost exactly the same date.

I have also suggested[225] that in this last case we may perhaps see some proof of an hypothesis, advanced many years ago from legendary and linguistic data by Terrien de Lacouperie.[226] This ingenious author, who had been dead many years before the discoveries at Anau were made, suggested that certain tribes, settled near the Caspian Sea, whom he called the Bak tribes and who had been under the influence of the kings of Elam, left their settlements about 2200 /B.C./, and set out on a long trek towards China, into which land they introduced the beginnings of culture and the germs of the Chinese script.

This hypothesis was badly received when it appeared. Few of its critics had taken the trouble to master Lacouperie’s argument, which was advanced in a most confused style. Sir Robert Douglas,[227] however, a sinologist of no mean reputation, believed that there was a considerable amount of truth at the bottom of it, though the theory was overlaid by many fanciful conjectures. Recently M. Cordier[228] has dismissed the whole idea as imaginary and based on inaccurate linguistic data. The question, I venture to think, needs re-examination, for at Anau we find a settlement of peasants, in touch with the Elamites, abandoning their village just at the date suggested by Lacouperie.

All this evidence seems to point to the fact that owing to drought, either of a prolonged order or lasting for two or three consecutive summers, our steppe-folk, who buried their dead in a contracted position covered with red ochre, suddenly left the steppe lands between the Dnieper and the Asiatic frontier, and dispersed in search of wetter regions and richer pastures. Two settled agricultural civilisations on their borders, the Tripolje settlements in the Ukraine and those at Anau, disappeared at the same time, driven out either by the drought or by the advancing hordes.

That some went to the east as well as to the west seems probable, for we find not long afterwards, in the reign of Hammurabi, 2123-2061 /B.C./, bands of steppe-folk on the Iranian plateau, who had already tamed the horse.[229] These entered Mesopotamia and established the Kassite dynasty about 1760 /B.C./,[230] and were the first to introduce the horse into the valley of the Tigris.[231] Whether or no other bands passed further to the eastward we have no positive evidence, but, as we have seen, there seem to be reasons for suspecting that some reached Tobolsk,[232] and there were at one time fair people dwelling in the upper basin of the Yenesei[233]. It seems probable that it is to this period that we must attribute this easterly movement. As it seems probable that the Mitanni barons, who were lording it over eastern Armenia, were of the same stock as the Kassites, we may attribute their arrival south of the Caspian to the same causes. Geographical considerations, too, would lead us to suspect that ample pasturage could have been found also among the hills surrounding Balkh.

The westward movements I have already dealt with elsewhere,[234] and I need do no more than recapitulate them here. As we have seen, the steppe-folk entered the Tripolje region, and probably occupied this district as far as Breslau. Some of them passed southwards along the western shore of the Euxine, and crossing the Danube, settled in Thrace, where numerous kurgans are to be seen.[235] Others seem to have passed on further south, and eventually reached the Thessalian plain, into which they introduced Dhimini ware and the cult of the horse. It may be that it was the appearance of these strange horsemen in this region which gave rise to the stories of the Centaurs.

Some bands of the latter party seem to have separated from the main body and advanced down the Gallipoli peninsula. These, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere, destroyed Hissarlik II., among the ruins of which two of their skulls were found.[236] It may be that these were responsible for the rude villages of Hissarlik III., but it seems more probable that they would have passed on to the grassy steppes in the interior of the Anatolian peninsula.

