NEOLITHIC PEOPLES AND THEIR MIGRATIONS
The study of history without a thorough knowledge of geography is almost
as futile as the hope of interpreting the structure of the ape without
thinking of his arboreal life.[139] Contour lines are of vast, often
dominant, importance in the life of every nation. John Bull has been
moulded, if not made, by his island. Italy could never be safe until its
boundary followed the crest of the Alps. Great mountain chains mark
limits, and river valleys are thoroughfares. Whoever holds
Constantinople controls the trade of a boundless area. If this is true
to-day, it must have been far more important in prehistoric times, when
man had only begun to gain a certain degree of independence or mastery
of nature. Culture was then very largely determined by position and
routes of communication. The Alps and Pyrenees formed a long, impassable
barrier between northern and southern Europe, broken only by the Rhone
valley; and northern Europe was split into an eastern or middle and a
western province by the Juras, the Vosges, and the forested Ardennes.
Then, as now, the Pass of Belfort was the narrow opening, and Belgium,
always the battle-ground of nations, the great thoroughfare between
middle Europe and France. From the south, and to a certain degree from
the west, middle Europe was not easy of access. But to the eastward
there are few or no natural boundaries as it goes over into the great
Russian plain, of which North Germany is practically a westward
projection. We might possibly go farther and accept literally the
somewhat exaggerated statement that all Europe is only a peninsula of
Asia.
Osborn has called attention to the fact that from Paleolithic to
Neolithic time Europe gave rise to no new races.[140] The immigrants
entered their new home with all their physical and mental characters
already fixed or determined. The routes of migration of the successive
waves of lower Paleolithic immigrants are still unknown. Remains of
Chellean and Acheulean cultures are rich and widely distributed
everywhere around the Mediterranean, especially in northern Africa, at
this time well watered. The entrance of Neanderthal man into Europe may
well have been from this direction.
The Cro-Magnon race very probably came along the northern or southern
shores of the Mediterranean, and then pushed northward into France;
though the evidence is far from compelling. The race is evidently
Asiatic in its physical characters, reminding us of tribes still living
along the Himalayas, most strikingly of the Sikhs. If they entered from
the south, northern Africa was a station on their march, not their
original home. The Solutrean culture may have been brought by the Brünn
people, who probably came through Hungary and up the Danube, but its
origin and route of migration is still very obscure. Breuil's arguments
for the migration of Magdalenian culture from Poland across Europe are
very strong, and his view seems to accord well with the facts, though
Osborn seems to lean toward a somewhat different interpretation.[141]
The broad-headed people of Furfooz and Grenelle apparently came by the
central European route. The only race showing any Negroid characters is
that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number
and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently
the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe,
and the genuine Mediterranean race may have arrived here bringing the
Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper
Paleolithic Epoch in France.
Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the
Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the
great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are
the Hamitic peoples along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.[142]
His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of
skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. It was a
work of observation, insight, and genius, and was a landmark in the
progress of the science of anthropology.
The area of distribution of the race takes the form of a Y, the arms
following the north and south shores of the Mediterranean while the stem
or lower portion extends through Asia Minor. It includes the Hamitic
peoples, also the Pelasgi and the Hittites, but leaves out the Semites.
Huxley had described the distribution of his Melanochrooi, or dark
Europeans, very similarly, except that in his group the stem of the Y
lay farther south and extended into Arabia. In locating the origin of
the Mediterranean race in Africa, Sergi was doubtless influenced by the
opinion of Darwin and others that man's birthplace was in Africa. Nearly
all paleontologists to-day favor the Asiatic origin; and the stem of the
Y stretching eastward toward Asia Minor or Arabia points to a possible
or probable primitive route of migration. The Asiatic cradle is really
in better accord with Sergi's theory, and meets some objections or
difficulties better, than the African.
We vaguely located this Asiatic cradle somewhere westward or
northwestward of the great plateau of Thibet. We may call it the Iranian
plateau, using the term in the broadest possible sense, including
Afghanistan and perhaps western Turkestan: a great area extending more
than 1000 miles from northwest to southeast, where it sinks into the
valley of the Euphrates. We found a branch of the great Negroid race
starting very early from this region and migrating westward past Arabia
into Africa. This was an easy line of least resistance through regions
where the moist, cooler climate of the glacial period brought only
blessing instead of calamity and curse. The Hamitic and Semitic peoples
naturally followed the same route, travelling as one people or nearly
together, if the relations between the languages are as fundamental and
close as some good authorities think. The Semites settled in Arabia,
while the Hamites went on westward and found a home along the southern
shore of the Mediterranean. We do not know when this migration took
place.
