  The dawn of history came late in Northern Europe and the morning was stormy. We see the Roman Empire struggling in vain to hold back successive swarms of barbarians, pouring from a dim, misty, mysterious northland. Centuries of destruction and confusion follow; then gradually states and institutions emerge, and finally our own civilization, which, though still crude and semibarbarous, has its glories as well as its obvious defects. The growth, development, and training of these remarkable destroyers and rebuilders was slowly going on through the ages of prehistoric time. Most of the germs, and many of the determinants, of our modern institutions and civilization can be recognized in the habits, customs, and life of the Neolithic period. Hence the importance of its study to the historian and sociologist. It has left us an abundance of records, if we can decipher and interpret them. It opens with savages living on shell-heaps along the Baltic. Later we find the stone monuments We find agriculture highly developed in the valleys of the Danube and its tributaries. We see villages erected on piles along the shores of the Swiss lakes—probably a later development. We find implements, pottery, and bones of animals; charred grains of wheat and barley and loaves of bread; cloth and ornaments—almost a complete inventory of the food and furnishings of the people of this period. We should call them highly civilized, had they been able to write their own history. What was their past and whence had they come? Implements and pottery tell us of exchange of patterns and ideas, or may suggest migrations of peoples, and finally map out long trade-routes. Some day the study of the pottery will give us a definite chronology, but not yet. We can reconstruct, to some extent, these phases of prehistoric life. Our greatest difficulties begin when we attempt to combine these separate parts in one pattern or picture, to trace their chronological succession or the extent of I venture to hope that historian and sociologist may find valuable facts and suggestions in this book. But, while writing it, I have thought more often of the eager young student who may glance over its pages, feel the allurement of some topic and resolve to know more about it. The bibliography is prepared especially for him. It is anything but complete. The literature of the period is almost endless. I have referred to only a few of the best and most suggestive works. They will introduce him to a chain of others. If he studies their facts and arguments he will probably reject some of my opinions or theories, modify others, and form his own. If I can do any young student this service, my work will I wish that this little book might play the part of a good host, and introduce many intelligent, thoughtful, and puzzled readers to the company and view-point of the prehistorian. In prehistory we find man entering upon course after course of hard and rigid discipline and training, usually under the spur of necessity, the best of all teachers. Every course lasts through millennia. Their chief end is to socialize and humanize individual men. Environment, natural or artificial, is a means to this end. It compels men to struggle, each with himself; only as men improve is any marked change of conditions possible or desirable. Men must “pass” in the lower course before they can be promoted to the next higher, to find here a similar field of struggle on a somewhat higher plane. Human evolution, as a process of humanizing and socializing man, is and must be chiefly ethical; for ethics is nothing more nor less than the science and art of living rightly with one’s neighbor. And man is incurably religious, always feeling after the power or powers in or behind nature, whose essential character she is compelling him to express, as her inadequate but only mouthpiece. He will gradually The story told us by the evolutionist and prehistorian is full of surprises. It tells us of the failure of dominant species of animals and of promising races of men. It shows men plodding wearily through hardship and discouragement, and finding therein the road to success. The apparently dormant peoples and periods often prove in the end to have been those of most rapid advance. “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.” But it enables us to plot the line of human progress by points far enough apart to allow us to distinguish between minor and temporary oscillations and fluctuations and the law of the curve. The torch is passed from people to people and from continent to continent, but never falls or goes out. There is always a “saving remnant.” We have grounds for a reasonable hope, not of a millennium, but of success in struggle. The economist, sociologist, and even the historian, are lookouts on the ship; evolution and prehistory must furnish chart and compass, and tell us our port of destination. Many or most of the best thoughts in this CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
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| WESTERN AND MIDDLE EUROPE | NORTHERN EUROPE | DATE B. C. |
| 4. Typical Neolithic. | Typical Neolithic. Beech and fir forests. | 6000-2500 |
| 3. Daun Stage. | Litorina Epoch. Oak forests. Northern climatic optimum. | 8000 |
| Campignian | Shell-heaps. | |
| 2. Gschnitz Stage. | Ancylus Epoch. Birch and pine forests. | 10,000 |
| Azilian-Tardenoisian. | Magelmose. | |
| 1. BÜhl Stage. | Yoldia Epoch. Swedish-Finnish Moraines | 16,000 |
| Magdalenian (later) | Tundra. Dryas Flora. |
The growth and succession of the forests of Denmark, accompanying changes in conditions of soil and climate, have been clearly traced by Steenstrup.
Some of these depressions are filled with a poor variety of peat, dug for fuel, and the sides are often abrupt, steep, and deep. These sides furnish a calendar by showing the different layers which have been formed by successive generations of tree-growth falling into the bog. Thus, in the upper layers we find remains of trees which still flourish in Denmark, while the deepest strata contain the remains of reindeer. The thickness of these layers is between five and seven metres. Their formation, according to Steenstrup, occupied 10,000 to 12,000 years.(1)
The following layers are found in these “calendars,” beginning at the surface:
1. Surface layer. Remains of the beech, which furnishes the chief beauty of the forests of Denmark to-day.
2. Oak. The beginning of this layer was contemporary with the Litorina depression.
3. Scotch pine (pinus sylvestris). The earliest pines were dwarfed, the trunks showing as many as seventy rings to the inch. In upper strata their trunks were a metre or so in diameter. In the Lillemose moor, near Rudesdal, the whole eastern side, twenty metres deep, was filled with pines. While no human remains have been found in these moors, a stone axe embedded in a pine trunk, and a stone arrow-head in a bone of the bos primigenius (which, like the auerhahn or pine partridge lived on the young pine shoots) have been discovered. The soil best adapted to the pine is a damp soil, poor in humus, whereas the present rich, fertile soil of Denmark is best suited to the beech. This explains the fact that pine forests no longer grow there.