Now the bulk of the people of Asia Minor at this date, as at the present day, were of that eastern Alpine, Anatolian or Armenoid type, best represented by the modern Armenians. These people are not by nature warlike, though they will sometimes fight well to defend their homes; but in no case are they aggressive, unless under the command of a more militaristic type. A few centuries after the events which we have been discussing, we find an aggressive, military power growing up in the peninsula, at first under several chiefs or kings,[237] in which, I think, we may see a military aristocracy. These separate, though perhaps federated, states ultimately coalesced into the great empire of the Khatti or Hittites, who attacked and sacked Babylon in 1746 /B.C./[238]

Whether or no any of these steppe-folk entered Hungary at this time is not quite clear, for it would seem that some of the long skulls found at Laibach may be of an earlier date. To these we will return later. It seems probable that the grassy steppes of the Hungarian plain would tempt these wandering horsemen, and we can scarcely believe that they would have avoided such rich pastures, unless, indeed, they were already occupied by their distant relatives, who were powerful enough to keep them out. The balance of evidence seems, however, to suggest that, whether or no any Nordic steppe-folk had arrived here earlier, some of these invaders from the steppes must have entered the fertile plain of the middle Danube.

It has been pointed out by Minns,[239] that “in the far west of Russia, between the Carpathians and Kiev, we find in the neolithic period distinct traces of connection with the coasts of the Baltic,” also that there are found “northern types of axes and amber.” Zaborowski,[240] also has drawn attention to the resemblance between some of the contents of the kurgans and the culture by the shores of the Baltic. It was for this reason that in 1916 I suggested[241] that at a date prior to that we have been discussing, perhaps about 3000 /B.C./, some of these steppe-folk had passed to the shores of the Baltic, and were the long-headed men who are found occupying the lowlands of Belgium[242] about that time. I have elaborated the argument since,[243] but it has not met with the approval of some of the Swedish archæologists.[244] With the evidence at present available it is not easy to make a conclusive case one way or the other, but, as we have seen, the neolithic culture of this area resembles in some points that of the Baltic, Nordic types appear in the Baltic region, in Belgium, in the Rhine basin and pass thence to the Swiss lake-dwellings, while other long-headed types, which may however have appeared later, are found in the west of Hungary and the eastern slopes of the mountain zone. All these points lead one to suspect that at an earlier date some of these Nordic steppe-folk, driven doubtless by a former period of drought, had migrated north-westwards to the colder regions around the Baltic Sea, where the type, already tall, relatively fair and long-headed, developed later these characters to a more pronounced degree.

We have seen that the Tripolje people had departed from the Ukraine and Galicia, driven away by drought or by the invading steppe-folk. Traces of pottery, bearing some resemblances of that of the Tripolje culture, have been found in various places to the south, just those places where we find that our steppe-folk had settled. This suggests that the steppe-folk had conquered these people, and taken captive some of their women,[245] who in all primitive tribes are the potters.

If Keith is right that our Beaker-folk came from Galicia, we must suppose that on leaving the Ukraine they passed westward and entered Bohemia, for it is from this country, as Lord Abercromby has shown,[246] the northern beaker seems to have been derived.

CARINATED VASE FROM SPAIN.]

But Leeds has lately suggested,[247] and this suggestion was also made some years ago by Sir Arthur Evans,[248] that the beaker developed originally in Spain. Leeds has published a map, showing that beakers of the earliest type are found most abundantly in Andalusia, and he traces their distribution thence throughout west Europe. One of his lines of migration carried them to north Italy, where it points to the Brenner Pass.

Now the Spanish and western beakers differ in many important respects from the northern type, though it is characteristic of both to be decorated with parallel and horizontal bands of ornament. Leeds thinks that the beaker developed in Spain from a type of pot, which he terms carinated, and which is found associated with megalithic monuments at such distant points as Denmark, the Isle of Arran, Guernsey and Brittany, the Pyrenees, Spain, Algeria, Taranto, Sicily and Malta. This type of pot is distinguished by having a hemispherical base, while the sides, half way up, have a knee or angle, above which they are concave.

