The cover image was created by the transcriber based on the original book cover and is placed in the public domain.

THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD

THE BRONZE AGE AND
THE CELTIC WORLD BY
HAROLD PEAKE, F.S.A.

LONDON: BENN BROTHERS, LIMITED
8 BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.4
1922

PRINTED AND MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HEADLEY BROTHERS,
18, DEVONSHIRE STREET, E.C.2; AND ASHFORD, KENT.

DEDICATION

To the anonymous benefactors whose liberality made possible the delivery of these lectures this work is gratefully dedicated.

PREFACE

THE substance of the following pages was delivered in February last in a series of six lectures at The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In volume form the matter has been somewhat re-arranged and the latter part expanded.

So many attempts have been made during the last century and a quarter to locate the Aryan cradle and to trace the wanderings of the Wiros, that it may be considered presumptuous for the author to venture on a further suggestion. He can only plead that most of the previous attempts have been made by philologists, usually with little or no archæological experience, while the discoveries of the last quarter of a century have placed the inquirer to-day in a position which is vastly superior to that of most of his predecessors. The evolution and distribution of the leaf-shaped swords seem to provide a crucial test by which to gauge the value of previous suggestions.

The author has felt that it would be for the convenience of the reader if he reduced the footnotes at the bottom of the page to the smallest possible dimensions, while describing each work quoted very fully in the bibliography at the end of the volume. In many cases, where the subject matter does not form the basis of his argument and the fact is not in dispute, he has thought that it would be more useful to quote a recent and readily accessible volume, preferably in English, in which authorities are fully cited, than to include all the original authorities in the notes and bibliography. This applies specially to Chapter II, and to some extent to those immediately following.

The author would like to take this opportunity of thanking his many friends, who have so kindly placed their knowledge and experience at his disposal, especially the Principal and other authorities of The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, for inviting him to deliver the lectures, and Professors H. J. Fleure and H. J. Rose. He wishes also to thank the Rev. Professor A. H. Sayce, Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie and Miss M. A. Murray, who have sent him valuable notes, Mr. E. Sharwood Smith for much help with classical references, Professor J. L. Myres and Dr. S. Singer for many helpful suggestions. Especially are his thanks due to Mr. J. H. Le Rougetil, for procuring drawings of swords from the Buda-Pest Museum, to Sir Arthur Evans, Dr. A. J. B. Wace and Mr. S. Casson for photographs and drawings from Crete and Athens, to Dr. W. Šmid and Dr. F. Neumann for sketches and notes on the specimens at Graz and Laibach, and above all to Dr. Adolf Mahr, of the Naturhistorisches Museum at Vienna, for drawings of the swords and other objects in his museum and for an immense amount of help in other ways. He wishes also to thank the authorities of various museums for permission to publish drawings of specimens in their collections, and the Trustees of the British Museum for allowing him to reproduce Plate III.

These are only some of the many kind friends who have given him assistance and who have helped him with suggestions and in verifying references. To all these he returns his grateful thanks. He wishes also to acknowledge the great help afforded to him by the officials of the London Library, the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Hellenic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society, and to take this opportunity of thanking them for their unvarying courtesy.

HAROLD PEAKE.

29th June, 1922.

CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS

LIST OF PLATES

(AT END OF VOLUME)

CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM

FOR the last fifteen hundred years the Celtic tongues have been spoken only in the extreme north-west of Europe, in parts of Ireland, the west of Scotland, and the Isle of Man, in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, and for some little time these languages have ceased to be spoken in Cornwall and the Isle of Man.

But we have ample evidence that these tongues had once a wider range, and were pushed westward in the first instance by the spread of Roman culture and the Latin language as the empire increased its bounds, and still more by the Teutonic tribes who invaded the western half of that empire and brought about its fall.

If however we examine the evidence which has come down to us from the first century before the Christian era, especially such material as has been furnished by Cæsar and Strabo, we shall find that languages of the Celtic type were spoken at that time throughout all Europe west of the Rhine and north of the Pyrenees and the southern slopes of the Alps. We shall note also that these tongues were spoken in many parts of Spain and in North Italy, though in both these areas they were of relatively late introduction.

Again there is another area in which Celtic speech was in use at that time, or had been shortly before. This is the mountain or Alpine zone of Central Europe, as far east, at least, as a line drawn from Cracow to Agram. It is possible, too, that such tongues may have been spoken at one time still further east.

The problem before us is to inquire first in what region the Celtic tongues originated, then how and when they spread to the areas in which we find them two thousand years ago. To do this we shall have to review the condition of these areas both from the standpoint of prehistoric archæology and physical anthropology, to see whether the evidence derived from these sciences, taken together with that drawn from comparative philology and the study of place-names, can help us to reach a solution.

But the problem is further complicated by the fact that the Celtic languages fall into two groups. In the one occurs the sound qu, which has in later days become a hard c, while in the other this sound has become labialised and converted into a p or b. It has been thought by some that the qu peoples, spoken of usually as Goidels or Gaels, arrived first from the common Celtic home, and that the p peoples, called Brythons or Cymri, came later from the same centre; this view is, however, strenuously denied by others. We have, therefore, to determine if we can, not only whence and when the Celtic languages arrived in the west, but whether they came in one, two or more waves.

FIG. 1.—CELTIC LANDS AND THE CELTIC CRADLE.

Lastly, we find that the Celtic tongues, as spoken to-day, contain elements of grammar and syntax, and not a few words too, which divide them off sharply from those groups of languages to which they are in other respects akin. Also it is believed by some that non-Celtic languages, such as Pictish, survived in this region until relatively late times, while it is well-known that a primitive non-Celtic tongue, the Basque, is still spoken in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees. It is important, therefore, if we are to have before us all the factors which enter into the problem, that we should inquire what people were here before the first Celts arrived, and that we should make ourselves to some extent familiar with all the different races and cultures which preceded the Celtic invaders.

If we pass across England and Wales from east to west, and the same is almost as true if we cross Scotland, we find, first of all that the population is mainly tall and fair, while as we proceed we come across elements which are darker and shorter, until in Wales and the West Highlands we find the majority of the people are small brunettes of slender build. This dark type is also to be met with in Ireland, especially in the west, the part of that island in which the Erse language has best survived.

It is because the Celtic tongues, whether qu or p, are spoken chiefly by people of this small brunette type, that it is frequently called the Celtic race, and yet all the evidence of ancient authorities goes to show that 2,000 or 2,500 years ago the Celts were looked upon as a tall, fair people.[1] Here is another difficulty which must be taken into consideration as we make our inquiries, for no solution can be considered sound which cannot, without straining the evidence, answer all these questions.

As we have seen the main areas which were Celtic-speaking in the time of Cæsar were the British Isles and Gaul, west of the Rhine; these I shall term Celtic lands, leaving out Spain and Cis-alpine Gaul as areas into which the Celtic invasion arrived at a relatively late date. Now, besides these Celtic lands Celtic tongues were spoken in the Alpine zone, and perhaps at one time still further east. It is from this area that the Celtic languages have been thought by some to have entered the lands of the west. They cannot have been introduced from Spain or Italy, into which they were late entrants, but it has been suggested by some writers that they arrived from the north-east, from the Baltic region. It is true that there is some slight evidence that Celtic place-names have existed in this area, but the balance of evidence, as I shall hope to show, seems to prove that Celtic people arrived there relatively late and not in large numbers, and that they were never the dominant people of that region. There remains only the Alpine zone and the lands to the east of it. This area, from the Jura to the Iron Gates, from the northern slopes of the Carpathians to the southern foot-hills of the Alps, I shall term the Celtic cradle, and I trust that the evidence which I shall produce will convince my readers that I am correct in so doing.

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF CELTIC LANDS

OF the earliest inhabitants of Celtic lands we know little or nothing. We have, it is true, a number of tools made of flaked flint, but they tell us little of the men who fashioned them. In spite of the recent admissions by the eminent French archæologists who have examined the new discoveries at Foxhall,[2] there is still no little difference of opinion as to the human workmanship[3] of rostro-carinates, eoliths and such like early attempts, and no human remains have come to light which can be attributed with any probability to this horizon.

When we come to what is usually termed the lower palæolithic period we are on surer ground, for no one now denies the origin of implements of the Chelles and St. Acheul types. But the only skeletal remains which can with certainty be attributed to this period are the human jaw from the Mauer sand-pit near Heidelberg,[4] and the famous Piltdown skull.[5] Few people now believe that the Galley Hill skeleton dates from so remote a time,[6] while the discoverer himself has disclaimed so early an origin for the Ipswich man.[7]

To attempt to reconstruct a human type from a mandible alone would be indeed to carry far the principle of ex pede Herculem, and as yet there is little agreement among anthropologists as to the exact date, or for that matter the exact reconstruction, of the Piltdown skull,[8] though the ingenious hypothesis that a unique human cranium without a jaw, was found in close association with a unique troglodyte mandible has now, I understand, definitely been abandoned.[9]

Thus little or nothing is known of the first inhabitants of Celtic lands, beyond their tools, but when we come to the middle palæolithic period the case is different. While some difference of opinion still exists, the view advanced by Obermaier[10] and others seems to be gaining ground, that in Celtic lands the industry of Le Moustier first appeared as the climate was becoming colder on the approach of the last or Würm glaciation, though it is thought by some that it had flourished in an earlier and warmer time in the regions lying to the east.[11] This industry is believed by most authorities to have survived the first Würm maximum and to have lasted through the temporary amelioration of the Laufen retreat. Whether it survived, too, the second maximum, and lasted until the climate definitely improved is more doubtful, but many archæologists of great repute believe that it did so,[12] and unless this was the case it will be difficult to explain certain features of the Audi flints.[13]

Though there is as yet no general agreement as to the duration of the Mousterian industry, it is different when we come to consider the type of man who was responsible for this work. Everyone is agreed that the authors of this culture were of the type known as Neanderthal man, for several skeletons of this type, or parts of them, have been found associated with flint implements of Le Moustier design, and none have as yet turned up under conditions which make this correlation impossible.[14]

A considerable number of skulls and skeletons, about two dozen in all, of Neanderthal man have been found, the great majority in Celtic lands; but, though there is a general resemblance between all the members of the series, sufficiently strong to mark them off from the Piltdown skull on the one hand and from modern men on the other, the type is in many respects very variable. There are vast differences observable between the skull from Chapelle-aux-Saints,[15] the highest form yet discovered, and that of the Gibraltar man,[16] or rather woman, which is the most primitive yet found in Europe. As far as one can judge from the descriptions which have appeared as I write, the skull recently found at Broken Hill in Rhodesia differs from that of Gibraltar hardly if at all more than the Gibraltar skull differs from that found at Chapelle-aux-Saints. In the latter case there are several intermediate forms, in the former such may yet turn up, for Africa has, as yet, produced but one other skull of this type, that found not long ago near Constantine in Algeria, no description of which has, I believe, yet been published.