4. At the bottom, poplars and aspens. The clay underlying the pines and poplars contains leaves of arctic willows and saxifrages.
Through these types of strata we may trace the epochs described at the beginning of the chapter. The pine characterizes the Azilian-Tardenoisian-Ancylus Epoch; at the time of the Litorina depression it was fast giving place to the oak, which remains characteristic of the Neolithic and Bronze periods, yielding to the
Blytt has traced a very similar succession of changes in flora and climate in southern Norway, and Geikie in Scotland.
Shell-heaps are found all over the world in favorable sheltered localities where sea food is abundant, especially near clam flats. Hence they are not characteristic of any one race or time. Some are very ancient, some comparatively or very modern. They merely show the remains of the camping-grounds of people in a low stage of culture. Every one has its own history and its own slight or marked peculiarities.
The Danish shell-heaps or kitchen-middens are mounds generally about fifty metres wide and one hundred metres long, and perhaps one metre in thickness. But, as we should naturally expect, the size varies greatly according to the advantages of the situation, the number of inhabitants, and the length of time that it was inhabited.
| SHELL-HEAP | |
| SHELL-HEAP AXE | SHELL-HEAP JAR |
The age of these shell-heaps is shown approximately by the presence of the auerhahn, proving the neighborhood of pine forests. The charcoal in the fireplaces came from oak wood, showing that oak forests are overspreading the country. The Baltic was more salt than at present, and the shore line was depressed. These facts indicate a period of transition from the Ancylus to the Litorina Epoch. The stone implements resemble those of western Europe during the late transition epoch, and do not occur in the oldest graves. There are no domestic animals except the dog, and no cultivated plants except some wheat in the later remains. All this seems to prove that genuine Neolithic culture had not yet reached the shores of the Baltic. They are composed mostly of oyster shells with a mingling of those of scallops, mussels, and periwinkles. The oyster has now disappeared from large parts of the coast and in others has decreased in size. Land elevation has narrowed the connection of the Baltic with the North Sea, and the water contains less salt.
Remains of cod and herring show that the fishermen who lived on or near these harbors ventured out to sea in dugouts or on rafts, and that they must have made lines for fishing in fairly deep water. Remains of other fish occur.
Bones of stag, deer, and wild boar form, according to Steenstrup, 97 per cent of all those of mammals found at Havelse.
Daggers, awls, and needles were made of bone; also combs apparently used for stretching sinews into long threads. The flint implements are rudely chipped, never polished. We find long flakes used as knives, and numerous scrapers and borers.
The pottery is thick, heavy, crude, with practically no ornament, except finger-prints around the upper edge. The jars are sometimes of
Shell-heaps quite similar to those of Denmark were discovered at Mugem, in Portugal, in the valley of the Tagus, twenty-five to thirty metres above sea-level, and thirty to forty miles from the mouth of the river. The shells are of marine origin, and indicate a considerable elevation of land since their accumulation. The stone implements are very primitive and of Azilian-Tardenoisian type. Large flat stones, perhaps for grinding, perhaps for dressing skins, occur. Pottery occurs only in the upper layers, where the bones of mammals increase in number. There are no polished implements, no traces of domesticated animals, not even of the tame dog. Graves were found here and there; and while the skulls were badly contorted, they seemed to show that the inhabitants were partly long-headed, partly broad-heads. Remains, apparently of the same age, have been found in Great Britain.
Even the Danish shell-heaps are not all of the same age. According to Forrer, Havno is ancient; Ertebolle is also old, but was long inhabited, and some of its uppermost layers may be full Neolithic; Aalborg and others are younger. Mugem strikes us as more ancient than the similar Danish remains. Other remains near the Baltic suggest very strongly quite marked differences in age or in the culture of their inhabitants, or in both these respects. We can notice only two of these.
Maglemose lies on the west coast of Zealand near the harbor of Mullerup. Here a peat-bog has encroached upon a fresh-water lake and has covered a mud bottom strewn with shells of pond-snails and mussels. Pines had grown in the swamp, and their stumps still protrude into or above the moss. The implements were found a little above the old lake bottom between seventy centimetres and one metre below the surface of the peat. The remains of the settlement were distributed over an area about one hundred feet long and broad. The charred or burned wood was very largely (eighty per cent) pine, ten per cent hazel, a little elm and poplar. No oak was found here, but oak-pollen grains were found in the same level as the settlement, or slightly higher and later. Flint cracked by
Flint chips are abundant at Maglemose; long knife-flakes and axes are rare. Scrapers and nuclei are numerous. The arrow-heads are long and pointed instead of broad and edged, as in the usual Danish shell-heap. Many of these so-called arrow-heads may have been nothing more than microliths used for a great variety of purposes. No flint implements or fragments show any trace of polishing. Bone implements are numerous. We find rude harpoons of a very late Magdalenian type. Also, some of the bone implements are ornamented with various patterns of incised lines, and even one or two rude drawings of animals occur. The culture evidently differs quite markedly from that of the ordinary shell-heaps. It is worthy of notice that the mud of the lake bottom and the overlying peat were continuous over and around the whole area of the settlement; there is no sign
Virchow has described a heap composed of mussel-shells on the outlet of Burtnecker Lake, east of Riga, called Rinnekalns.