Now it is of course possible that the bell-beaker of Spain may be derived from this carinated vase, though intermediate forms seem to be lacking. I am inclined to think, however, that this beaker has a double parentage, and has been influenced, too, by certain types of ware not uncommon at Hissarlik II., the form of which is best shown by a silver vase found in that city.[249]

However this may be, the bell-beaker, which has invariably a convex base, seems to have been evolved in Andalusia, and to have been carried, amongst other places, to North Italy, and thence northward to Bohemia, where it is localised in the western part of that province. Here another type of pottery, called cord vases, which had developed in the plain of North Germany, had been already introduced, and the northern type of beaker, which has a flat base, seems to have been derived from a combination of both types.

BELL BEAKER.]

Some years ago Dr. O. Reche[250] described a people, very closely resembling the Beaker-folk, as inhabiting Silesia and especially Bohemia during the closing phases of the megalithic period in the Baltic, that is to say about the time we are considering. Into this population there intruded invaders of the Nordic type, exterminating the men but marrying the women and adopting their customs. These invaders entered Silesia in force, but only penetrated into Bohemia in small numbers.

This seems to point to the fact that some of our Tripolje people were, as we have seen before, occupying Silesia, while others had settled in Bohemia. Here they were using, and had perhaps taken over from an earlier people, a type of beaker, which had been developed from the cord pottery of northern Europe, influenced by a few imported specimens of the bell-beaker, which had come ultimately from Spain. Soon the steppe-folk, passing through Galicia and southern Silesia, entered Bohemia, and some, at any rate, of the Beaker-folk moved northwards. Lord Abercromby[251] has shown how they left through the Elbe gap and passed northwards between the valleys of the Weser and the Rhine. Some went further north to Jutland, where we find them introducing the single grave culture, characterised by the presence of beakers and those perforated stone axes, which we have met with before in the Tripolje area.

NORTHERN BEAKER.]

Others passed into the low countries, where they occupied the region lying between Utrecht and Gelderland in the south and Drenthe in the north.[252] Thence some passed to this country. Lord Abercromby believes that they crossed the channel at the narrowest point, and passed westward and northward by land.[253] It seems more likely, however, that though the crossing may actually have been made by the Straits of Dover, the Beaker-folk coasted along the southern and eastern shores of Great Britain, for maritime traffic was no new thing in these parts. Some, who landed near the Moray Frith, seem to have been accompanied by a few pure Alpines,[254] whose blood has left a marked effect on the present population of Aberdeenshire.[255] While they settled in the upland regions of England and Scotland, especially on the open downs and limestone hills, they penetrated very little to the west, which was dominated by the Prospectors. Few signs of their presence appear in Wales, and none that can be depended upon in Ireland.[256]

It has been thought by some that they spoke some form of Aryan or Indo-European tongue, and it has been conjectured that it was they who introduced into these isles the Goidelic or Gaelic dialects. This opinion has recently been restated by M. Loth.[257] This view has been well answered by Rice Holmes,[258] and his arguments are as valid to-day as when they were written. We are forced to admit that we are in total ignorance of the language spoken by the Beaker-folk.

It was at one time believed that they introduced into this country the knowledge of bronze, and graphic pictures were drawn of the way in which, with their superior weapons, they conquered the stone-using aborigines. Few, however, of their graves, either here or in Jutland, contain objects of metal, and those which have been met with seem to conform more to south-western than to Central European types.[259] It must not, however, be assumed too hastily that they were in complete ignorance of metal, though they did not possess implements of that material on their arrival; for, as we have seen, the Tripolje people, in their period A, had used copper axes, doubtless carried thither by Ægean traders, and the perforated axes, used in the Ukraine, as in Jutland and Britain, seem as though copied from metal originals. It would be more accurate to say that a tradition of the former use of metal may have lingered among them, as of an article once possessed but long since lost.

/Chapter VII/

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LEAF-SHAPED SWORD

We have seen that the Alpine people were the earliest inhabitants of the mountain zone, west of the Hungarian plain, and that they had arrived there at an early date, bringing with them from the east the custom of living in pile-dwellings and the germs of agriculture. Whether they were living also in Hungary seems uncertain, though it is possible that they dwelt in the ring of mountain land that surrounds the plain.

