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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.
BOWL, DECORATED WITH RED LINES, DISCOVERED IN THE GREAT “THOLOS” OF
HAGHIA TRIADA.
(From Mosso’s “Dawn of Mediterranean Civilisation.”)]
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.
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.