The culture is peculiar, paralleled to a certain extent but not repeated in western Europe. We still seem to detect the influence of a decadent, late Magdalenian style of ornament. Virchow considered them as very late Paleolithic or very early Neolithic.
The shell-heaps of different regions resemble one another in general features, but differ and show their individuality in details of culture. These peculiarities may be due to difference of age or of culture or population, or to both. We must first attempt to find some place for them in the chronological succession discovered in France. They cannot be much older than the French period of transition, when Scandinavia first became habitable. But good cave-series covering the transition epoch are rare, and usually very incomplete. In 1887 Piette found a remarkable series in a cave or natural tunnel at Mas d’Azil, near Toulouse.
1. A dark layer evidently Magdalenian.
2. A yellow layer deposited by river floods.
3. Dark Magdalenian layer, with reindeer harpoons, engravings, and sculptures. Reindeer becoming rare; stag increasing.
4. Barren yellow layer, like 2.
5. Reddish layer (Azilian). No reindeer. Stag abundant. Flints nearly all of Magdalenian types. Flattened stag-horn harpoons perforated at base. Bone points and smoothers. Pointed flat pebbles. Bones of stag, bear, boar, wildcat, beaver.
6. Bones of wild boar, stag, horse. Flints similar to those in 5. Beginnings of pottery and of polishing; but not of polished axes. Piette’s Arisian. Beginning of Neolithic.
7. Neolithic and Bronze remains.
Layer 5 evidently represents a period posterior to the Magdalenian and anterior to the real Neolithic. Hence Piette considered it as marking a distinct Azilian Epoch, resembling the Magdalenian in most of its flint implements, in the absence of pottery and of polished axes. But the reindeer has here given place to the stag, and the harpoon has changed correspondingly and is less skilfully made. Bone implements are decadent.
Another culture, the Tardenoisian, was of exceedingly wide range. It took its name from FÈre-en-Tardenois, Department of Aisne, northeast of Paris, and was characterized by its very small “pygmy” flints of various, usually geometric forms.
In 1909 Breuil and Obermaier found in the grotto of Valle, in northern Spain, a classic Azilian deposit, forming the lower levels of a series rich in these microliths or pygmy flints. The Azilian was more nearly a continuation of the Magdalenian culture, while the Tardenoisian, in France, seemed to be an importation from the Mediterranean region. Since the two were so closely related in point of time it seemed safe and wise to combine the two names and call the epoch the Azilian-Tardenoisian, the Azilian representing the older portion.
The station of Campigny, on the lower Seine, seems to be somewhat later than the Azilian-Tardenoisian.
The whole transition epoch, which we have hastily surveyed, shows us a series or mixture of disconnected cultures, yet with curious and striking interrelations. This may be partly due to the fact that the population of Europe was diminished and scattered. Little groups of people formed more or less isolated communities, and developed their own special peculiarities according to situation, needs, and opportunities. Connecting links, or intermediate cultures, which may once have existed, have been completely lost or still remain to be discovered. The general desertion of the caves destroyed one of our best sources of continuous records.
But the cause of this diversity lies deeper. New cultures and new waves of migration of peoples were pouring into Europe, especially into the Baltic region now left free of ice, enjoying a mild climate, and offering an abundance of food along the shores of its rivers, lakes, and seas. The Tardenoisian culture had spread northward from the Mediterranean. The broad-headed people of Furfooz, Grenelle, and Ofret had apparently crossed Europe from the
CHAPTER III
LAND HABITATIONS
OUR history of Paleolithic times is drawn very largely from the successive strata of remains found in rock-shelters and near the mouths of caves, where the succession of epochs is clear and indubitable. We naturally look for similar reliable testimony concerning the chronological succession of Neolithic utensils, pottery and other remains. Here, however, we have been disappointed to a large degree. Paleolithic layers were generally or frequently overlaid by beds of stalagmite or fallen rocks, which have saved them from disturbance. But the Neolithic and Bronze layers are superficial, usually of no great thickness; they have been less solidified and protected, and far more exposed to the disturbing work of burrowing mammals and of men digging for buried treasures. These circumstances, combined with far less continuity of occupation, have greatly diminished the chronological value of their study.
Neolithic cave remains occur in somewhat limited areas scattered all over Europe.
A second province lies in Bavaria, between Bamberg and Baireuth. Hoernes considers its remains as also of the same age as the oldest lake-dwellings, but with peculiarities due to the different geographical conditions. The cave provinces of other countries are equally interesting.
Remains of dwellings are common all over Europe, and are likely to be uncovered wherever excavations are made in grading or for the foundations of buildings. They are of two forms: the rectangular house and the round hut. The rectangular form is the rule in the lake-dwellings, though with exceptions; on the land the reverse is true. The pit-dwelling at Campigny was elliptical in form with a longest diameter of 4.30 metres. We remember that the settlement at Campigny is probably little, if at all, younger than the shell-heaps. But by far the commoner form of pit-dwelling is circular, with a diameter rarely exceeding two metres. Such small circular pits are exceedingly common. At the bottom we find ashes, bones of animals, implements, and fragments of clay once forming a part of the superstructure, baked hard when
Says Tacitus (Germania, XLVI) of the Finns of his day: “They lead a vagrant life: their food the common herbage; the skins of beasts their only clothing; and the bare earth their resting-
Let us hope that the reports which Tacitus had been able to collect concerning the dwellings, as well as the ferocity, filth, and poverty of the Finns, were somewhat exaggerated. Evidently conical, largely subterranean huts have been common in Europe down to far later than Neolithic times. The age of any pit-dwelling can be determined only by its contents.