Skulls of this type have been so frequently described,[17] individually and collectively, that it is unnecessary to give another detailed account. It will be sufficient to say that they are large and massive, the vault is low, and they are specially distinguished by having over the eye sockets a heavy and continuous projecting ridge, known as a torus, which is one of the distinguishing features of the large anthropoid apes. Another point of importance is that the head was so attached to the body that it could not have been held absolutely erect, and must have produced a slouching gait, though the degree of this slope varied considerably in different specimens, and in the case of the Rhodesian skull was quite halfway between the slope of the Gibraltar skull and that of the gorilla.[18]

But it is unnecessary for our purpose to pursue this question further, for with the arrival of modern man, after the last glaciation was past, Neanderthal man disappeared. That the two races met, though not necessarily in this continent, seems clear from the fact that at Audi, near Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, we find a culture, which in some respects resembles that of Le Moustier, and in others the succeeding culture of Aurignac.[19] That these two races interbred is unlikely, for Neanderthal man must have appeared an unsightly beast to his modern successor. In any case, if mating did take place, the union must have been sterile, for, in spite of much that has been written to the contrary,[20], there is no clear evidence of the survival of any distinctive Neanderthal traits in the men of later days.[21]

The second maximum of the Würm glaciation seems to have culminated about 15,000 B.C.,[22] and about that time, or conceivably earlier, modern man first arrived in North Africa, if we may judge by the appearance of a fresh type of flint industry, known usually as Capsian.[23] Whence he came is uncertain. It has been suggested that he may have reached the north from tropical Africa,[24] but no evidence has been adduced in support of this hypothesis. It seems more likely that he came from Asia, probably by means of the Sinaitic peninsula, or possibly across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. This much is certain; about this time the Capsian culture is found extending along the north of the continent, from Egypt as far west at any rate as Algeria, and perhaps beyond, though at no point but one is it found far from the Mediterranean coast.[25] The one exception is in Egypt, where implements of this type have been found as far south as Luxor,[26] so that we may be satisfied that modern man in his earliest movements passed up the Nile valley at least as far as the First Cataract. It would seem probable that in Egypt the invaders came into touch with their Neanderthal predecessors, who retreated before them up the Nile valley towards Luxor, where Dr. Seligman has found implements of Le Moustier type more developed than any discovered elsewhere[27]; it is possible that some retreated further south and may even have reached Rhodesia.

Other of these Neanderthal refugees seem to have gone westward, and perhaps passed up the Italian land-bridge to western Europe; if so it was probably these, who had come into contact with the Capsian culture of North Africa, who were responsible for the Audi industry. They were followed before long by the invaders, and in Celtic lands at least were soon exterminated, though it is just possible that they survived to a later date further east.[28]

The culture of the newcomers is known as that of Aurignac, and seems to have started in Europe about 12,500 B.C. A great many skeletons of this period have been discovered and described, and though all of these show us men very like those of the present day, there is a considerable range of variation among them.[29] The skulls of the upper palæolithic periods, apart from the Chancelade skull[30] to be discussed later, may be divided into three marked groups, though it is well to remember that there is no strict uniformity among all the members of each group. All the skulls of this period, however, are long, for the broad-headed type, so prevalent in Central Europe to-day, did not arrive until the closing phase.

Of the first of these three groups we have only two examples, the mother and son from the Grotte des Enfants, near Mentone.[31] But as these are the earliest in date, and differ in some respects very markedly from the remainder, they have been distinguished by the name of the Grimaldi race, after the owner of the cave, the Prince of Monaco.

This type was small, being less than 5 ft. 3 in. in height, the skulls were of the long variety, having length-breadth indices of 68.5 and 69.2, and the jaws and teeth project, so that they exhibit a character known as prognathism. This latter character has caused the race to be termed negroid, and unjustifiable deductions have been drawn from this term. It has been shown, however, that there is no reason for supposing any affinity between this type and the negro race of tropical Africa.[32] Both of these skeletons were found in a contracted position, and that of the boy was covered with red ochre.[33]

Our second group is the Cromagnon, and is based largely on the skeletons found in the cave of Cromagnon, near Les Eyzies. By many anthropologists this term is used to cover all the skeletons from this period except those of the Grimaldi type, but more recently it has been shown that all these remains cannot conveniently be placed in one group, for the distinguishing characters are but faintly visible in some and totally absent from a large number.[34] The term is now becoming used in a more restricted sense.

The Cromagnon type is tall. The men were often 5 ft. 10 in. or 5 ft. 11 in. high, though the women were frequently much shorter. Their heads were large, larger than the average in Europe to-day, but not very high; they were long as compared with their breadth, having a cranial index of about 74; their noses were narrow, but their faces were short and relatively broad. This combination of a long head and a short face is unusual, and is called disharmonic, and this disharmony is one of the most striking characteristics of Cromagnon man.[35]

It is often thought that this disharmonic trait, the long head and the short face, is evidence of the mixed ancestry of the race which exhibits it,[36] and if this were the case we might expect Cromagnon man to be the result of a crossing of two other races. There is no other evidence to indicate that this was the case, and if such crossing had occurred, it seems likely that it took place before the Cromagnon type reached Europe.

It seems probable that it is to the men of the Cromagnon type that we must attribute the beginnings of that art, which reached its finest development in a later age, and has provided the most conspicuous as well as the most pleasing feature of the upper palæolithic culture.[37]

Lastly we have the type represented by Brünn I., Brüx, Lautsch, Combe Capelle, Barma Grande (one of the skulls from B.G. now in the Musée de Menton, but not the skulls generally known as B.G. 1 and 2), the woman from the upper layer in the Grotte des Enfants, the Calotte du gravier de fond at Grenelle, the Denise fragments, as well as by one or two skulls of the transition period from palæolithic to neolithic found at Ofnet (No. 21, i.) and a few of those belonging to the same period found at Mugem. The type is usually high-headed as well as narrow-headed, and tends to have the orbits horizontally lengthened, the glabella and supraciliaries strong, the fore-head retreating, the nose broad and the upper jaw projecting (alveolar prognathism). The cephalic index is usually between 68 and 72; the stature is moderate or low.[38]

Thus we find during the period of Aurignac three groups of long-headed men, the Grimaldi, Cromagnon and Combe Capelle, and, especially on the Riviera, in the Barma Grande cave and the Grotte des Enfants, skulls which show various apparent combinations of these types, while at Solutré and Laugerie Basse we find the last type showing modifications to some extent towards the characteristics of modern men. These types and intermixed types occupied west and central Europe, so far as it was habitable during the later palæolithic periods, and the combinations of Combe Capelle and Cromagnon characters in the skulls of Obercassel (Magdalenian period) is noteworthy. The earliest in point of time is the Grimaldi, which has been found only near Mentone, and there are reasons for believing that its distribution lay around the western Mediterranean, then an inland sea. This view is supported by the fact that marked alveolar prognathism has been noted among the natives of Algeria and Morocco, and I am told that it is not uncommonly met with in Spain; it is also very marked in Portugal, though here it has been attributed to a different cause. It is, however, of old standing in that country, as it has been noted among the skulls from Mugem,[39] which are believed to date from the close of the palæolithic age. A similar feature has been noted in some of the skulls from the Algerian dolmens.[40]

To the Cromagnon type, pure, it is difficult to ascribe any other skulls besides those from Cromagnon, and those from Lafaye Bruniquel, but some of the Cromagnon characters are well shown in some Barma Grande skulls. The type is said to survive in the Dordogne and perhaps near the western Pyrenees in North Spain at the present day.[41] The Combe Capelle or Brünn type, is seen to have occurred on the whole more to the north and east, and seems rather to focus in Central Europe and the southern part of the North German plain. It was probably the latest to arrive on the scene, for it is associated only with remains of late Aurignac type, and has been more frequently found in the succeeding Solutré period.

Thus we see that by the close of the period of Aurignac, about 11,000 B.C., we have three groups of long-headed men in Celtic lands, and that, though they overlap, they are tending to obtain for themselves definite areas of distribution.

During the closing years of the Aurignacian period the climate had been getting milder and perhaps drier, and steppe conditions prevailed over much of France and still more further east. Herds of horses arrived and were hunted for food and the saiga, a kind of antelope, was found as far south as the Dordogne, if not beyond, during the succeeding Solutrean period. These Steppe conditions are more characteristic of the latter period,[42] when France was invaded by a new people, not given, as far as we know, to artistic efforts, but who were able to fashion very skilfully made weapons of flint to aid them in chasing the beasts of the steppe.[43] The fact that skulls of our third group the Combe Capelle, are more common during this period and have only been found during the later phases of the previous age, when, as we have seen, steppe conditions were already approaching, leads us to suspect that it is to this type of man that we must attribute the invasion of Celtic lands which took place at this time. The Cromagnon men seem to have retreated to the south-west and to have taken refuge in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees,[44] while the invading hunters dominated the southern part, at least, of the Celtic lands.

But towards 9,500 B.C. the climate began again to deteriorate, and the steppe conditions passed gradually to those of tundra. The steppe animals retreated to the east, towards South Russia and Turkestan, and most of the men of Solutré, who hunted them for food, seem to have followed in their wake. It seems doubtful whether the Solutrean invasion reached Britain, though implements of this type are said to have been found here,[45] and Proto-Solutrean stations are reported as occurring in England.[46] It has been claimed recently that this type reached the south of Sweden,[47] but this view is not generally accepted in that country.[48]

On the departure of the Solutrean invaders the remnant of the aborigines, who had fled to the mountains in the south-west, and there developed their art to a much greater pitch of perfection, now returned to France, and once again, as the men of La Madeleine, became the dominant race in Celtic lands. It seems possible that some of their comrades had fled north to Britain on the arrival of the men of Solutré, and had survived there throughout this period, for, though no industry has been found in the British Isles which can accurately be described as that of La Madeleine,[49] in the strict French meaning of that term, we do find traces of the culture of Aurignac, persisting perhaps until still later times.