This route was easy and wide, and led into a broad, favored continent.
It would not be surprising if for a very long time most of the travel
went this way. We may venture to guess that Neanderthal man may have
followed it long before the beginning of the Hamitic-Semitic migrations,
but this is only a guess. While rich, well-watered, and probably
park-like in its flora during the moist climate of the glacial epochs,
it was sure to degenerate into desert as the climate became warmer and
dryer; as the Sahara Desert is dotted with the remains of Paleolithic
settlements where the explorer to-day is in danger of perishing from
thirst. Any traveller by this southern route must pass through Italy or
Spain before reaching northern Europe.
[Illustration: _F. B. Loomis, del._
MIGRATIONS OF PEOPLES
1. The southernmost route to the Mediterranean and Africa. The
middle part of this route follows roughly Breasted's "Fertile
Crescent," as shown in his History of the Ancient World,
around the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris. 2. Middle
route through Asia Minor. 3. Northern route around Caspian Sea
to Carpathians. _A._ Grass-lands and steppe. _B._ Iranian
Plateau (central portion). _C._ Valley of Mesopotamia.]
A second great western route must have begun very early to compete with
the African. This led along the curve of the mountain ranges of Persia
and Armenia, with Breasted's fertile crescent at their base, up the
valley of the Euphrates and elsewhere into Asia Minor. This route
continued in use as a great thoroughfare for migrating peoples and
invading armies through historic times. Xenophon and his 10,000 explored
it. It is surrounded on three sides by water, although mountain chains
cut off the influence of the sea to some extent. It is a plateau of
glade and forest, though the forests have now largely disappeared. It
has the features of a semitropical climate; here the flora of northern
and southern provinces meet and overlap. One great characteristic of the
region is the abundance and variety of its fruit-trees. It was
apparently the original home of apricot, peach, fig, and orange, as well
as of other fruits introduced into Italy from this region by the Romans.
The vine is luxurious. Somewhere along the line of this great
thoroughfare the wild olive was domesticated, improved, and transformed.
Oaks, walnuts, chestnuts, and many smaller growths furnish a variety of
nuts. The open glades tempted to agriculture and furnished no small
contributions of grain to Rome. Though suffering from dessication, it
may yet again become the garden of the world.
When once a wave of westward migration had entered Asia Minor it was
walled in on the north and south by mountain and sea. There were no
by-roads. Crowded and pressed from behind, it could not stop until they
reached the shores of the Ægean Sea.
Here there were two possible outlets. One was by sea, using as stations
the islands with which the sea is dotted and leading to Crete and to
Greece. Crete, according to Evans, was settled some 14,000 years ago,
and is on the whole less easily reached by short voyages than Attica. A
second outlet led across the Hellespont and around the Ægean Sea into
Greece, or still farther northward and westward around the Adriatic and
down into Italy. We might add still a third fork of this great highway
running northward to the Danube. When we remember how Neolithic
settlements in northern Europe clustered around the lakes and dotted the
river valleys, the primitive minor routes of communication, how early
islands like Crete in the south and Gothland in the Baltic were settled,
we can imagine the importance of a city--or even a village--like Troy even
in prehistoric times. Here a sea route running east and west crossed a
great land route running north and south. Here was a point of exchange,
trade, and transshipment--if we may use the word. We do not wonder that
before the close of the Neolithic period, and perhaps far earlier,
patterns and influences were radiating through the Balkan region, far up
the Danube, and we know not how far into Russia.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Greece, and Italy to a less
extent, were in climate and many other features bits of Asia Minor,
almost shut off from northern Europe by the great Alpine barrier. The
two regions were entered by different routes, each of which had left its
mark on its travellers. Immigrants seeped into Italy and Greece through
broken and rough mountain regions. Great invasions were difficult or
impossible. They were sunny, smiling lands compared with the grim and
dreary north. Men living in this milder climate did not need to be gross
eaters. They lived from the fruits of their orchards to a far larger
extent. Nuts were in early times almost a surrogate for grain. The olive
furnished a delicious oil, and the grapes wine. The butter and cheese of
northern Europe were neither needed nor desired.[143] Most of these
habits, tastes, and desires had become fixed during the march through
Asia Minor.