In addition to these circular pits, long or short trenches occur. Forrer found at Stutzheim one cellar more than ten metres long, and
We have still much to learn concerning these Neolithic dwellings. They have been discovered by chance, and usually studied only hastily and superficially. A pit discovered and examined may have been only one of a large cluster
As an example of late Neolithic settlement of the better or best class, we may take Grosgartach, near Heilbronn, in the Neckar valley.
The situation was very favorable, with loess-clad hills sloping to rich meadows, and the lake furnishing fish and a line of communication. The areas occupied by the houses and stalls were clearly marked by the dark “culture-earth” contrasting sharply with the yellow loess. The principal house was rectangular. The outer wall was composed of posts with a wattling of twigs. This was plastered with clay, mixed with chaff and straw. The inner face of the wall was smoothly finished, and then “kalsomined” reddish yellow, and still further decorated with fresco in geometrical designs. The house—5.80 metres by 5.35 metres—was divided into two rooms. The larger part of the house was occupied by the kitchen, with its floor about one metre below the surface of the ground, and entered by an inclined plane or ramp. The other chamber, the sleeping-room, was nearly a metre above the kitchen and separated from it by a partition. Benches cut out of the loess were found in both kitchen and sleeping-room. Stalls for cattle and barns or granaries were also found.
The villages of Butmir, Lengyel, Jablanica, and others in southeastern Europe show us a condition of advanced culture here also.
But an agricultural population inhabiting a fertile region open to attack might well surround their villages with a wall, or provide a burg, or fortified place or “refuge,” whither they might drive their cattle or transport their grain. Examples of this are Stutzheim and Urmitz, in the Rhine valley, always a great thoroughfare, and in Switzerland and along the maritime Alps villages of this sort seem to have been fairly frequent. Apparently they were still more numerous in the valley of the Danube and in the Balkan Peninsula. It is not at all surprising to find them in Thessaly, so near to the advanced civilization of Greece.
Another class of settlements usually well protected were the workshops (ateliers) and manufacturing villages, especially those where flint was mined, or where flint implements were made in large quantities and distributed by trade over wide areas.
Even before the close of the Paleolithic period tundra and steppe were giving place to forests, which were advancing even into Scandinavia. The forest looms large and terrible in the works of classical writers and German antiquarians. Says Tacitus: “Who would leave the softer climes of Asia, Africa, or Italy to fix his abode in Germany, where Nature offers nothing but scenes of ugliness, where the inclemency of the seasons never relents?... The face of the country, though in some parts varied, presents a cheerless scene, covered with the gloom of forests, or deformed with wide-extended marshes.” He says that the soil produces grain and is well stocked with cattle, though of small size. But grain does not grow in primeval forests, and herds of cattle need at least open glades for pasturage. It is an extreme picture tinged by the homesickness of a citizen of sunny Italy. Northern Europe was generally heavily forested until long after Tacitus’s time. The Romans began in earnest the work of deforesting France, and the work was carried on all over Europe in mediÆval times. The Neolithic immigrants probably made small clearings with
Geikie describes loess as typically a “fine-grained, yellowish, calcareous, sandy loam, consisting very largely of minute grains of quartz with some admixture of argillaceous and calcareous matter.”
In England the valleys of the Thames and other rivers were heavily wooded and not populated until much later. But the long lines of chalk-downs and oolitic uplands were far less favorable to forest growth. In Norfolk and Suffolk there were apparently open spaces. Yorkshire and Derbyshire had very similar landscapes. The forest was held back wherever the porous chalk formation made a large outcrop. In these places man could settle and find pasturage for his flocks and attempt a poor sort of agriculture, even in Neolithic days. Hence we find these regions dotted with Neolithic settlements. The immigrants who came in during the Bronze period settled in the same regions. Here again clearing of the forest on any large scale was apparently not attempted until Roman times, but along its boundaries, where the forest growth was not too heavy,
CHAPTER IV
LAKE-DWELLINGS
THE winter of 1853-1854 was exceedingly cold and dry. The surface of the Swiss lakes sank lower than at any time during many preceding centuries. The lowering of the water tempted the inhabitants along the shore to erect dikes and thus fill in the newly gained flats. During this process the workmen along the edge of the retreating water came upon the tops of piles, and between those great quantities of horn and stone implements and fragments of pottery. Aeppli, a teacher in Obermeilen, called the attention of the Antiquarian Society in Zurich to these discoveries. The society recognized at once their importance, and under the leadership of its president, Ferdinand Keller, began a series of most careful investigations which have contributed more to our knowledge of life during the Neolithic period than any discoveries before or since.
The number of these lake-dwellings is very large. Lake Neuchatel has furnished over 50; Lake Leman (Geneva) 40; Lake Constance over
These settlements are by no means limited to Switzerland. They stretch in a long zone along the Alps from Savoy and southern Germany through Switzerland into Austria.
A sunny, sheltered shore, protected by hills
These rudely sharpened piles were driven into the bottom by the use of heavy stone mallets. This must have involved an immense amount of hard labor, for at the settlement of Wangen 50,000 piles were used, though not all probably
When the piles had been firmly driven, cross-pieces were laid over the top, and on this a “flooring” of smaller poles, or of halved logs or even split boards, whose interstices were probably filled with moss and clay, forming a solid and fairly even surface, on which the dwellings could be erected. The framework of the houses was of small piles, some of which have been found projecting considerably above the platforms.
These houses were calculated by Messikommer at Robenhausen to have been about 27 by 22 feet, a very respectable size. One was excavated at Schussenried, whose side-walls and floor were fairly well preserved. This was a rectangle about 33 by 23 feet (10 by 7 metres), and was divided into two chambers. The front room, 6-1/2 by 4 metres, opened by a door facing south, and with remains of a hearth in one corner. The rear room, 6-1/2 by 5 metres, was without outer door, and was apparently a bedroom.