It must not be thought, however, that the Combe Capelle race never reached these isles. Whether the culture of Solutré did so or not seems uncertain, but some of the skeletons which have been found here have been classed with the Combe Capelle group.[50] But, as we have seen, this race was present in France, at any rate in some parts of that country, for some little time before the arrival of the men with the culture of Solutré.

The colder climate of the Magdalenian period has been shown to coincide with the Bühl advance of the Alpine glaciers,[51] which reached its maximum about 7,500 to 7,000 B.C. After that the climate slowly improved, though the precipitation increased, and forests sprang up on the hitherto open lands. As the tundra conditions in Celtic lands gave way to forest, the reindeer migrated to the north and north-east, while their place was taken by the red deer. As the forests developed it became increasingly difficult for men to traverse great distances or to intermingle as freely as they had done before. There was a tendency for separate groups to develop in different regions; so that, when we arrive at the next period, the Azilian, we find very different types of people in various parts of Europe.

Even before the close of the Magdalenian period a fresh type had arrived, apparently from the north, if we may judge from the skeleton found at Chancelade in the Dordogne. This skeleton bears a close resemblance to those of the modern Eskimos,[52] and since the latter have retained a type of art reminiscent of certain phases of Magdalenian culture,[53] we may suspect that Chancelade men, following the departing reindeer, passed north-eastward to the tundra of Siberia.

It was between 7,000 and 6,500 B.C. that a fresh wave of Capsian people from North Africa began to invade Spain,[54] into which peninsula they introduced what is known as East Spanish Art.[55] By degrees they pressed the Magdalenian Cromagnons to the Pyrenees, where their culture declined to that which we know as Azilian.[56] The invaders passed on through Celtic lands, bringing with them a new culture, known as Tardenoisian,[57] and seem to have reached the British Isles before 5000 B.C.

These people seem to have been another variety of the same long-headed race, which had developed into a distinct type in North Africa, and had there, perhaps, mingled to a greater or lesser degree with the descendants of the Grimaldi men, whom we met with at the beginning of the period of Aurignac. If we may judge by those who seem to be their descendants, they were of rather short, slight build, with long narrow heads, brown skin, dark hair and eyes, the type which to-day is known as the Mediterranean race.[58] It is possible that the Grimaldi elements in their composition, and which are sometimes found comparatively pure, may account for that small dark type, often showing marked alveolar prognathism, which has been found in certain out of the way regions, such as Apulia and Sardinia, and which are known to some anthropologists as Iapygian,[59] and have been termed Ethiopic by Ruggeri.[60]

This new population seems to have been peaceably inclined and made no attempt to exterminate its predecessors, but settled down in the lower lands and by the sea shore, while the Cromagnon men remained in the mountain zones of the Pyrenees and the Dordogne, and the Combe Capelle type survived in Central Europe and among the hills of Wales. It seems almost certain that the newcomers were still hunters, quite ignorant of agriculture and the domestication of animals; as some of their settlements have been found by the sea shore and on the banks of streams, it seems likely that they lived to a considerable extent on fish and molluscs.

It would appear, then, that the type which we know as the Mediterranean race, and which has given to Wales, Scotland and Ireland the majority of their small brunette inhabitants, is made up of the descendants of all the types of long-headed men—except the Chancelade variety—which we meet with in the Celtic lands of western Europe during the upper palæolithic period. That the Combe Capelle type survives on the moorlands of Plynlimmon has been shown by Fleure: examples of an africanoid type with alveolar prognathism are not uncommon in Wales and in the poorer quarters of our big cities, and the Cromagnon type only seems to be missing or at any rate relatively scarce. The main element, however, which has gone to make up the Mediterranean race as we now know it, seems to be that which entered Europe through Spain, with Capsian culture, during the closing years of the Magdalenian period.

These people have left in the west, not only considerable vestiges of their blood, but no small amount of their language, or to state the matter more accurately the language of these people has left a marked effect upon the tongues which succeeded it in the west. More than twenty years ago Mr., now Sir John Morris Jones[61] pointed out that “the syntax of Welsh and Irish differs in some important respects from that of the languages belonging to the other branches of the Aryan family,” and suggested that these points, in which too the neo-celtic tongues differed from ancient Gaulish, were due to the influence of a language which had been spoken in these lands before the introduction of the Celtic tongue. He pointed out that many of these peculiarities, which occur also sometimes when the English tongue is spoken by Irishmen, were similar to the syntactical arrangements in force in the language of ancient Egypt and among the Berber dialects spoken by the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles, Shawiya and Tuaregs.

Now the Egyptians and other peoples of North Africa are considered by all anthropologists as typical members of the Mediterranean race, though the inhabitants of the western part seem, as we have seen, to have incorporated no small amount of Grimaldi blood; it would seem then that we may accept the suggestion of Sir John Morris Jones that the syntax of Welsh and Irish is a legacy from the language spoken by these Mediterranean invaders, who reached Spain about 7000 B.C. and formed the bulk of the population of the British Isles about 5000 B.C.

So far we have been dealing with the early inhabitants of the Celtic lands of the west, but a word must be said of some fresh arrivals into the Celtic cradle in Central Europe. It was during the Azilian period, about 6000 B.C., that a new race appeared in Central Europe, coming from the east. Of their earlier abode we know nothing positively, but there are reasons for inferring that their line of approach was by the Kopet Dagh and the Armenian highlands, and that they came ultimately from the slopes of the Hindu Kush and the western side of the Himalayan massif. This race, which is called the race of Ofnet, from the skulls found in the caves of Ofnet, in Bavaria, had a broad head, the outline of which as viewed from above consisted of two segments of circles, the one forming the back of the head, the other the front. The brow-ridges are slight, the nose short and straight, the eye-sockets low and almost rectangular, the cheek-bones not very prominent and the chin weak and undeveloped.[62] This race seems to have met and mated with the remnants of the Combe Capelle race in the Upper Danube basin, and the progeny of this union seems to have been a type with a pear-shaped head as seen from above, with a rounded back, indistinguishable from the type found later in the Swiss lake-dwellings and in the mountains of Central Europe at the present day, and which is known as the Alpine race.[63]

The Ofnet race seems to have spread westward into the Celtic lands, either at this time or perhaps later, though probably in small numbers, for a skull found at Grenelle, near Paris, under what are believed to be neolithic surroundings, belongs to this type.[64] Other broad-headed skulls of this or the Alpine type, dating from about 5000 B.C., or a little earlier, have been found at Mugem on the banks of the Tagus,[65] while others of this type of about the same date have been found in the caves of Furfooz in Belgium.[66]

Whether any of this broad-headed Asiatic strain reached the British Isles at so early a date is uncertain. No skulls of this type and date have been discovered, but broad-headed types occur sporadically in Wales, Ireland and the western islands of Scotland, which may conceivably represent descendants of early Ofnet or Alpine immigrants.

Somewhat later, before 4000 B.C., fresh waves of broad-headed immigrants seem to have arrived in Central Europe from the Armenian highlands or the Anatolian plateau, bringing with them the knowledge of grain, cultivated fruits and domestic animals, and the custom of erecting pile-dwellings in marshes or lakes, and of grinding and polishing axes of flint or other hard stone.[67] Such knowledge seems to have reached even the west of Switzerland by 4000 B.C. and to have spread later throughout the massif central of France, which was already peopled by men of the Alpine type.

But the art of polishing hard stone spread further than the people who were responsible for its introduction, and during the next few centuries this art had become well known throughout the Celtic lands of the west; the need for more efficient tools to fight the encroaching woodland must have encouraged this art. How far the elements of agriculture had travelled with the art of grinding axes seems uncertain, for few, if any, unquestionable neolithic dwelling sites of this time within this area have been found or thoroughly explored. The scanty evidence at our disposal seems to show, however, that the people of the west were possessed of some domesticated animals, so that the inhabitants of Celtic lands had passed from a purely hunting stage before 3,000 B.C.

There is one other culture, introduced into Europe perhaps by another race, which I must not omit to mention, as it may have provided another element, albeit a small one, in the early population of Celtic lands. At Mullerup, in the peat moss of Maglemose, in the west of the island of Zealand, there was found in 1900 an important dwelling site with a very distinct culture, including harpoons and other implements of horn and bone, which is known to Scandinavian archæologists as the Mullerup, but to English-speaking students as the Maglemose culture.[68] More recently, in 1917, another settlement, exhibiting what appears to be the same culture, was discovered at Sværdborg, in the south of the same island.[69]

No skulls or skeletons have been found associated with this culture, and there has been much speculation as to the race which was responsible for it. Owing to the presence of harpoons it was first assumed that this culture was a direct derivation from the Azilian and Magdalenian, though it has been pointed out that the Maglemose harpoons are very different in form from the Azilian, and resemble more nearly some found in eastern Russia.[70] Still the majority of authorities treat this culture as of Azilian origin. Others, relying largely on the resemblances of certain elements of culture to those found at some very late Aurignacian sites in South Poland, believe the people and the culture to have arrived from that region.[71] Recently I have suggested another explanation.[72] Noticing the resemblance between the Magiemose culture and a slightly later civilisation known as East Scandinavian or Arctic, which has been found at several sites associated with skulls of Mongoloid type, I have suggested that in the Maglemose people we may perhaps see the first arrival in Europe of that Mongoloid race, which now peoples a large part of the north-east of the continent. My suggestion has not been well received in Scandinavian circles, and M. Nordmann has submitted it to very searching though courteous criticism.[73] While duly appreciating the value of all the evidence he has cited, I am still of opinion that my view, though far from proved, meets the existing evidence as well as, if not better than, its rivals.

The importance of the Maglemose problem for our purpose lies in the fact that certain sites in the British Isles have produced an industry which has been claimed, and perhaps rightly, to be akin to that of Mullerup and Sværdborg. Certain discoveries in the caves at Oban and on a raised beach on the island of Oronsay, are claimed to be of this or of Azilian culture,[74] while other finds at Holderness are said to resemble more closely still the Maglemose culture.[75] More recently still Mr. O. G. S. Crawford has suggested that certain implements, which he and I discovered last year at an early occupation site on the Newbury Sewage outfall works at Thatcham, Berks., bear close resemblances to some found at Sværdborg.[76]

It is too soon yet to appraise the value of these resemblances. Some of these sites, notably those at Oronsay and Thatcham, appear on some grounds to be somewhat later than the settlements at Mullerup and Sværdborg. This does not, of course, disprove their cultural connection. It is unwise, at present, to draw any positive conclusions from such evidence, but we may note that it is possible that during late Azilian times, or perhaps later still, fresh elements entered the British Isles from the Baltic region, and that it is at least possible that these elements may have been of the Mongoloid race.

