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 palæolithic 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 palæolithic 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]
/Chapter VI/
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]
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 archæologists.[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.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.
CARINATED VASE FROM SPAIN.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--SILVER VASE FROM HISSARLIK ii.]
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]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.
BELL BEAKER.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.
NORTHERN BEAKER.]