Nordic folk had arrived in both areas by 3000 /B.C./, coming, it has been suggested, from the Russian steppes. It is also more than probable that fresh invaders from the steppes arrived about 2200 /B.C./, especially in the Hungarian plain. Thus, though the population of the whole of the area, which we have termed the Celtic cradle, was to some extent alike, there were considerable differences, both in the proportion of racial elements and in the methods of life, between the people of the mountain zone and the inhabitants of the plain.

Though members of both the Alpine and Nordic races inhabited the mountain zone, and are found living together in the same villages, they appear not to have intermarried, at any rate to any considerable extent, for at a much later date we find skulls both of the long-headed and the broad-headed types, but few if any which show evidence of mixed ancestry.[260] The evidence obtained from the cemetery at Hallstatt, which dates from 1000 years or more later, seems to point to the same conclusion.[261]

Now the Alpine people, as we have seen, are thrifty, steady, hard-working tillers of the soil, patient but lacking in the spirit of adventure. The Nordics, on the other hand, are strong, active, courageous and adventurous, devoted to the horse and accustomed on its back to drive bands of cattle over the grassy steppes. If we may judge from the views of many of their modern representatives, they despise menial work, such as ploughing the land or digging the soil, just as they prefer cattle and beef to sheep or mutton, and have a contempt for fish-eaters and vegetarians. The Nordic also has a natural instinct for governing and administration.

As I have shown elsewhere,[262] if two such peoples come into contact, and settle down together, there can be but one result: the Nordic becomes a lord and his people a privileged nobility, while the Alpine becomes eventually a serf. With a strong racial exclusiveness, or, as we call it to-day, colour prejudice, the Nordics decline to take wives from the subject class, and, though irregular unions may in time take place, marriage is strictly forbidden. In this we have the germs of the caste system so well known in India. Similar objections to such inter-marriages are a marked feature of the Briton throughout the empire. This custom has given rise to the strict marriage regulations, which existed until lately among all royal and many noble families in Europe, and among the descendants of the Visigoths in Spain. The marriage laws of Athens and Rome seem to imply a similar point of view. Another steppe-folk, entering a mountain zone filled with an eastern Alpine population, issued a similar edict, which they credited to their tribal god.[263] Thus in the mountain zone Nordic and Alpine lived together, apparently in harmony, as lord and serf, never intermarrying and rarely, if ever, mating with one another.

In the plain, however, the Alpines seem to have been absent, or at any rate few in number. Here we may well imagine the Nordics continued their nomadic existence, driving their cattle from one pasture to another. Thus the population tended to divide into two groups, the people of the mountains and the people of the plain.

When the first group of Nordics arrived in this region, both they and their Alpine predecessors were ignorant of metal, but a few centuries later implements of copper began slowly to penetrate the whole area. Perhaps these arrived from the east, up the Danube valley, either from Hissarlik II. or from those Ægean merchants, who, as we have seen, were trading for Transylvanian gold, or taking copper axes to the Tripolje folk. Or it may be that other Ægean folk had by this time reached the head of the Adriatic, and were making their way thence to the mines of the Erz-gebirge and the amber coasts of the Baltic. It is probable that both lines of trade began fairly early in the third millennium, and the general course of the latter route can be traced in outline from Fiume, along the eastern foothills of the mountain zone towards Linz, where the Danube must have been crossed in dug-out canoes; thence it continued through the Elbe gap, and on by various routes, indicated by the distribution of flat celts, to the amber coast.[264]

One thing is clear, and that is that metal reached the mountain zone from the east and not from the west. It was at one time believed that when metal first appeared in the western Mediterranean, the Rhone valley was the main line of approach into Central Europe.[265] This we now know was not the case,[266] for that valley was thickly wooded, and the inhabitants of most of it remained in a neolithic state until many centuries after metal had become known in Switzerland.