People showing slight Mongoloid traits may be found sporadically throughout Wales, though, as far as I can ascertain, this type has not been noted as prevalent in any particular areas; how far it may be noted in the west of Scotland or in Ireland I am uncertain. But we cannot be sure that the introduction of this Mongoloid strain dates from so early a time, as it is quite possible that the type may have been introduced much later by the Vikings, who may perhaps sometimes have carried Finns with them in their forays.

Though after the close of Azilian times the culture of Celtic lands changed more than once and in more respects than one, we have at present no reason for suspecting the introduction of fresh racial elements before the beginning of the Bronze Age. The origin of Campignian culture, which seems to have flourished over the northern part of Celtic lands, in one form or another, from about 5000 to 3500 B.C., is still a matter of dispute, but it is doubtful whether the solution of the problem is likely to introduce a fresh element into the population of the Celtic lands.

The vast mass of the population of this area about 3000 B.C. were the descendants of the long-headed populations of Europe and North Africa in the upper palæolithic period. In some parts of the south the Cromagnon type may have persisted, in a pure or mixed form, as did the Combe Capelle type further north, while a modified form of the Grimaldi type was found from Portugal to Wales, especially in fishing villages. The prevailing type seems to have been that which came latest from Africa, and which most truly deserves the name of the Mediterranean race, though it may be well to realise that this term, as commonly used, seems to include all the varieties before mentioned, as well as a modified mixture of all these long-headed types.

In Central France, and to a less extent elsewhere, the Alpine type had penetrated, though it is doubtful whether it had, as yet, reached the British Isles. And we must realise that it is just possible that some Mongoloid peoples, from the Baltic and ultimately from Siberia, may have made a few settlements in this country, though their numbers are not likely to have been great.[77]

Such then, as far as our evidence extends at present, seems to have been the population of Celtic lands in the true neolithic age, when people lived in small, self-contained communities, and outside commodities were rarely met with, and then only bartered from tribe to tribe. As we shall see, the next thousand years or so were to introduce fresh elements.

CHAPTER III
EARLY TRADE WITH CELTIC LANDS

UNTIL the close of the stone age the movements of people had been by means of gradual drifting. During the palæolithic age, when the population supported itself by hunting, the people wandered over considerable areas in search of game, and the inhabitants of different regions frequently met and mingled with one another. As the forest conditions arose during the close of the Magdalenian period these wanderings were restricted in scope, and with the gradual introduction of domesticated animals and the practice of agriculture during the neolithic age, more settled communities arose. Thus the different types mixed less with one another, and the communities became more specialised, both in type and culture, as their wanderings diminished.

A new method of intermixture was, however, soon to arise, as the practice of commerce developed. It is possible that even during the palæolithic age, tribes who lived in a region where flint or other suitable material was abundant, or who had become skilled in the fashioning of some advanced type of implement, sometimes bartered their spare products for other commodities. Such operations, if they did exist, must have been very limited in extent, and confined to bartering between neighbouring tribes.

During the neolithic age this simple principle of exchange continued, though it was probably more frequent, since communities had a narrower range, and some must have been living in regions where suitable raw material was scarce or non-existent. Some well favoured regions also had begun to develop regular commerce. The inhabitants of the island of Santorin, the ancient Melos, had before metal was known organised an export trade in obsidian goods, for they held a monopoly of that excellent volcanic glass in the Ægean region[78]. It seems likely, too, that the people of the Lipari islands traded in the same material with south Italy, Sicily and Malta.[79] Some of the natives of the French department of Indre-et-Loire, finding themselves possessed of great quantities of beautiful honey-coloured flint in the neighbourhood of Le Grand-Pressigny, exported implements, both finished and in the rough, to many distant places in France,[80] and the same is probably true of the dwellers on Pen-maen-mawr, if we may judge from the extensive remains of their industry recently discovered at Graig Llwyd.[81] The industry of Le Grand-Pressigny seems, however, like the obsidian trade in the Mediterranean, to belong to the closing phases of the neolithic age, while the Graig Llwyd factory may well date from the bronze age.

So long as these products of local industry were distributed by land, as in the case of Le Grand-Pressigny and Graig Llwyd, the old method of barter from tribe to tribe was possible and doubtless still continued. But when an island, such as Santorin, was the scene of production, such methods were ineffectual, and a definite organisation for export became necessary. To carry goods from one island to a neighbouring isle or to the mainland requires a ship and a crew, besides some representatives of the makers to effect the sales. When the ship has been equipped it is economical to provide a full cargo, and this would be more than one small community would need or could afford to purchase. This leads to trading voyages of some days’ or weeks’ duration, when the ship can call at a number of ports to meet the needs of many communities. The inland inhabitants have also to be catered for, and the most serviceable ports became in their turn fresh centres of distribution, and need a depôt under the supervision of a representative of the makers.

Thus, even before the close of the stone age, we see developing, especially in the Mediterranean region, the beginnings of an organised commerce, involving visits paid by ships and their crews to distant ports and foreign communities, and sometimes leading to the establishment of small foreign trading settlements. With the introduction of metal these features increased rapidly, and, as we shall see, before the bronze age had been in existence for many centuries, an extensive trade had grown up, mainly by sea, but sometimes by land as well, so that bronze became known and used over most parts of Europe which were not too remote from the sea to be affected by sea-borne commerce. Thus a considerable mingling of peoples and cultures took place, not by the sudden arrival of large numbers of invading hordes, but by the constant infiltration of small bodies of merchants and seamen.

The origin of the discovery of metal is still unknown, though many ingenious suggestions have been made. All investigators are agreed that gold, being the most strikingly conspicuous metal, was the first to be noticed and used, though there are those who believe that copper was almost if not quite as early a discovery. Professor Elliot Smith has made interesting suggestions in both cases. He believes that somewhere on the African shore of the Red Sea a cult arose which involved the use of the cowry shell as an amulet for fertility; such cults are well-known and widely spread.[82] For some reason the shells did not ultimately satisfy the people, or the supply diminished, and they made models in gold, deposits of which were found in that locality. Thus the virtue of the amulet, residing originally in its form, became transferred to the material, and gold became and has since remained a lucky and fortunate possession.[83]

Copper, on the other hand, he believes to have been discovered in Egypt. The inhabitants of this country had, in neolithic days, been in the habit of mining malachite in the Sinaitic peninsula, and grinding this mineral on slate palates into a powder, which they applied to their eyes. Green powder thus applied is said to save the wearer from the ill-effects of glaring sunlight, and perhaps served also to keep away the flies, which are a constant source of ophthalmia. Professor Elliot Smith suggests that an Egyptian grinding his lump of malachite on his decorated slate palate, one day met with an unusually hard lump, which he could not grind satisfactorily. In a fit of temper he threw the offending morsel into the fire, doubtless with words of objurgation; later on in the ashes he found a small red bead of copper. A repetition of this action, no doubt with the same formula, produced an identical result, and so the discovery of the reduction of copper from its ore was made.[84] I must admit that at one time I doubted the possibility of this explanation, as I questioned whether the heat of a fire of dung, now and probably then also, the only available fuel, would be sufficient to reduce the ore. To satisfy me on this point, Mr. R. H. Rastall of Cambridge kindly made a laboratory experiment upon a piece of malachite, and as a result assured me that the heat of a dung fire would be ample for the purpose.

While admitting that Professor Elliot Smith’s theories are both possible and suggestive, I feel inclined to offer another, albeit more prosaic solution to these problems. Primitive men, whether in prehistoric times or among backward peoples to-day, and, dare I say it, this is perhaps more true of primitive women, have a habit, not, I believe, quite extinct even in more advanced circles, of collecting small objects with natural perforations, or through which holes could readily be drilled, and stringing them upon a thread or wire to make necklaces or bracelets for the adornment of their persons. Such customs carry us back a long way. The old Grimaldi woman from the Grotte des enfants wore two bracelets composed of perforated shells, while her son, if indeed he were her son, had worn on his head a chaplet of the same materials.[85] The Alpine inhabitants of the North Italian lake-dwellings used the vertebræ of pike for the same purpose.[86] Whether the use of strings of beads originated in some religious practice I know not, for it may be that such religious associations, though found to-day among Buddhists, Moslems and Christians, may be relatively modern. That in later days it proved a safe and convenient way of storing accumulated wealth seems more certain, and for this purpose the custom is still practised. Perhaps after all the Preacher was right and this, like everything else, was vanity.

Leaving the cause unsolved, we may be content to note that the practice dates from the first arrival of modern man in Europe, and may be much older. But shells and the vertebræ of fish are easily damaged, and store would have been set by perforated stones, which would have been much more durable. Pebbles of clear quartz, with natural perforations, were worn sometimes by our Saxon forefathers,[87] but such stones are scarce and would have been prized accordingly.

I picture to myself the first discoverer of gold as a young man wishing to obtain the favour of a maid, or perhaps to purchase her from her father. I imagine such a youth going in search of some object, rare and durable and capable of being strung on a necklace. Walking down to a clear stream, perhaps to wash, though more probably to drink or to fish, he noticed in its bed a brilliant yellow stone of quite exceptional beauty. Picking it up and examining it he found he could bend it where it was thin, so that with the aid of a stone he was able to fashion it into the much sought-for bead. Here he had something which was perforated, strong, rare and also beautiful. We can imagine that his success would have been assured. Then would have followed the first gold rush.

Now copper, too, is found in a native state, and is also malleable and easily modelled with a stone hammer; it, too, is capable of exhibiting a bright metallic lustre when clean. Though it could not compare with gold for beauty, or in the permanence of its natural lustre, it could well take second place, and being less rare it soon came to be used freely for decorative purposes. At first it was obtained only in a native state, and was hammered, not melted, as was the case until recent times around Lake Superior.[88] Later some copper ornaments probably fell into the fire, and it was thus discovered that it could be melted. Later still experiments were made with other metallic-looking ores, such as chalcopyrite, and the metal age had come.