We pass now to the remains of animals and plants found here, especially in their relations to the food supply of the people.
We find a somewhat small dog (Canis familiaris palustris) closely resembling that of the Danish shell-heaps. It was apparently of the jackal type, and much like the modern Spitz. This would have been an excellent watch-dog to give warning of the approach of enemies. But at the close of the Neolithic, with the increase of flocks of sheep, a larger dog more closely related to the wolf seems to have spread widely through the country (Canis familiaris matris optimÆ Juit). This form was much like, and probably the ancestor of, our present sheep-dogs. A third form (Canis intermedius) also occurs. The origin and relationships of the various forms of this oldest domesticated animal are still anything but clear. That they all go back to the jackal and the wolf rather than to a form like the Australian dingo, still seems to be most generally accepted. (But see Schenk.
Man gained the dog by domesticating the jackal and different species of wolves in different parts of the world and then by crossing, or, by a more or less unconscious selection, bred different varieties, until we have at present a chaos of intermingled forms. Something similar
One of the Vaphio vases of about 1500 B. C. represents the capture of large, long-horned cattle in a net, while the second shows similar animals tamed. Apparently the smaller and lighter brachyceros was first tamed, and this success led to a series of experiments with the larger and more difficult form.
If we draw a line from northwestern Russia diagonally across Europe southwestward to the mouth of the Rhone, it will divide fairly well the distribution of the descendants of those two forms. To the eastward in Russia and Austria, also generally through Germany, and extending also along the shores of the Baltic, we find the large, heavy, usually long-horned descendants of the primigenius stock. The cattle of Spain, and southward into Africa, of France and England, are more of the short-horned, light-built, smaller brachyceros type. Holstein and Jersey are good representatives of the two types, though the Holsteins are, perhaps, a somewhat marked variety. Some regard the cattle of the Scotch highlands as the best representatives of the primigenius type, though reduced in size. This same type, on account of its size and endurance of harsh climate, has furnished the range cattle of our Western plains.
Two fairly distinct forms of swine occur in the lake-dwellings. The first is the so-called turbary pig (Sus scrofa palustris). This is a small form with comparatively long legs. It differs markedly from the wild boar, and was probably imported already domesticated. Being more or less left to feed and shift for itself, it may well have declined in size from its primitive
“The domestic sheep,” says Brehm, “is a quiet, gentle, patient, simple, will-less, cowardly, wearisome animal. It has no character. It understands and learns nothing; is incapable of helping itself.”
The turbary sheep (Ovis aries palustris) is very small, with slender legs, long narrow skull, and bones somewhat like those of the goat. It was certainly not developed in Switzerland, and before it arrived there it had apparently been much modified by conditions of life or by crossing.
The arkal (Ovis arkal) is the steppe sheep of central and western Asia. It is the ancestor of the oriental and African fat-tailed sheep. The western Asiatic forms seem to have developed the fine wool at the expense of the coarse hair, like that of the goat and of many other forms.
A third form is the Moufflon, of the mountains around the Mediterranean and of its larger islands—here probably introduced. Similar forms appear in Europe during the Bronze period.
Other species are found in different parts of Asia. The balance of probabilities seems to incline toward the view that the turbary sheep came into Europe from western and central Asia with other “turbary” forms, that it had been long domesticated, and either here or on
The presence of oxen, sheep, and goats is enough to prove that the people must have practised agriculture to some extent to have kept these animals alive through the winter. That they were kept on the platform is shown by the presence of manure in the remains underneath. Whether this was used for fertilizer we do not know, nor their method of cultivating the ground. No agricultural implements have come down to us.
“The small-grained, six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum sanctum) and the small lake-dwelling wheat (Triticum vulgare antiquorum) were the most ancient, most important, and most generally cultivated farinaceous seeds of our country. Next to them come the beardless compact wheat (T. vulg. compactum muticum) and the larger six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum densum), with the two kinds of millet, the common millet (Panicum miliaceum) and the Italian millet (Setaria italica). The Egyptian wheat (Triticum turgidum L.), the two-rowed wheat (emmer, Triticum dicoccum Schr.),
Oats occur in the Bronze period in western, middle, and northern Europe, in the Alpine lake-dwellings, and in the Danish islands. The ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, Indians and Chinese, did not cultivate them; they were raised in Asia Minor and America only since historic times. We remember that wheat and barley are mentioned in the oldest records of the Old Testament—as in Gideon’s barley loaf—but rye and oats not at all.
The grains seem to show a gradual improvement in productiveness from the very oldest settlements to those of the Bronze period. They are found charred and perfectly preserved wherever the houses were destroyed by fire. Even the ears and stalks have been saved for us in the same manner. Charred loaves of bread, and cake made of poppy-seeds, were also found. “Bread was made only of wheat and
The occurrence of the seeds of the Cretan catchfly (Silene cretica L.) is interesting, as it is not found wild in Germany or in southeastern Europe, but over all the countries of the Mediterranean. Similarly, the corn-bluebottle (Centaura cyanus L.) is found wild in Sicily. This seems to show that these plants came in with the wheat from Italy. But it is still possible that both Switzerland and Italy received them from a source somewhat or considerably farther east or south.
