The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

call the Celtic Cradle, that the Celtic tongues spread over the west, and now that we have traced the movements of foreign influenc

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 highla

ng 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 pil

Laibach in Carniola on the edge of the Hungarian plain.[177] We learn, too, from classical writers that similar pile dwellings existed in P?onia,[178] probably in L

nd, although these studies have been made for the most part in France, the description holds

ation 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.

villages leads one to believe that they are very democratic and, in fact, inclined to communism, though this tendency is usually confined to village affa

ugh 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 draw

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 se

his period we find that they were tall, long-headed men, with strongly marked eye-brow ridges, and bear a close resemblance to those tall

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 suppos

le 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

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

iver in the governments of Chernigov and Poltava. Southward it is found throughout the steppe region of Rumania, while westward it extends through the open count

G.

OM KOSZYLOW

hich are fairly common on both types of sites, the B culture is the more advanced. On the other hand no metal has been

ada 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

G.

D WITH RED LIN

"THOLOS" OF H

wn of Mediterrane

ffinities. 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

ed 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

cupied 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

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 peculiarit

aikop, 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

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 we

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

t 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

and cap of skin, deeply impregnated with this pigment. This custom is widespread, and, as we have seen, was not uncommon in the upper pal?olithic age, being found at the beginning of the Aurig

ter, 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 dur

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, wh