Where these discoveries were made is still a matter of uncertainty. Copper objects have been found not uncommonly in tombs of the second predynastic period in Egypt, and sometimes in those of the first.[89] So rare, however, are they in the latter, that, since the two cultures must to some extent have overlapped, it seems possible that the knowledge of this metal was introduced into Egypt by the second pre-dynastic people. It has been suggested recently that these people, with a copper culture, bringing the knowledge of wheat and the cult of Osiris, came from North Syria, from somewhere between Damascus and Beyrut,[90] and if Breasted’s views upon the Egyptian calender are sound, we may expect that they entered the Delta 4241 B.C. or thereabouts.[91]

In Mesopotamia we are not very sure of our dates at so early a period, nor have we got any clear evidence of the earliest copper civilisation of that region, but the beautiful copper lions brought back from Tell-el-’Obeid, near Ur, by Dr. H. R. Hall[92], show that at the time when they were made the art of working copper must long have been known, and Dr. Hall tells me that their date may be placed with fair certainty between 3500 and 3000 B.C. Small foundation figures, cast solid in copper, have been found which date from the time of Ur-Ninâ, about 3000 B.C.[93], while Mr. Raphael Pumpelly, describing his excavations at Anau in Turkestan, states that he found copper implements in a deposit, which on other grounds he dates between 8000 and 7000 B.C.[94] While there is no doubt that copper was found in the lowest layer of the Anau village site, there are few people who agree with the early date claimed for it by Mr. Pumpelly. Taking all the available evidence into consideration, it seems likely that copper was known and used in western Asia as early as 4500 B.C. and might conceivably have been known as early as 5000 B.C.; that it was known before that seems unlikely as far as we can judge from the evidence available at present.

Gold, as we have seen, seems to have been the first metal to be discovered, though we have no sufficient reason for believing that its discovery preceded that of copper by any considerable period. Objects of gold have been found in graves of the second pre-dynastic period in Egypt, as well as some of silver and of lead,[95] so that before 3500 B.C. the metal age had passed its infancy.

It will be seen from what has gone before, that the discovery of metal must have taken place somewhere in western Asia; in Asia Minor, Armenia or Persia. The knowledge spread first of all from tribe to tribe and from city to city, and the objects were traded like the stone axes of Le Grand-Pressigny and Graig Llwyd; but about 4241 B.C. this knowledge was carried into Egypt with an invading people. So far, then, there is no evidence of organised trade, for the gold, silver and lead, which have been found in the pre-dynastic tombs, may have arrived in the same way. Gold, it is true, was found in quartz veins in the granite mountains by the shores of the Red Sea, and in the Wadi Foakhir,[96] but it is not clear that these sources were tapped before the fourth or fifth dynasties; in later days the principal source of supply was Nubia which had, however, been inaccessible to traders until Mernere had made the first cataract passable for navigation about 2570 B.C.[97] Silver was always imported from abroad, probably from Cilicia.[98]

There are reasons for believing that some, at any rate, of the gold used during the period of the Old Kingdom was of foreign origin. Professor Flinders Petrie tells me that Dr. Gladstone made for him an analysis of the gold object found in the tomb of King Khasakhemui, of the second dynasty, who reigned, according to the chronology we are using, about 3200 B.C. He found on this gold object a red crust, which he stated was antimoniate of gold. Now it appears that antimony will only combine with gold in the presence of tellurium, and Professor Petrie tells me that he has been advised that there is no known source of this ore, telluride of gold and antimony, except in Transylvania. I have been informed that all the gold found within the Carpathian ring is of this nature, but as the richest sources lie in Transylvania, where gold was worked by the Romans, the conclusion is the same, that before 3200 B.C. the Egyptians were obtaining gold from Central Europe.

As it seems unlikely that gold would be carried between such distant points as the valleys of the Danube and the Nile by the old method of bartering from tribe to tribe, especially since there are so many physical obstacles on the route, including the Taurus range, it seems more likely that we should see here evidence for an organised sea commerce. Not that I would imply a direct sea traffic from the Danube to the Nile, but that some intermediate people, probably some islanders in the Ægean, the people perhaps of Melos or Crete, traded on the one hand with settlements near the mouth of the Danube and with those in the Delta as well. The obsidian trade of Melos may well be as early as this, in fact it seems to have been on the decline by 3000 B.C., and we find Cretan trade flourishing only a few centuries later. Either or both of these islands might well have been responsible for this traffic.

Oversea trade, then, was in existence, if not very highly developed, during the early days of metal, the centuries preceding 3000 B.C. The knowledge of copper, and the possibility of making copper nails and wire, must have given a great impetus to ship building, which must at this stage have passed from the use of rafts and dug-outs to that of boats built as we know them now. But a new discovery, greater even in some respects than those which I have been describing, was still further to encourage oversea traffic.

The manufacture of implements of flint and obsidian had reached a high pitch of perfection during the early days of metal, and although the new materials were valuable for ornaments, copper knives were, in many respects, less serviceable than stone ones, as the metal is soft and its edge easily turned. It is true that many men, particularly those who wished to display their wealth, preferred copper daggers to those made of flint, for they were more ornate, more novel and had a scarcity value. Those, however, who were poor, or untouched by the fashionable snobbery, preferred the well-tried flint article, which was probably more effective for its purpose.

But with the discovery that the addition of about ten per cent. of tin to the copper produced an alloy of considerable hardness and no little toughness as well, from which could be made implements which seldom chipped or turned, and which could have their edges quickly renewed by hammering or grinding did such an accident happen, the days of copper came quickly to an end, and the traffic in flint implements, even in obsidian, fell upon evil days. It was this discovery, which made metal not merely a luxury, but a really serviceable article to man, which brought the stone age to an end and ushered in the true metal age.

How, when and where this discovery was made is still a mystery. At one time I was disposed to think that it was perhaps in Spain, where both these metals are found, that the discovery was accidentally made, but evidence which has come to hand quite recently has disposed of this idea. Professor Sayce has recently published an extract from a tablet found in the royal library of Assur.[99] It is from a document drawn up in the reign of Sargon of Akkad, whose date has now been finally fixed at 2800 B.C. It is a geographical description of that monarch’s empire, giving a list of the provinces, at the close of which it is said that his conquests had extended “from the lands of the setting sun to the lands of the rising sun, namely to the tinland (Ku-Ki) and Kaptara (Crete) countries beyond the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean).” At first there was a tendency to interpret this passage as though Ku-Ki was beyond the Mediterranean, and must refer either to Spain or Brittany; but this is to misunderstand the passage. As Professor Sayce says: “the western extension of the empire ended with the Syrian coast; beyond that were Kaptara or Krete and the Tinland.” Ku-Ki may well have been Cyprus, or some other island in the Mediterranean, or some region easily accessible from it.

Now the importance of this passage is that it shows us that as early as 2800 B.C. the Babylonians were cognisant of the existence of tin, and doubtless aware of its value as an ingredient of bronze; this can only mean that they were using it to harden the copper, which they had worked so well centuries earlier. The passage implies that Sargon’s rule extended to Ku-Ki, which may perhaps mean no more than that some of his subjects had a trading post there. What seems important is that the discovery of the value of tin and bronze had been made before 2800 B.C., somewhere in western Asia, though at what sites is at present uncertain. Copper mines, which are known to have been worked at an early date, exist south of Trebizonde, near Erzeroum, in Armenia and at Diarbekir in the upper valley of the Tigris; ancient tin workings have been found further east in Khorazan.[100] But the local supply of tin was apparently insufficient, and merchants from the Persian Gulf were carrying on a trade in this commodity with a place in the Mediterranean region, even if they had not already, as seems probable, established a definite trading post in Ku-Ki.

Thus we see that a definite organised trade, both by sea and by land, had been established in the eastern Mediterranean region before 2800 B.C., and that this included a new and important feature, the search for and importation of raw materials as well as the export of manufactured articles.

Now, as I have shown elsewhere,[101] at a date which cannot be very much later, during a period which closed about 2200 B.C., the eastern Mediterranean was in close trade relations with Spain, and was exploiting the mineral resources of that peninsula. At present it is uncertain who these traders were, but they seem to have been in touch with Crete, the Cyclades and the second city of Hissarlik, and perhaps too with Cyprus. Though we have no evidence that these traders were from the Persian Gulf, they were trading between Spain and the area in which Ku-Ki probably lay, and if they were not subjects of the Babylonian Empire, they were at least carrying on the metal trade first organised by the people from the Persian Gulf.

Quite recently it has been stated that there is no clear evidence that the Spanish copper mines had been worked at so early a time,[102] but the data cited by Siret[103] seem to me to prove conclusively that the early settlements of El Argar had direct or indirect trade relations with Hissarlik II., and the discovery throughout the Spanish peninsula of clay balls of a certain type,[104] which exactly resemble some found by Schliemann in the burnt city,[105] seems to me to place this early connection beyond all reasonable doubt.

How early this Spanish trade began we cannot yet say with certainty, beyond the fact that it must have been in existence for some time before the destruction of Hissarlik II. in 2225 B.C.[106] How long it continued in the same hands is also uncertain. But, as I have shown elsewhere,[107] there is evidence that while it lasted, and certainly before 2000 B.C., the eastern traders not only passed through the Pillars of Hercules and discovered the tin fields in the north-west of the peninsula, but learned also that both tin and gold were to be found in the rivers of the south of Brittany. Before the close of the third millennium, probably several centuries before its close, this Levantine trade had reached the Morbihan, where stone axes have been found which repeat the shapes of copper axes from Cyprus.[108]

Now, if we compare the copper and bronze axes found throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to Spain, and those found along the west of Europe from Spain to Brittany, we find a gradual change in form from the triangular axes of Cyprus to the western type, with semi-circular butt and widely splayed edge. The earliest types are found only in the east, the more developed only in the west, for in the east they followed a different line of development. It is true, however, in a general way that the type develops as we pass westward and northward, two or more varieties overlapping at many points en route. This can better be understood by reference to the series of axes shown in Plate I., which could probably be made more perfect, were it possible to get drawings of all the specimens in local museums and private collections.

If again we take the copper daggers, with broad butts and slightly ogival blades, several of which have been found in Crete, and compare them again with those found at Scurgola in South Italy and Monteracello in Sicily,[109] and with other types from Malta,[110] Spain, Brittany and the west, we shall find the type gradually narrowing at the butt and lengthening in the blade, till we come in later centuries to the type commonly known as the rapier, but which I think might more correctly be termed a dirk (see Plate II.).