The peoples which gradually went westward from the Iranian plateau
through Asia Minor, across or around the Ægean Sea into Greece and Italy
and Spain, generally found a very similar environment from beginning to
end of their long journey. There was little in food, climate, or
conditions to compel or stimulate change. Everything tended to more
firmly fix in their structure the already long-inherited characters of
their Iranian ancestors. These characteristics thus fixed have become
stable and persistent, and have remained so in modern times in spite of
repeated invasions and infusions of northern blood. We are perhaps
justified in speaking of a Mediterranean race.
It seems strange that Sergi should find traces of his Mediterranean race
in Russia. Did these find their way so far northward directly from the
Mediterranean area or are they merely sporadic groups more resistant to
modifying influences; or are they perhaps groups which have separated
from the westward migration at the Hellespont and turned northward? The
Nordic peoples of Europe are perhaps after all not so far from their
Mediterranean cousins. The Mediterranean race still holds its own around
the Mediterranean. In France its blood is much mixed and greatly diluted
with later infusions. In England it has generally been almost completely
swamped by Aryan invasions.
Neither of the two routes already sketched leads directly into middle or
northern Europe. The trend in both is toward the Mediterranean. We must
now consider the third and last route, which is of chief interest to us.
We have already seen that the Black Sea prevented all migrations
northward from Asia Minor except at the Hellespont. Eastward from the
Black Sea lies the Caspian, probably much larger in glacial times. The
two seas are separated by the forbidding, almost unbroken, mountain
barrier of the Caucasus; but a narrow passage at each end is left. East
of the Caspian Sea must lie the point where a more northerly westward
route diverges from the road through Asia Minor. Our third route starts,
therefore, from the northern edge of the Iranian plateau, perhaps mostly
from Turkestan, and runs westward north of the great barrier of seas and
mountains just described. It follows the great steppe or prairie which
stretches through southern Siberia and Russia into Hungary. Its western
portion lies along the valley of the lower Danube, the great east and
west artery of communication and migration through Europe. It lies
farther north than any other great route, and leads over steppe instead
of through forest. As the Arabia-Africa route was the first to be
traversed, this may well have been the last. Furthermore, the route
through Asia Minor, ending in a sort of _cul de sac_, may easily have
become well inhabited and hence less open before the Neolithic period
had begun in northern Europe.
It was by no means the most attractive route. It offered far less to
people in the collecting stage than the well-watered parklands of Asia
Minor. The steppe offers to the hunter few means of concealment or
approach to the game. The animals are swift and wary. In any migration
of peoples toward the frontier, the hunters lead the advance and spread
out like an army of scouts. Every river which crossed the steppe would
offer to them a tempting by-road leading off into the forests of Siberia
or Russia. How deeply they would penetrate into the primeval forest or
away from the river valleys is still a question. Very likely they would
find their best hunting-grounds not very far from the northern edge of
the steppe, where the forest is less dense. This question we cannot yet
answer. But most of European Russia is well watered, and here these
hunters would find themselves at home. The main route of the steppe
would be left for a very different population. The piedmont zone of
grasslands in Turkestan was an ideal land for primitive agriculturists
practising a hoe-culture, as at Anau. The northern edge of this steppe
zone, where it joined the forest, may have been equally favorable.
But the piedmont zone and the river banks of the steppe must have been
occupied by agriculturists before 10,000 B. C., probably much earlier.
Pumpelly's explorations seem to warrant this view. Alongside of
agriculture, but at a somewhat later date, sheep-herding and
cattle-raising were practised. But the nomad of these days was a less
dangerous neighbor than at later times because the horse had not yet
been domesticated. During these post-glacial times he would be less
dangerous here than farther south around Arabia, when the dryness which
finally produced the Arabian desert was making itself felt, burning up
the pastures and leaving only the choice between starvation and
migration in mass. Again comparing this migration with the pioneer
movements of peoples in historic times, we have good reason to believe
that the sheep-herders and cattle men--and they were probably both at the
same time--advanced faster than the agriculturists, who were more bound
to the soil. Between herdsmen and farmers there were almost certainly
many intermediate grades. We may be fairly confident, therefore, that
the movement or tide along this route did not take the form of a
procession marching in lock-step, but of a series of waves, generally
with hunters in front and along the forest flank, herdsmen in the
middle, and farmers bringing up the rear and making permanent
settlements at favored spots.