After the destruction of Hissarlik II. communications from the east seem to have ceased for a time; the irruption of the steppe-folk appears to have interfered with trade, especially by land, over the north Ægean and Euxine areas. Perhaps, too, after the arrival of fresh hordes of steppe-folk into Hungary trade by the other route may also have ceased for a time. There is some evidence that this was the case, but in due course it was resumed, and was at any rate in full swing again long before 1600 /B.C./, though, judging by the type of weapons found, this trade was rather with Italy and the west than with the Ægean and the eastern Mediterranean.

GROOVED ITALIAN DAGGER FROM CASTELLANO, NEAR RIPATRANSONE.]

We have seen in an earlier chapter that the people of the Mediterranean had developed a type of dagger of a somewhat triangular form, made first of all of copper and subsequently of bronze. This dagger, as we have seen, frequently had concave sides, perhaps at first as the result of constant grinding, and thus attained an ogival form. We have noted also that the breadth of the butt diminished as the length of the blade increased. Sometimes, especially in North Italy, the sides remained straight, and grooves were cut in the blade parallel to the sides. The object of these grooves, which were three, five or even more in number, was not in the first instance a question of ornament, though in time it became the _motif_ of an elaborate decoration. In the first instance it had a severely practical value, for a dagger so grooved, thrust into the body of an enemy, could be more readily extracted than one of which the whole surface was smooth. This grooving began with the straight-sided daggers, but was afterwards applied to those of ogival form.

The people of the Mediterranean race were, as we have seen, rather short and of slight build, and their daggers were relatively small. They were not used very frequently, we may imagine, in open warfare, but were more usually employed to stab an enemy in the back, a custom not yet obsolete in some Mediterranean lands. The handle was of bronze, often handsomely chased, and sometimes decorated with thin plates of gold. Such handles were riveted on to the blades, and so long as the butt of the latter was wide and the blade not too long, this method of attachment proved satisfactory. But, as we have seen, the tendency was for the butt to diminish in breadth and the blade to increase in length, which suggests that open combat was becoming more fashionable or more necessary, and that a greater reach was needed. The narrowing of the area of attachment, and the lengthening of the blade, threw an ever increasing strain on the riveted joint, which must have become more and more ineffective. Still, the Mediterranean peoples up to the last, except in the Ægean area, continued to use this long dirk, or rapier, with riveted handle.

LEAF-SHAPED SWORD.]

But the trade with Hungary carried these daggers from Italy into Central Europe, and the Nordic inhabitants, both of the plain and of the mountains, were good customers. But being big men, with large hands and accustomed to meet their foes face to face, they demanded larger and larger daggers, and this demand was met, as such a demand always is, by an adequate supply. Thus we find these weapons, closely resembling those in use in the Mediterranean basin, especially in its western half, becoming increasingly common in Hungary, and growing to greater and greater dimensions. Plate IV. shows five daggers found in Hungary: the two first can be matched both in Greece and Italy and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region, the third in Italy only, the fourth in the northern part of that peninsula, while the fifth is rare outside Hungary, and I have only been able to find one parallel, from Bondo in the Grisons.[267]

The increased size of the daggers, which in some cases had grown to enormous proportions, as may be seen in Plate V., made the weakness at the riveted joint more apparent. The Nordics, fighters above all else, paid much attention to their weapons, and they set themselves to discover some way to overcome this difficulty. This led, as we shall see, to the evolution of the leaf-shaped sword.

During the bronze age there were several types of sword in use in various parts of the Old World. We have seen how the typical Mediterranean sword or long dirk developed by slow degrees in the west from the triangular copper daggers of Crete. In the Ægean and in Greek lands we find other types, which seem to be derived from swords of Asiatic origin, and which had an independent development in Mesopotamia or Egypt; some, too, may have been derived from the copper daggers of Cyprus.

BRONZE HILT OF LEAF-SHAPED SWORD.]