The gradual evolution of the axe and the dagger as they pass westwards and northwards seems to indicate a line of trade, spreading further and further to the north-west as the centuries pass. At present we must be content with an outline of the movement, but if illustrations of all the specimens found in these regions were available, I doubt not but that the evidence would be more convincing and the details and the dates more minute and exact.

Thus we find these early traders seeking for copper, tin and gold, or any other precious commodities, on the north-west of Europe before 2000 B.C., and it has been shown by various authorities that among the gold-fields explored at that time none was richer than the Irish gold-fields in the Wicklow Hills.[111] It is needless here to recapitulate all the evidence which has been adduced to establish the early working of these deposits. The wealth of gold ornaments of this period found in the island, most of which have passed into the melting pot, but hundreds of which are still in the National Museum at Dublin,[112] would alone be sufficient evidence; but we know also that certain ornaments, known as lunulæ or crescents, were exported and reached Brittany, Denmark and Germany.[113] It is likely, too, that gold objects of Irish origin reached to more distant places.[114] This shows us that Ireland was in touch with the trade routes we have been discussing, and this in turn accounts for the vast numbers of bronze implements of early types which are to be found in all museums and private collections, not only in Ireland itself, but throughout Great Britain.

It would seem probable that the early traders from the Mediterranean also reached the Baltic at about the same date, for we find there, too, an early bronze industry, which, while bearing a close resemblance to Central European models, exhibits also western and Mediterranean types.[115] The search for amber probably induced our traders to go to this distant region, for amber, like the precious metals, was much in request in Mediterranean lands, for again it was a substance from which beads could readily be made. It was probably these traders who carried with them the news of the Irish gold-fields, and in due course other traders, starting out from the Baltic, joined the gold rush. We have already seen that a gold crescent of Irish work has been found in Denmark, we can find, too, other evidence of this trade.

Now if we plot out on a map of the British Isles the sites at which have been found the bronze implements of this period, and such a map of flat celts was published some years ago by Mr. O. G. S. Crawford,[116] we shall notice certain striking features. Where the chalk lands or limestone hills exist these finds are fairly numerous and generally distributed, for, as Crawford showed, these areas were open grass lands. But throughout the rest of the country these sites string out into long lines, and these lines, if produced, would intersect near Dublin; these lines seem to indicate trade routes, passing through thickly wooded and probably uninhabited country on their way to the Irish gold-fields.

One such route starts from Southampton and passing Winchester, crosses the Kennet at Newbury, where it was met perhaps by a route from Chichester. Thence it passed by the head waters of the Thames to a point on the Cotswolds not far from Cirencester, where it may have been joined by other routes from the south-west. It descended the scarp slope of the Cotswold at or near Broadway, crossed the Avon near Evesham, and the Severn at Bevere Island above Worcester. Thence it passed up the west side of the valley, crossing the river again below Shrewsbury. Its course across north Shropshire seems to have lain on the watershed between the Tern and the Perry, if we may judge from evidence of a later date,[117] thence passing from Ebnal towards Llanarmon-dyffryn-Ceiriog, it crossed over to the Dee Valley, where we can pick up fresh evidence near Corwen. From the head of Bala lake it seems to have turned slightly north of west, instead of passing down the Mawddach Valley, and it reached the coast somewhere to the north of Harlech, perhaps by the so-called Roman steps at Cwm Bychan. This is the best attested route so far traced out, but further work is required to establish its course with precision all the way.

Another route from the Yorkshire coast through York to the Aire gap has been described by Colonel E. Kitson Clark,[118] while some years ago I traced several from the borders of the Fens into Leicestershire, where they met at Bardon Hill; thence the route passed through Ashby-de-la-Zouch as far as Burton-on-Trent, where it seemed to be pointing to the Peak district.[119] There appears to be a route running thence by Macclesfield and Knutsford towards Warrington, while there are signs that the route through the Aire gap also turned south towards the same spot. Near Warrington a number of flat axes have been found,[120] some on the north and some to the south. The northern settlement was in the parish of Winwick, and among the things found there and dating from this time is a battle-axe of the so-called boat-axe or batyx type.[121] This type and the flint of which it is made both indicate Denmark as the place of origin. The fact that both these trade routes run to Warrington, which seems then to have been an island in the middle of the Mersey, shows, I think, that here we have a port, from which in the early bronze age Baltic traders set sail for Dublin Bay.[122] Warrington, therefore, rather than Chester, was the first predecessor of Liverpool, and the Mersey holds its own as the earliest estuary used for the western trade. Crawford’s map also shows that a similar trade route must have crossed Scotland from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde and the Mull of Galloway, but no details of such route have been worked out.

Much work yet remains to be done before the courses of these trade routes can be traced with precision and their dates fully established, but enough has been said, I trust, to show that in addition to direct sea routes from Brittany, the Irish gold fields tempted traders to cross both England and Scotland on their way from France and the Baltic.[123] These traders would have needed provisions for the journey, and for these would have bartered bronze axes to the people settled on the chalk downs and limestone hills. The journey across the Midland plain was through a densely wooded and probably uninhabited area, and in passing through Wales they kept mostly to the valleys, while the bulk of the population grazed its sheep on the high moorlands.[124] The few axes found must have been such as were lost by the way, and considering the number found this indicates an extensive traffic.

In Ireland the traders probably employed the natives to wash the alluvial gold; they had also to barter with them for their supplies. No wonder, then, that bronze implements of the earliest type have been found almost more abundantly in that island than in any other part of Europe, while the number of gold objects found there is unsurpassed elsewhere. Doubtless the natives worked the gold fields sometimes on their own account, and they seem also to have tried to supply themselves with home-made metal axes. There are veins of copper ore in various parts of the island, which they seem to have discovered, but tin is to all intents and purposes absent.[125] It is possible, too, that the traders refused to divulge the secret of the tin alloy. It would have been strange indeed had they not done so, and so the native Irish, for a time at least, made themselves axes of copper. This, at least, seems so be the most plausible explanation of the great number of copper axes found in that island.

The foregoing is, of necessity, but a brief account of the early metal trade and its relations with Celtic lands. To do the subject justice would require more space than is at my disposal; nor is the time yet ripe for more detailed treatment. This outline will serve to show that foreign elements reached Celtic lands some 4000 years ago, though in small numbers; who these people were must be considered in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV
THE PROSPECTORS

IN many parts of the world there are to be found monuments of rough, unhewn stones, sometimes rudely shaped by hammering, which from the size of the stones used have been termed megalithic monuments.[126] These consist of burial chambers, either a simple slab or capstone supported on four or more uprights, or a similar but more complex chamber, approached by a stone-lined passage. Other monuments consist of circles or alignments of standing stones, or single stones only set in an upright position. There are many types; some, like the dolmen or simplest burial chamber, or the simple standing stone, are widely distributed, while others have a restricted range. One type of elaborate temple is found only in Malta and in the adjacent island of Gozo.[127] Such monuments have these features in common: the stones are large, they have not been hewn with chisels or axes, and they are orthostatic or set on end.

Frequently associated with these megalithic monuments are other structures, which are believed to belong to the same culture, though the association is not so clearly established. Such are bee-hive huts, round towers, and dry walls with polygonal masonry. These are often found in close association with the erections of larger stones, but not infrequently where true megalithic structures are absent.[128]

An attempt has been made to show that the dolmen originated in Egypt, and is closely connected with the mastaba, the tomb used throughout the earliest dynasties.[129] Elsewhere I have endeavoured to show that there are reasons why we cannot attribute the origin of these structures to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and that the resemblances may better be explained by supposing that the idea of the former was introduced into Egypt, perhaps at the beginning of the second predynastic period, from some region, such as Syria, where dolmens were known, or else that both had been derived from a common ancestry.[130]

It has been suggested by some inquirers that the fashion of erecting such megalithic monuments of orthostatic blocks arose at one time and in one place, and was carried by degrees from centre to centre until it reached many widely scattered regions between Ireland and Polynesia.[131] It is not suggested that this culture, with which has been associated many others, such as terrace cultivation, irrigation, the use of conch shells and a number of others, was carried to all these places simultaneously or even within the same millennium, nor is it asserted that the people who introduced it to these widely scattered regions were of necessity the same. The idea may, I think, be better expressed by saying that a cult or religion became widely disseminated at an early date, that it developed many varieties in the regions in which it took root, and that these regions often became in time fresh centres for dissemination. Thus it might happen that a daughter cult might ultimately become spread through part of the region in which the parent cult had arisen. A parallel may be drawn from the spread of Christianity, especially in these islands. The new faith reached Britain during the period of the Roman occupation and thence spread to Ireland; later, when it had disappeared from the former, it passed from Ireland to Iona and thence back to England.

We need not discuss the whole of this hypothesis, which is concerned with a much wider area than the lands we are considering. One of the most essential features, however, of this interesting thesis is that the people, whoever they were, who spread the cult of megalithic monuments and allied practices, were travelling in search of gold, silver, copper, tin, amber and pearls; they were, in fact, merchants in search of precious and easily portable commodities.

Now Perry,[132] who has specially worked at this part of the hypothesis, maintains that megalithic monuments are invariably found in association with metalliferous deposits, amber coasts and pearl fisheries, and he has produced maps which appear at first sight very convincing. A careful examination of his megalith map shows that he has copied that of Fergusson, published in 1872,[133] and which represents far less accurately the distribution of these monuments than does that published by Colonel A. Lane-Fox in 1869.[134] Neither of these maps, however, gives us a really reliable summary of the facts. Much work has been done on this subject since these maps were produced, many fresh areas have been added, and two at least have been deducted; but no one has recently attempted to make a map of the European megaliths, or those of any country except Holland.[135] The French anthropologists have made a list of the dolmens in France, and published a summary giving the number noted in each department,[136] a catalogue of the British megaliths is in process of formation.

Wherever it has been possible to test it with sufficient accuracy, we find that Perry’s contention is substantially true, and that there is a definite relation between many areas rich in megalithic structures and deposits of metal which are known to have been worked in early days; the megalithic areas of the Baltic coincide fairly well with the coasts producing amber. Nevertheless there are many spots, rich in metals, and which are known or suspected to have been worked in early days, where megaliths, have not hitherto been noted, and on the other hand, dolmens and other such structures occur, sometimes with great frequency, in areas devoid of metals or other precious commodities. The problem is not quite so simple as it would appear from Perry’s account.