Hunters had been spreading northward at least as early as the beginning
of Upper Paleolithic times. Farming on the lowest grades of agriculture
is essentially Neolithic. A town or village had risen at Susa 20,000
years ago. Neolithic civilization probably reached Crete nearly or quite
15,000 years ago. Small Sumerian cities were being founded in southern
Babylonia at or before 5000 B. C. Population was increasing in density in
the Iranian plateau, as almost every mountain region with its healthy
atmosphere and low death-rate quickly becomes overpopulated. Our pioneer
column was continually pressed forward by new recruits from the rear as
well as by its natural increase. We have practically no records of the
march. But our sketch is no mere invention of fancy. It applies to every
great migration of peoples extending over centuries or millennia. The
last illustration was the great westward movement in America beginning a
century or two ago, and still far from completed.
The Hungarian plain is the last extension of the great south Russian
steppe far into Europe. West of this anything like nomadic life was
practically impossible. Here our pioneers scattered and followed the
river valleys, settling more or less permanently the loess deposits as
farmers, but on less favorable soils devoting themselves more largely to
cattle-raising. The latter form of life seems to have been more common
on the great North German plain, though accompanied by much hunting, a
genuine pioneer life.
We may now turn to Europe and consider the distribution of its races and
peoples.
Of the route of migration of the Neanderthal race we have no sure
knowledge. The wide and rich distribution of ancient Paleolithic
implements in Egypt and northern Africa tempts us to guess that it
represents a very early migration along the Arabian route after the
negroids and before the Hamites and Semites. We have glanced at the
origin of the Cro-Magnon people, and have discovered our uncertainty.
The Tardenoisian culture, with its pygmy flints, is exceedingly
wide-spread,[144] and seems to have started in Europe in the
Mediterranean region, arriving from still farther east. We are tempted
to guess that the great bulk of westward migrations in Paleolithic
times followed the southern, Arabian, route, but there were probably
exceptions.
Coming down to Neolithic times we find the Hamitic peoples in Africa,
apparently representing the first wave in the migration of the
Mediterranean race. It may well have arrived at its present home long
before the beginning of the Neolithic period. It had followed the
southern route. Peoples physically and racially closely akin to the
Hamites followed, probably in successive waves. The Tardenoisian people,
if their culture was carried by a distinct people, may represent an
early wave. The bulk of the population of Greece, Italy, and Spain
followed, but migration seems to shift gradually from the Arabian route
to that through Asia Minor, as the zone of most favorable climatic
conditions moved slowly northward. Before the close of the Neolithic
period the relations between Greece, Crete, and western Asia Minor have
become so marked and close that they almost represent one culture and
people.
The Mediterranean race, thus established in Europe, spread northward. It
could not cross the Alpine barrier. It followed the Rhone valley and the
Atlantic coast, and furnished the basic population in France and Great
Britain, though here frequently crowded back into corners or submerged
by later invasions, peaceful or otherwise. It furnished the great link
or means of communication between the Mediterranean basin and the far
north of Europe. Schliz has some reason for calling these megalith
people largely traders.
In a cave near Furfooz, Belgium, there were found crania, probably of
Azilian-Tardenoisian time, noticeably distinct from those of the
long-headed or dolichocephalic Paleolithic peoples in being short--and
broad-headed, brachycephalic.[145] Brachycephalic crania, perhaps early
Neolithic, were also found at Grenelle near Paris. We remember their
occurrence in the shell-heaps at Mugem, Portugal. Similar crania were
found of about the same age at Ofnet, Bavaria, on a tributary of the
Danube.
Somewhat later we find broad-headed people occupying the higher lands of
southeastern France, the _Massif_, Juras and Vosges, forming thus a
north-and-south zone separating France from middle Europe. They seem
later to have gradually spread westward, somewhat irregularly, and to
have mingled with the Mediterranean peoples of France.