But there is one type or group which stands apart from the others. In many examples the blade narrows rapidly near the butt, then expands slowly till it reaches its greatest breadth about two-thirds of the way down the blade; then it narrows more rapidly, then very quickly to the point. This gives a shape not unlike the leaf of the lanceolate plantain, a form not uncommon in other leaves; hence the name leaf-shaped sword. But many examples from this group, in other respects indistinguishable from those described, have sides which are nearly parallel, sometimes quite so. To these cases the term leaf-shaped is not so applicable. But the name is hallowed by a long tradition, and so it will be well to retain it for the whole group.

Leaf-shaped swords may be divided into two sub-groups: those with bronze hilts or pommels, and those without. Owing to the beauty of their decoration, the types with bronze hilts have hitherto received the greatest amount of attention, and several archæologists have devoted pages to describing them and tracing out their evolution.[268] They are not, however, very common outside Hungary, and in all cases are much rarer than the other types. The details of their form lead us to believe that they are contemporary with some, in fact with most of the other types, and the elaborate decoration present in most cases shows us that they were an expensive and ornate form, used probably by the greater chieftains, while the other types were the cheap and plain weapons used either by the lesser nobles or by the rank and file.

The simpler type of sword has no bronze hilt, but in its place a long tang, usually but not invariably with flanged edges, and shaped to fit the hand. This tang is pierced by several rivet holes, in which the rivets are sometimes found adhering, and these rivets were used to secure on either side of the tang pieces of wood, bone or horn, which with it formed the hilt. In some cases such swords have been found with wood or horn still attached. These are obviously a cheaper form of hilt, and it is not surprising that such swords are more commonly found and more widely distributed than those with bronze hilts or pommels, notwithstanding that the latter have been more eagerly sought after by collectors.

TANG, WITH FLANGED EDGES, SHAPED TO FIT THE HAND.]

It is partly because these types, which are all included in the Type II. of Naue,[269] are commoner and more widely distributed that I have selected them for special study in preference to the more ornate forms, but also for another reason. It has hitherto been usual to classify swords mainly by the shapes of their blades or their sections; for reasons which will become apparent as I proceed, I am proposing a new classification, based upon the shape of the butt of the blade, the portion, that is to say, which immediately adjoins the handle-shaped tang.

Now if we examine a large number of swords of these types, we shall find that these butts vary in form, some being convex and others concave. In Plate VI. I have placed them in a series of seven, and it would, perhaps, be possible to sub-divide them more minutely, and to give several variants of most of the types. For reasons, which will, I think, be apparent to anyone consulting the Plate, and which I give more fully below, I believe Type A to be the earliest of the series; Type G, on the other hand, occurs in the famous cemetery at Hallstatt, in the Salzkammergut, and as iron swords and implements were found in most of the graves there, we may consider these bronze swords as belonging to the very last phase of the bronze age in Central Europe. As the butts of the blades show a gradual transition from the form usual in the daggers with riveted handles shown in Plate IV. to the Hallstatt type, we may, I think, feel satisfied that we have placed our series in strict chronological sequence.

A glance at Type A, especially as seen in full length in Plate VII., shows us at once that it is a transitional form, and that it has grown out of an ogival dagger, similar to those given on Plate V. The butt is of the same shape, being a flattened semicircle, with the horizontal radii considerably longer than the vertical. The upper part of the blade, too, is of the same form, and the parallel incised lines are survivals of the grooves already described. These show that the prototype was of ogival shape. In two points only does it differ from the ancestral form: the blade has been lengthened considerably, till its form is of rather an unnatural shape, while at the other end a tang, shaped to fit the hand, and with flanged edges, has been cast in one piece with the blade. Here we have a leaf-shaped sword, it is true, but with the greatest breadth relatively near to the butt, and the tang flanged and with rivet holes to enable the wooden or horn sides to be attached to form the hilt. The section is somewhat rhomboidal.