Still, looking at the matter broadly in the light of information available at present, it does seem that, in western Europe at any rate, the megalithic monuments cluster thickest in or around those regions which produced gold, copper, tin and amber, and which were readily accessible to maritime traffic, and that they coincide very closely with the lines of trade which I described in the last chapter. The exceptions, too, are not destructive to the hypothesis. In the British Isles we find that the megaliths in the main coincide with the metalliferous areas, though in some cases more closely with lead ores than with the metals previously mentioned. As lead does not seem to have been used in north-west Europe before 1000 B.C., these monuments must, if any connection be implied, date from a much later period than that which we are discussing. But a large number of megalithic structures are found in the region surrounding Salisbury Plain and in certain parts of the Cotswolds. These are some of those open chalk and limestone areas already mentioned, which were the early centres of population in this country. As we have seen, certain trade routes to Ireland seem to traverse these regions, and here the merchants would have obtained their supplies of food for the rest of their journey; it would not surprise us, therefore, if they introduced their cult here, and that these populous areas formed fresh centres of dispersion.

The long barrows of Wiltshire and the Cotswold areas, and the same is probably true of those in South Wales, have been thought by some Scandinavian archæologists to be closely related to the types peculiar to the Baltic region. Dr. Knut Sterjna[137] believed that the English chambered long barrows represented a stage in the evolution from the dolmens to the chambered barrows (sépultures à galerie) of Denmark and Sweden. The stone circles, which are conspicuous in the Salisbury plain area, are absent in France, and seem to have originated by the Baltic. It would seem, then, that some at any rate of our English megaliths were introduced, not so much by merchants coming from the south as by those adventurers who came later from the Baltic region, some of whom we have seen passed across this country to the port at Warrington.

In France, too, though megaliths are more numerous and finer in the Morbihan, where we have seen that tin and gold were found, than elsewhere in that country, yet they cluster thickly in Finistère, and in a curved line from that department to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne.[138] The occurrence of so many megaliths in Finistère and the adjoining departments may be due to the need of the early traders to take refuge in the inlets of that region, while endeavouring to round the dangerous promontory. That they did so not infrequently is shown by the occurrence near these inlets of numerous hoards of bronze implements, most of which date from the time which we are discussing.[139]

The band across the country clusters most thickly just north-east of the line, running through the Carcassone gap, now followed by the canal du midi. This seems to indicate that a land route through the pass was in use at this time, as a safer alternative to rounding the Iberian peninsula by sea. From this line the cult seems to have spread north-eastwards, though these monuments grow scarcer the further we leave this line.

Lastly, there are certain islands in which these monuments are found, which do not seem to have produced any wealth of the type required, notably Sardinia and Malta. We have also an isolated group near Taranto. It seems probable that such islands, and points en route with good harbours like Taranto, would have been convenient points of call to these traders, as Tarentum was afterwards to the Phœnician and Greek merchants. Here, and perhaps too at Syracuse, they may well have had depôts, but from the wealth of its megalithic monuments we may well believe that Malta was the base of operations for the western and northern trade. Here we have a small island, very isolated and with excellent ports, with a population primitive and docile; such a spot would be a safe depôt in which to collect and store valuable merchandise, until it was convenient to ship it through the more traversed and perhaps pirate-infested seas of the east. Thus, though there are more exceptions to his rule than Perry would lead us to suspect, these exceptions do not seem to weaken his hypothesis, but rather help to prove the rule.

Now in Britain and the north generally these monuments, or at any rate some of them such as dolmens and long barrows, are believed to date from the neolithic age, albeit from its latest phases; nevertheless there are instances in Scandinavia and Brittany of the discovery of copper tools and gold beads in these tombs.[140] Further south the evidence of metal in association with them is clearer, but in Malta the only bronze implements discovered, the hoard found in 1915 in the temple of Hal Tarxien,[141] had been deposited above three feet of silt which had accumulated on the temple floor. This at first sight seems to militate against the theory that these structures were the tombs and temples of miners.

I do not think, however, that these facts are necessarily fatal to the hypothesis. In the first instance it is probable that gold and amber were the objects of search, and these were probably to a large extent exported. For a long time metal implements must have been rare in these regions, and the people might well have hesitated to bury them with their dead. The tools of metal were modern and new-fangled, while burial customs are singularly conservative, as we can see at any English funeral. For centuries and millennia it had been customary to bury with the corpse weapons of stone for use in the next world; what kind of a reception would the deceased have had on his arrival with a metal instrument? It would have been a great risk, which was seldom if ever taken. In matters of burial and religion, which are in fact one, the older course is safer, and so these people, even after metal was known, continued to bury stone implements with their dead, just as Joshua circumcised the Israelites with flint knives.[142] The temples of Malta, too, were erected without the use of metal tools, as was Solomon’s temple,[143] and it is probable that while this cult lasted no metal object might be taken within the shrine. It was only after Hal Tarxien had been deserted, and its floor covered with three feet or more of dust, that traders in bronze, or perhaps pirates, who knew not the ancient cult, ventured to bury their treasure in the desolated sanctuary.

In a recent paper Mr. Thurlow Leeds has suggested that the dolmen originated in the Iberian peninsula, in the basin of the Tagus, and thence spread throughout west Europe.[144] The first type he believes to have been polygonal with a short gallery of approach, lined with large stones, and this gallery seems, from his plans, to have been somewhat in the nature of an antechamber. He further shows that such primitive dolmens are derived from cave tombs, found in the neighbouring region, and in these caves the antechamber seems more apparent. More recently[145] he has compared these early dolmens with certain rock-cut tombs at Castellucio near Syracuse, though, if I understand him aright, he would derive the Sicilian tombs from those in Portugal. Taking all the facts into consideration it seems more likely that the Iberian caves and dolmens are derived from the rock-cut tombs of south-east Sicily.

As to the date of this trade we can say little with certainty at present. We have seen that objects have been found in Spain which seem to point to a connection with Hissarlik II. In the temple of Hal Tarxien in Malta were found certain carved stones with a double spiral ornament[146], which exactly resemble some in the Syracuse museum, which had closed some of the rock-cut tombs near that city.[147] These tombs have been relegated by Signor Orsi to the period he calls Siculan I., and to this period belong the rock-cut tombs at Castellucio, in one of which was found several pieces of carved ivory, which closely resemble a piece found in Hissarlik II[148]. This city was founded about 2500 B.C., or perhaps some centuries earlier, and seems to have been sacked about 2225 B.C.[149] The trade then which we are discussing must have taken place during the latter half of the third millennium B.C., and in the light of the Babylonian tablet already quoted may well have begun some centuries earlier. How soon the trade and the megalith cult passed on from Spain to Brittany and thence to Ireland and the Baltic is uncertain, though it becomes difficult to fit in all the successive cultures unless we postulate that megalithic monuments were known in Denmark and the south of Sweden as early as 2400 or 2500 B.C.[150]; in Brittany a still earlier date seems to be needed. We may then suggest tentatively that the Atlantic trade began before the close of the first half of the third millennium.

All this seems to indicate that the rock-cut tomb with an antechamber, the fore-runner of the dolmen, came from Asia; the antechamber also occurs in the Egyptian mastaba. Professor Elliot Smith believes that this structure, and the use of the antechamber, developed in Egypt,[151] but of this I do not feel confident. It may well have been introduced into that land from the north-east by his Giza folk. If these may be identified, as I think they may, with Newberry’s people, who introduced wheat and the second pre-dynastic culture, we must postulate the use of rock-cut tombs with antechambers in Syria before 4000 B.C. Rock-cut tombs and dolmens, dating from before and just after the discovery of metal, are not uncommon in some parts of this region.[152]

Some years ago Professor Fleure was engaged in a detailed survey of the physical characters of the present inhabitants of Wales, and the results of this inquiry were published in 1916.[153] Among the many types noted was one which is of special interest in this connection. He describes it as: “powerfully built, often intensely dark, broad-headed, broad-faced, strong and square jawed men characteristic of the Ardudwy coast, the south Glamorgan coast, the Newquay district (Cardiganshire), Pencaer in north Pembrokeshire, and other places.”[154] He states in another place; “We found our dark, stalwart, broad-headed men on certain coastal patches, often curiously associated with megaliths in Wales.”[155] Later on he states that a similar type has been noted in Ireland, about Wicklow, in South Devon, and perhaps Cornwall, in the gulf of Saint Brieuc, around Narbonne, in the Asturias and around Oviedo, on the Andalusian coast from Motril to Moguer, in the gulf of Salerno and thence past the gulf of Taranto to Bari, on the Adriatic.[156]

It will thus be seen that this type appears to occur in just those regions in which megaliths and traces of early mining have been found. The inference Fleure has drawn is that in some way these people were connected with the ancient trade we have been discussing.[157] Though I cannot find that he has published the fact, Fleure has told me that he has noted the type in many of our commercial centres, especially in sea-port towns. It is not uncommon in Liverpool, especially in shipping circles.

Some years previous to the publication of Fleure’s paper I had noted in Athens, in the restaurant at which I usually lunched, a type which I was unable to place among those described by Ripley. I noted, too, that they looked prosperous and were evidently well-off. Early in 1914 I noted the same type in Alexandria, especially common among the successful Greek cotton merchants. Both these occurrences puzzled me until in 1916 Fleure’s paper seemed to offer an explanation. I then remembered having noted the same type in Venice and Florence, and among the portraits in both those cities of successful merchants of the renaissance; it also occurred to me that the type could often be seen in London, especially in the city.

When it became clear that here was a type, not recognised or described by any previous anthropologist, and one, moreover, with a rather unusual distribution, it was felt that it should receive a name, which should identify it neither with any people past or present, nor with any language, for such equations would inevitably lead to confusion, nor with any place or country, for its place of origin was uncertain. Since the distribution of the type seemed to be in maritime trading centres, or else in those areas which were connected with ancient mining or trade, it was felt that this type must have been associated with these enterprises. Taking therefore a name, commonly used in America and in our colonies for those who go out to search for gold or other precious metals, we decided to term them “Prospectors,” and by this name they will now be called.

Constant observations since made on people of this type have shown us that they are remarkably clever, especially at money making, and that they engage more in trade than in manufacture, and that their trade is commonly in oversea commodities, when it is not in money itself. The type seems intermediate between that of the Mediterranean and of the Alpine, and suggests a cross, but the great stature which is sometimes, though not invariably, found among them suggested that the cross was probably between the Mediterranean and the eastern Alpine or Anatolian type, rather than with the short and stumpy western Alpine. It was felt that they had reached the west and north from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region,[158] as had in all probability the cult of megalithic monuments, and certainly the knowledge of metals. Further than this it was not possible to trace them.