Apples and pears, split and dried, occur abundantly. Some of the apples are so large that they suggest a certain amount of care and cultivation. Sour crabapples, and the stones of
Basket-making and the weaving of mats from bast-fibres had led up to a highly developed weaver’s art. Few or no remains of wool have come down to us from Neolithic time, though it occurs in graves of the Bronze Age farther north. It would not preserve by charring, as all other lake-dwelling organic remains have been saved for us, and our failure to discover it is not surprising. We can hardly believe that these people did not use the wool of their flocks of sheep, or failed to felt the hair of their goats. But flax has been found in all stages of preparation and manufacture in great quantities. Says Messikommer of Robenhausen: “Every house had its loom.” We find not only threads, cords, and ropes, twine and nets, but cloth of varying pattern and design. Some pieces were so finely woven and well preserved
Linen alone could hardly have furnished sufficient protection against the cold and dampness of the Swiss winter climate. The more primitive inhabitants had an abundance of furs. Garments of sheepskin were doubtless in use. And probably wool and goat’s-hair were woven or felted into outer garments. Dye-stuffs of black, yellow, red, and blue coloring furnished a variety of tints and shades.
Very few human bones have been found among those lake-dwelling remains; and only a few burial-places, or rather tombs, in the neighboring mainland. The discussion of their mode of burial and racial characteristics may well be deferred to a later chapter.
Of their religious cult we know almost nothing.
WAVING AND PLAITING FROM LAKE-DWELLINGS
A lake-dwelling of any size is inconceivable without a well-advanced social development. It could hardly be founded, builded, or maintained without close co-operation. Families had to live closely crowded together, almost as in our modern cities. Neighbors had learned to get on with one another and live together in peace, and to submit to a close regulation or discipline by law or custom. They seem to have been a peaceful folk and exposed to no great dangers from outside attack, at least in Neolithic time. When the ice fringed the shores or covered the small lakes, they must have been easily open to attack. A few brands thrown into the thatched roof would have brought sure destruction. Traces of conflagration occur, as at Robenhausen, which was twice destroyed by fire.
Their food was varied and more than fairly
The lake offered a thoroughfare for their canoes, and communication was easy for long distances. To cite only one illustration: flint was brought from Grand Pressigny, in France, and manufactured in certain Swiss localities. There was much variety and division of labor between different villages. One manufactured flint very largely—so at and around Moosseedorf; while Robenhausen and Wangen have furnished great quantities of cloth. Others were rather centres for the manufacture of pottery. Even in the same village one area is richer in one product, a second in another. There was much variety as well as freedom of intercommunication. The whole region lay a little back from the great Danube thoroughfare, but near enough to it to retain connection with the larger world. Life was not altogether monotonous.
The lake-dwellings have been divided according to their age into three groups or stages, representing three epochs more or less marked.
Stage I. Archaic Epoch.—Axes small and made out of indigenous material. “Hammer-axes” and utensils of horn and bone rude. No decorations on weapons, utensils, nor on the crude pottery. Plaiting and weaving practised. Population in Switzerland at this time seems to have been sparse. Food obtained from hunt more than from domestic animals. Examples: Chavannes (Schafis) Moosseedorf, Wauwyl. People brachycephalic.
Stage II. Middle Neolithic Epoch.—Weapons and utensils more perfect. Stone axes finely polished, often with hole for handle, sometimes very large. Beside the commoner minerals five to eight per cent of implements made of nephritoids (nephrite, jadeite, and chloromelanite). These are almost absent in Epochs I and III. Pottery of far better material and manufacture, with traces of ornament. Remains of domestic and wild animals nearly equal. Domestic animals are turbary pig, goat, sheep, turbary cattle, but primigenius form present though less common. Brachycephalic and dolichocephalic people nearly equal in number. Examples: Robenhausen and Concise.
Stage III. Copper Epoch.—Hammer-axes, beautifully finished. Bone and horn implements. Nephritoid minerals less used. Pottery more artistic. Cord-decoration appears. Certain ornaments, weapons, and implements are made of copper. Domesticated animals improve and form a larger part of the food than game. Cattle especially increase in numbers, and a new race of sheep has arisen. Long-heads more numerous than broad-heads. Examples: Roseax, at Morges. Locraz, Ferril (Vinelz).
It is interesting to notice that remains of domestic cattle are abundant in all ages, that goats are more abundant than sheep in the earliest lake-dwelling, but that the sheep became equally numerous in the second epoch, while they decidedly outnumbered the goats during the Bronze period. This is what we should expect from the advance of culture.
Says Keller:
Could we have sat on one of these village platforms of a summer afternoon and looked out to the wheat-fields on the shore, and seen the canoes come in with fish or game, and the cattle returning from the mainland pasture; could we have watched the men fashioning implements and all manner of woodwork, and the women grinding the grain or moulding pottery, or spinning and weaving; we should have found a great deal to please and interest us. The fruits and berries, the smell of roasting fish and baking bread, of cakes well flavored with the oil from beechnut or flax, or perhaps sifted over with the seeds of poppy or caraway, would have been far from disagreeable. We should have felt that it was a goodly land, and that life was well worth living. We should not have been disturbed by shrieking steamboats, puffing and groaning locomotives, or honking automobiles,
We ought not to forget in our comfort that everybody could not live in a lake-dwelling, that all over Europe there were other settlements or dwellings, more lonely or isolated, where food was never abundant and sometimes very scarce, where labor was unremitting and the reward scanty. But even in those less civilized regions there was probably usually much rude comfort; and if there were times of scarcity and want, there were also times of feasting and abundance. All over Europe there were, even in Neolithic time, children, boys and girls playing around the houses; and young men and women looking out on life with the same inexperience and illusions, courage and hopes, which lure us onward to-day.
