The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

hown 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 expediti

spian sea seems to bear out his thesis, which has been further strengthened b

sequence 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 betw

mes 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 c

cholars,[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 Hun

le 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 ha

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

ed 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

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 infl

an 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 base

racted 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 a

lley 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 t

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 eventual

w 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

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 un

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D VASE F

ssy 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 e

e 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 arch?ologists.[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 t

ER VASE FROM

ing 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

ving the Ukraine they passed westward and entered Bohemia, for it is from this countr

inally in Spain. Leeds has published a map, showing that beakers of the earliest type are found most abundantly in Andalusia, and he traces th

hat 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 Britt

seem to be lacking. I am inclined to think, however, that this beaker has a double parentage, and has been influenced, too, by

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BEA

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

ses 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, ex

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 throug

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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 effec

se 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

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