The relation of these "Protobrachycephals" to the great Alpine race,
most of which arrived later, is still a matter of discussion, and the
whole problem of the brachycephalic peoples bristles with interesting
questions. They seem to have originated in the mountain regions of
western Asia, possibly in or near the Armenian highlands, though this
has been disputed.[146] It looks as if they came originally from a
region bordering on or overhanging the steppe route and came into Europe
by way of the valley of the Danube. There were certainly several if not
many waves of brachycephalic migrations into Europe, of which this was
the first. Other waves may have come from different parts of a great
area, and hence show modifications of type. Everywhere the Neolithic
brachycephals seem to inhabit mountainous or rough country, perhaps
because of preference, perhaps because as they gradually made their way
they found these regions unoccupied. They seem to be an unassuming,
unpretentious, peaceable, exceedingly persistent and enduring stock,
which has held on its way with remarkable pertinacity. Some still
maintain that brachycephaly is everywhere largely an adaptation to
conditions and habits of life.[147] The rough country, generally heavily
forested, and well populated with this quiet but firm and solid people,
greatly hindered free communication between France and central Europe.
No human remains have been found in the Danish kitchen-middens, which
may well have been heaped up by broad-heads from Belgium but apparently
mingled with eastern immigrants who brought with them the domesticated
dog not found at Mugem. They left their axes and picks in Sweden and
across into Norway. Behind them came people bearing the Nostvet
culture.[148] Our knowledge of Russian prehistory is still very scanty.
But we find here a variety of cultures, such as we should expect from a
confusion of hunting tribes far from their original home much broken up
and remingled during the long migration. We find in Poland the remains
of a culture akin in its carvings to the Magdalenian culture of western
Europe.
It would hardly have crossed Europe from the west. Breuil[149] seems to
consider it as the station from whence it was carried to France. The
question is exceedingly interesting and important, but is one to which
we can give no sure answer. The carved bone implements are certainly to
be found in Poland and to the northward.
Behind these bits and wrecks of tribes and cultures, for they were
hardly more, came the first great recognizable body of Nordic peoples,
probably also in successive waves mingling on this northern coast toward
which they had been drawn by the climatic optimum. Kossina,[150] who has
given an excellent account of these early northern migrations, speaks of
them as _Urfinnen_ and _Urgermanen_, primitive Finns and Germans.
_Urskandinavier_, primitive Scandinavians, would seem to be a more
appropriate name. For the centre of the least mixed blood of this group
is to be found in the Scandinavian peninsula.
These Scandinavian representatives of the so-called Nordic race or stock
are characterized by tall stature, blond complexion, light hair, blue
eyes, and long head and face. Their origin is still a matter of much
discussion. Kossina and others derive them from Cro-Magnon people,
following the reindeer in its migration northeastward from France at or
toward the end of the Magdalenian epoch. Some suggest that the
Cro-Magnon people were also blonds. If this were so they formed a marked
exception to the color of Paleolithic stocks coming from and through
southern regions. The possibility cannot be denied. But, if the
Cro-Magnons were light-colored, they have left no traces of this in
their descendants at Perigeux and elsewhere. The face of the Cro-Magnon
was short and broad, that of the Scandinavian long and narrow. It might
have changed but has not done so at Perigeux. The Cro-Magnon race was
already declining in physique and numbers during the Magdalenian. Even
if all migrated, could they have furnished enough descendants to give
rise to the Scandinavian population? It seems to me far more probable
that the Scandinavians were hunters or partially herdsmen, who had
wandered by the steppe route through the forests or along their edge,
and had lost the dark pigmentation in the northern climate. This has
been noticed, perhaps to a less extent among Asiatic steppe-dwellers.
The study of prehistoric anthropology in Russia, a vast territory, is
still in its infancy. We have touched upon only one or two of the
questions concerning this so-called Nordic race, which is probably
hardly more than a name for a mixture of peoples.[151] We must not
forget that even in Scandinavia we find traces of a very early
immigration of short-headed people.[152] We still know little concerning
life in North Germany during the Neolithic period. It was probably what
we should call pioneer life, where hunting and cattle-raising and a rude
tillage combined to furnish support.
We must now turn to the valley of the Danube. Here we find a population
characterized by similar ground form of skull, although according to
Schliz[153] showing two fairly distinct varieties, a longer and a
shorter cranium. Probably this population arrived in several successive
waves. Its culture is evidently homogeneous. They are agriculturists
forming fixed and permanent settlements, practising farming of a high
grade. The characteristic implement is the mattock. Daggers and
lance-heads are rare, or fail. They were a peaceful folk settling by
preference, though not exclusively, in the loess districts, as at
Grosgartach. We find, as we had every reason to expect, that northern
Germany and Scandinavia were peopled by a pioneer folk not yet
completely agricultural. The Danube people represent the farmers of the
steppe whose migration probably went on more slowly and gradually, and
who always remained more homogeneous physically and culturally. They
may, or may not, have reached the Danube valley as early as the Germans
and Scandinavians arrived at the Baltic, for they had far less distance
to march. They spread out westward and northward. Here we trace them by
their pottery. Starting from Hungary and the surrounding regions we find
them in Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, across south and middle Germany as
far as the Rhine. We have already noticed that the banded pottery
covered all this region, while the home of the corded pottery was North
Germany.