CHAPTER V
A GLANCE EASTWARD
THE culture of the oldest lake-dwellings appears suddenly in Europe, and its beginnings are exotic in all their essentials. The turbary cattle were quite different from the wild primigenius race of the surrounding regions; and we find no remains of the intermediate forms which should occur if domestication had taken place here. The same is true of the turbary pig. Wild sheep are unknown in northern Europe, and the moufflon of the Mediterranean islands can hardly have been the ancestor of our Swiss flocks, and is very possibly descended from domesticated ancestors which reverted to wild life. Something very similar may be said of our oldest cereals, wheat and barley.
We must evidently turn eastward or southward to find the cradle of the whole culture. Even if it came partly from Italy, it could hardly have developed there. Egypt may have made contributions, but mostly at a later date. We naturally turn first to Asia, the great centre of mammalian evolution, probably the oldest seat of cattle-raising and agriculture, cradle of man
We naturally turn first to Babylonia. Under the temple of Bel, at Nippur, was an immense platform constructed of sun-dried bricks, most of them stamped with the name of Sargon or of Naram Sin. The date of Sargon seems still uncertain; many historians place it at 2800 B. C.; others, and apparently most archÆologists, like Obermaier, still hold to the old date, 3750 B. C.
Says Delitzsch
In 1904 Pumpelly
At the time of the beginning of the settlement, which Pumpelly estimated as somewhat before 8000 B. C., the inhabitants lived in rectangular houses built of uniform sun-dried bricks. They were skilful potters, though unacquainted with the potter’s wheel, making different grades of coarse and fine vessels. These were unglazed, but often painted with a definite series of geometrical patterns. They had the art of spinning, for whorls are found in all strata from the lowest up. They cultivated cereals, for the casts of the chaff of wheat and barley are found in the clay of the thicker pots. At first they had no domestic animals, only the bones of wild forms being found. When ten feet of culture strata had been accumulated the remains of a tame Bos namadicus, the Asiatic variety of the Bos primigenius, or urus, occurred. That this animal had already been domesticated is inferred from the less compact microscopic structure of the bones modified by artificial conditions. At this time the change of structure, if not complete, was evident. It had been for some time under the new conditions. The turbary pig appears about 7500 B. C.,
The camel appears at Anau somewhat after 6000 B. C., and seems to be a means of intercourse and transport far antedating the horse, in a region already showing signs of dessication.
Spherical mace-heads occur reminding us of those used in Egypt. But no lance-head or arrow-point or other stone weapon was found in the lower levels. We do not know how they killed or captured the larger animals; they may have used the sling or bolero. In the lowest strata we find the bones of young children, but not of adults, buried in a contracted position under the floors of the dwellings. The first objects of copper and lead appear about 6000 B. C., and, open the Æneolithic period. Pumpelly distinguishes a Copper period, here longer and more distinctly marked than in Europe. The turquoise bead found in one of the graves came, in all probability, from the Iranian plateau, as did probably the copper and lead also.
He has shown us that even on the steppe the cultivation of cereals precedes the domestication of sheep and cattle. The nomadic life follows
Pumpelly’s time-estimates have been criticised by Doctor H. Schmidt, of Berlin.
In the Third Culture Epoch there was found “copper, with sporadic appearance of low percentage of tin.” This describes well the close of the Copper period or the beginning of the Bronze Age, the rest of which is not represented at Anau, the settlement being deserted, probably because of aridity. Pumpelly thinks that the last strata deposited before the desertion comes down to the Bronze Age, and, assuming the latest possible date for the beginning of this period, places it about 2200 B. C. This is almost surely much too late. Obermaier dates the beginning of the Bronze period at 4000 B. C.
The culture at Anau is very similar in all its essentials to that of the European lake-dwellers, and is much older. The same cereals and the same kinds of domesticated animals appear in both. The brick houses are better and the very fine painted pottery is new and peculiar. These and the art of spinning and the cultivation of cereals were brought hither by the first settlers; their development to this stage must have taken place elsewhere and occupied a long period of time. Sheep could not have been domesticated here, for they and the goats are natives of the mountains, and could not survive wild on the steppe. Neither is the pig a steppe animal, but lives naturally in forest glades and along watercourses. Pumpelly has evidently discovered a very old and interesting station in the spread of this ancient culture, but not its cradle. This was apparently in some mountainous region.
Here at Susa (Shushan), about one hundred miles from the apex of the Persian Gulf, de Morgan excavated in a mound rising about thirty-four metres above the level of the plain and continuing some six metres below the surface, which has been raised that amount since the first settlement was made.
Over twenty metres of these remains are purely Neolithic. There was the usual abundance of flint nuclei, flakes, and utensils. There
Here again we find abundant pottery in the lowest strata. It is of a “dark brown pattern painted on a pale ground, partly imitating basketry and textiles, partly rendering plants and animals with childish simplicity.... It resembles in a striking way a few widely scattered series which are all that have been secured hitherto from a very ill-explored area: from a Neolithic site underlying the Hittite castle at Sakye-Giezi, in North Syria, from the surface of early mounds in Cappadocia, and from low levels of the Hittite capital, at Boghaz-Keui; and, more surprising still, from an important site, also Neolithic, at Anau, on the northern edge of the Persian plateau looking over into Turkestan; and at a number of points scattered over the flat lowland on the north side of the Black Sea, and thence into the Balkan Peninsula as far south as Macedonia and Thessaly. These resemblances are general and their value may be overestimated; there are differences in detail, but the general similarity seems to link the peoples over this wide area at the same time in
The discoveries at Susa and elsewhere in this region seem to prove that compact settlements of fair size had arisen in western Asia long before the founding of Anau.
