Chapter 5 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 Neuchatel 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 P?onia,[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 pal?olithic 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 pal?olithic 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 pal?olithic 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]

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