But, while the form of the banded pottery is quite constant, the
ornament varies greatly. We find the plain, often rude, saw-tooth
pattern, the meander and scroll, the spiral-painted pottery--sometimes in
the southeast plant patterns, perhaps introduced. I regret that I cannot
find any clear or definite theory as to the exact relations of any of
this pottery to that of Anau or Susa. The greatest variety, as well as
the most complex patterns, seem to occur in most southeasterly regions,
which, at least in later Neolithic times, were much under the influence
of the Ægean culture, just as western Europe borrowed from Italy and
Spain.
Here there was evidently a great and very complex mixture of cultures,
and probably of peoples all of one great primitive stock, shown least
modified in the Mediterranean race, here more influenced, changed, and
varied by steppe climate and conditions, and more or less admixture.
Along the Swiss lakes we find the lake-dwellers. The few human remains
from the earliest lake-dwellings are all brachycephalic--short-heads.
Then in the period when copper was beginning to come in we find
long-heads arriving in greater numbers, but the short-heads regain their
superiority during the Bronze period. The weight of evidence seems to
favor the view that these settlers did not come from the zone of
"proto-brachycephals" inhabiting eastern France, but represent a new
immigration from the east, and, according to Schliz, founded fortified
settlements on the heights of Baden, Wurtemberg, and along the valley of
the Rhine as far as Cologne.[154] We have seen that the pottery of these
earliest immigrants was crude and almost or quite without definite
ornament.
Northern and central Europe seem to have been settled mainly or almost
entirely directly from the east, along western Russia and the Danube
valley. But, especially toward the close of the period, people from the
megalithic zone seem to have penetrated much farther southward into
Germany than their monuments would prove. Schliz thinks that he has
recognized their skulls as well as calyciform pottery over a wide
region. Their presence seems fairly clear, but whether they were
comparatively very few in number, or fairly numerous, is still
uncertain.
There seems to be good reason for believing that in late Paleolithic
time the population of middle Europe north of the Alps was very sparse
and the Baltic region hardly inhabited. A hunting population without
domestic animals except the dog pressed northward through Russia in
waves and fragments, and along the Baltic mingled with a strain coming
from the west, probably broad-heads from Belgium. The great Scandinavian
and North German peoples followed with a frontier culture, a combination
of hunting, fishing, cattle-raising, and agriculture mingled in
proportions varying according to time and place. Their exact route of
migration from the region of the steppes must yet be traced. But the
weight of evidence favors an eastern origin. At a time probably not so
very far from their arrival in the north, agriculturists--we might safely
speak of them as farmers--were coming into the Danube valley and
spreading along its tributaries. Apparently somewhat or considerably
later the lake-dwellers appear along the northern piedmont zone of the
Alps as broad-heads, marking the arrival of the advance guard of the
great Alpine race of to-day. But here again our certainty is not as firm
as we could wish. They extend northward toward and along the Rhine
valley. The close of the period is marked by the southward spread of
peoples from northern Germany crowding back the farmers characterized by
the banded pottery. This movement is augmented somewhat, perhaps very
little, by recruits from the megalithic zone of northwestern Europe and
Denmark. All these people are closing in on central or middle western
Europe. In the Rhine valley along the middle of the course of the river
we find a region of mingling or overlapping cultures which have not yet
been satisfactorily disentangled.
We have spoken of them as pioneers. It was a time and place of pioneer,
frontier life. And frontier men and life have their peculiar physical,
cultural, mental, and temperamental characteristics, almost apart from
time and place. The people have something, at least, in common with the
great American westward migrations and frontiersmen of a far later date.
We have the successive waves of hunters, herdsmen, and farmers often
overlapping or mingling. We have a grand mixing of peoples and cultures,
if not of races. Many a fine art or technique is left behind. Life is
rude, hard, vigorous, vital, joyous. It was so yesterday, it was
probably so millennia ago. For the stratum of frontiersman and
barbarian--not to say savage--lies just below the surface in us all, and a
scratch exposes it. This was a period of vitality, hope, and promise.