Chapter 6 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 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 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 ?gean 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.

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