Now, as has already been noted, the Prospector type has been noticed not uncommonly in Florence, both among the present population and in the fifteenth century portraits. A glance at some of the pictures on the Etruscan tombs,[159] and the portrait statuettes on the alabaster sarcophagi, shows us a type corresponding very closely to Fleure’s description.

The Etruscans are a mysterious people, and various views which have been expressed as to their origin have led to no little confusion of thought. Leaving out of account such evidence as may have come down from the neolithic and early bronze ages, we find, according to tradition, that the Etruscans arrived from Asia Minor, probably in the eleventh century B.C., or perhaps a little later.[160] About 800 B.C. we have archæological evidence of the arrival of another people from the north, who settled near Bologna, where they developed a culture known as that of Villa-Nova. The Etruscans and the Villa-Nova people certainly exchanged products, and may have to some extent amalgamated. Later traditions suggest that the Etruscans extended their empire over the Villa-Nova area and to the south as well,[161] but this, while true in one sense, may give a very wrong impression.

I would suggest that the Etruscans proper, the Etruscus obesus of the Latin writers, were the people who so closely resemble our Prospectors, and the fact that they are said to have come from the east, agrees well with this view. The Prospectors, wherever we meet them, are merchants and business men, and not the kind of men to lead warlike expeditions, or to bring all Italy within their empire. On the other hand, as I hope to show in subsequent chapters, the men responsible for the Villa-Nova culture were a warlike, conquering type, given to imperial expansion, and it is far more likely that if one or other were the conqueror it would be the men of Villa-Nova.

That such was the case seems to be indicated by the frescoes in a tomb, a copy of which is on view in the garden of the Etruscan museum at Florence. In these we find depicted a country house, with domestic scenes, and a portrait of the owner, a fair man with a narrow face, blue eyes and brown beard, wearing a fox-skin head-dress. This man is totally unlike the Etruscus obesus of most of the other tomb paintings, and seems to be of that fair Nordic type, which, as I hope to show, formed the ruling caste, at any rate, of the Villa-Nova people. It seems probable, too, that the bodies buried in the Regulini-Galassi and other warrior tombs were also of this type.[162] All this seems to suggest that the Villa-Nova people at one time conquered Etruria, then extended their empire as far south as Naples and Pompeii. The Etruscan prospectors would not have been averse to this extension of the dominions of their war-lords, as their trade was doubtless increased thereby.

But it may be argued that megalithic monuments are not to be found in Tuscany, though it was once said that this was the case.[163] This, of course, is true, but the Etruscans are believed not to have entered Italy until after 1100 B.C., when such erections were in most places obsolete. Some of the earliest of the Etruscan tombs, however, look as though they had developed from the dolmen form,[164] though they are made of well-wrought stone, rock-cut tombs are of common occurrence, and dry polygonal walling, which, as we have seen, often occurs in megalithic areas, is not uncommon,[165] and there is a very fine example of this work at Fiesole.

Morris Jastrow junior,[166] in studying the religion of Babylonia, was struck with certain resemblances between the religious practices of that country and those in vogue in Etruria. Here I will only mention three points: the Sumerians, like the Etruscans, lived in city states; the Sumerians were governed by priestly magistrates known as Patesi, while the Etruscans had similar officials called Lucumons; lastly both peoples were addicted to the practice of hepatoscopy, or the art of divining by means of sheeps’ livers, and made models of the livers to aid their students. Such models have been found in Sumer and Etruria, and nowhere else except at Boghaz Keui, on the Halys, the ancient capital of the Hittites.

Relatively few sculptured figures of the Sumerians have come down to us, but those which have been found show us a sturdy people, not very tall, short in the neck and with broad heads,[167] and some of the Etruscan tomb paintings resemble fairly closely some of the Sumerian reliefs.[168] Besides this some of the small statuettes brought by M. de Morgan from Susa,[169] show us heads which bear a close resemblance to those found on the Etruscan alabaster sarcophagi. It is a far cry from Etruria to Sumer, but tradition brings the Etruscans from Asia Minor, and Boghaz Keui may have been an intermediate station, though probably not the only one. But we have seen that the Babylonians were engaged in trading for tin in the Mediterranean region in 2800 B.C., so that it is not altogether impossible that the Prospectors may have come in the first instance from the Persian gulf, where they had been known as Sumerians, though it is, of course, possible that the Prospector was not the only element of that population.

A very natural reply to such a suggestion is that megalithic monuments do not occur in Sumer, or, as I should prefer to state it, have not yet been observed near the Persian gulf. Such absence is not, however, fatal to our hypothesis. As we have seen it seems likely that the dolmen is derived from the rock-cut tomb, and such tombs, and dolmens too, occur in Syria. As yet we know little about the tombs of Mesopotamia before 3000 B.C., and still less of their contents; we may yet find in that region some sepulchre, perhaps built of sun-dried brick, perhaps of slabs of stone, which bears a closer resemblance to the dolmen than does the Egyptian mastaba.

The contention is that several lines of evidence point to the Sumerians, or certain groups of them, as being the traders who travelled the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of Europe in search of precious metals, and who are somehow responsible for the spread of the megalithic culture. Now, as we have seen, the Prospector is normally a merchant, we do not find him as a rule among miners and sailors, yet sailors must have accompanied these expeditions, and perhaps skilled miners also in some cases. It may be that the cult of the dolmen, or the rock-cut tomb which preceded it, belonged to one or other of these humbler peoples, perhaps recruited from the coast of Syria. Or it may be, again, that the Prospector, being unable to bury his dead after the fashion customary by the Persian Gulf, devised another plan more convenient for use in strange lands. The latter is, I am inclined to think, the more likely solution, since dolmens and other megalithic structures are found all round Sumer, in Syria and Palestine to the west[170], in the Crimea and the Caucasus.[171] Stone circles are found to the east in Seistan[172], while both these and dolmens occur further east in India.

Time will show whether the suggestion, which I have put forward, that the Prospectors, who seem to have been responsible for introducing the use of metal into the west and north, to which they came in search of precious ores, started originally from the Persian Gulf, or whether, indeed they were but sojourners in southern Mesopotamia, having arrived there by sea from some more distant land, bringing with them the seeds of civilisation, as the legends of Oannes, the exalted fish-man, as given by Berosus, seem to indicate.[173]

Be this as it may, there seems to be adequate evidence of a trade, starting in the eastern Mediterranean and going first to Malta and Sicily, and thence to Spain, Brittany, the British Isles and the Baltic. That the prime object of such trade was the procuring of gold, copper, tin and amber, seems equally certain, as does the fact that megalithic monuments are found associated with all the sites whence these commodities could be obtained, as well as upon the land routes connecting them. Further, a certain type of man, whom we term the Prospector, is found living in no small numbers in most of these megalithic areas, as well as becoming a successful merchant at many of the sea-port towns of Europe. Lastly we have seen that this trade, then in the hands of Babylonians, had reached the Mediterranean by 2800 B.C., was in touch with Malta, Sicily and Spain between 2600 and 2300 B.C., and scarcely later had reached Brittany, Ireland and the Baltic.

Thus it seems clear that the Prospectors, in search of metal, reached Celtic lands, where their descendants may yet be found. What language they spoke is uncertain; it may have been allied to Etruscan or to Sumerian. But judging from their cosmopolitan habits, one may surmise that they were polyglot, and adopted the language of the country in which they settled. We can, then, hardly expect to detect any survivals of the Prospector tongue in the modern Celtic languages, unless indeed it be some loan words connected with the metal trade.

CHAPTER V
THE CELTIC CRADLE

WE have seen that there is good reason for suspecting that it was from the mountain zone of Central Europe, which we have decided to call the Celtic Cradle, that the Celtic tongues spread over the west, and now that we have traced the movements of foreign influences into Celtic lands during the earlier phases of the bronze age, we must inquire what was happening meanwhile in this Alpine cradle.

It was about 6000 B.C. that the Ofnet race had arrived in this region, where they had mingled with some remnants of the Combe Capelle race, thus producing, it is thought, the Alpine type, which we find dominant in the mountains to-day. We have found reason for believing that further waves of Alpines, coming it is believed from the Armenian highlands, had arrived by 4000 B.C., and that these had brought with them domesticated animals, the germs of agriculture, and a few fruits, such as the apple, plum and cherry.[174]

These people settled down in the mountain valleys, by the margins of the lakes, or more often at their heads, where broad expanses of marsh produced luxurious crops of grass; this could be converted into hay, with which to feed their cattle during the long, snow-bound winters. On the harder slopes above they tilled their patches of grain and planted their orchards, while for security from the bears and wolves which infested the forest-clad mountains, they built their dwellings upon piles in the marshes, or in the shallow waters of the lakes. Thus they, and their cattle, which were stalled in the same dwellings,[175] could be safe from the attacks of wild beasts, or the more adventurous and less scrupulous of their neighbours.

Remains of such pile-dwellings have been found throughout all the mountain zone, from Geneva and Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and Annecy and Bourget in Savoy,[176] to Laibach in Carniola on the edge of the Hungarian plain.[177] We learn, too, from classical writers that similar pile dwellings existed in Pæonia,[178] probably in Lake Beshika north of Salonika, as well as in Asia Minor.[179] This is additional proof, if that were needed, of the route by which these people had arrived in Europe.

Several anthropologists have made a study of the mental characters of these Alpine people, and, although these studies have been made for the most part in France, the description holds good for the inhabitants of the Alpine region. These have thus been summed up by Ripley:[180]

“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.

FIG. 2.
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.

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.

FIG. 3.
BOWL, DECORATED WITH RED LINES, DISCOVERED
IN THE GREAT “THOLOS” OF HAGHIA TRIADA.

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

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]

FIG. 4.
CARINATED VASE FROM SPAIN.

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.

FIG. 5.—SILVER VASE FROM HISSARLIK ii.

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.

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]

FIG. 6.
BELL BEAKER.

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.

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.

FIG. 7.
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.

FIG. 8.
GROOVED ITALIAN DAGGER
FROM CASTELLANO, NEAR
RIPATRANSONE.

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.

FIG. 9.—RIVETED DAGGER-HILT
FROM FOSSOMBRONE.

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.

FIG. 10.
LEAF-SHAPED
SWORD.

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.

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.

FIG. 11.
BRONZE HILT OF
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.

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.