The BÜhl moraines, in Lake Lucerne, are estimated as having been deposited between 16,000 and 24,000 B. C., during the Early Magdalenian stage of post-glacial time, which would, there
When Europe changed from tundra to forest man became largely a fisherman, more or less settled at some favorable spot, and collecting his vegetable food in all directions. The same may well have been true of life at this early date in Persia. The man hunted or fished, the woman and the children gathered all kinds of
When she turned homeward with her load of spoil, some berries, seeds, and small bulbs doubtless fell to the ground and escaped her notice. These grew and flourished in the richer soil around the hut or shelter, for all the garbage could not have accumulated in the hut. Some unusually observing woman noticed this, and protected the plants, or even cultivated them a little with her digging-stick, and pulled out some of the largest smothering weeds. She began to plant a few others, and gradually started a garden. The garden is older than the farm, and hoe and digging-stick vastly older than the plough. This woman had discovered, and almost
Rice growing wild in large fields under suitable conditions is still gathered by all savages. This grain needed no preparation except boiling, while wheat and barley must be crushed or ground between stones, probably used at first for grinding dry nuts. Peas and beans, many vetches, and other members of this family so characteristic of the dryer uplands, were gathered very early, and may have been cultivated before wheat. Melons and many of the gourds always must have been eaten. We shall notice later that the zone of Persia and Asia Minor lay on the boundary line between two great botanical provinces, a northern and a southern, and furnished a very wide range of plants for this earliest experiment station.
But we must not think that the Iranian plateau, with its great zone of piedmont steppe stretching eastward and westward along its northern border across the continent of Asia, was the only place where agriculture could start and reach a high degree of development in ancient times. Its possibility lay in the habit of the woman of collecting the vegetable food and smaller animals, while the men hunted and fished. Useful food plants furnishing large amounts of food are to be found in all continents, and differ markedly in different soils and climatic zones. Hence even the beginnings of agriculture were probably not confined to any one region, but were wide-spread, manifold, and independent. The Chinese migrating eastward and southeastward down the great river valleys from eastern Turkestan may have carried with them the cultivation of wheat, or adopted it independently. The rice culture of China may have been borrowed from India or independently evolved. India and the Malay Archipelago and Africa have every one its own agriculture, of whose origin and early development we know nothing.
But western Asia, or more precisely the Iranian plateau, had another piedmont region beside the zone stretching along its northern border. This second piedmont zone of grass-land, or oasis, as Breasted has pointed out, bends in the form of a horseshoe along the western slope of the Iranian plateau, then northward and westward around the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and southward through Syria.
But far older than these cities of the Mesopotamian river valleys is the culture of the forests, glades, lakes, and riversides of the plateaus. Evidence seems steadily to accumulate that here we are to seek for the beginnings of agriculture and the domestication of animals which were slowly to change the face of the earth and the life and character of man.
Hoe-tillage of the ground is evidently far older than cattle-raising or nomadic life. It had been brought to Anau before 8000 B. C., and had probably already been practised at Susa and elsewhere thousands of years earlier. But we cannot help asking whether other plants may not have been cultivated long before cereals. Roots and tubers are much more conspicuous than the smaller grains. These underground storehouses of nutriment adapted to give the plant a quick and sure start, during a short spring period of growth and flowering, are abundant everywhere. They still form the staple crop in many parts of the world. We remember the potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, the cassava, and a host of others. In our northern
Primitive woman had no plough, only the digging-stick, the agricultural implement of the Australians. Later they learned to make a hoe, sometimes out of a tine of deer’s horn, sometimes of stone or other material, something half-way between a hoe and a pick. With such an implement a fair amount of soil could be broken up and well stirred. When domestic animals were introduced into Africa the plough followed only in the eastern regions; all through the rest of Africa the old hoe-culture held its own. Europeans introduced the plough into America. As a means of breaking up the ground the plough is infinitely superior; for tillage and cultivation the hoe is far more useful. When wheat has once been sown it cares for itself; further cultivation is unnecessary—it is the lazy man’s crop. Perhaps that, with a touch of the spur of necessity, persuaded the male to undertake ploughing. When the plough was invented many vegetables formerly cultivated
Studying European Neolithic agriculture in the light of the methods of savage and barbarous peoples, or even of our pioneer ancestors, we imagine them living on the border of the forests which furnished food and wood for buildings and implements. The first step was to burn and clear a place where the undergrowth was not too heavy, and to break up the soil with pick or hoe. Here the patch of grain was sowed. The soil fertilized by the ashes gave him a fair crop, but became exhausted after a few years of cultivation, and he was compelled to break up a new field. Some investigators have thought that the lake-dwellers used the manure from their cattle on their fields, but in most parts of Europe cultivation of the soil was probably crude and superficial. On the chalk downs of England, chief places of settlement by Neolithic peoples in this region, we find terraces and narrow strips which may have been prepared at
The primitive plough was hardly more than a pointed stout branch or stub of a tree, whose longer fork was fastened to the yoke. It made a furrow triangular in cross-section, broad at the top and narrowing to an edge at the bottom. It did not “turn” a strip, and between two furrows a long ridge was left unbroken. Even in Roman times cross-ploughing was common or usual. Even this rude culture needed the strength of cattle to draw the plough. The plough is associated in our minds with oxen, and the first man who made his cow, instead of his wife, draw the plough was a great benefactor.
Even the domestication of cattle was less easy than it seems at first sight. Wild animals rarely reproduce in captivity. Pumpelly thinks that the way toward the domestication of our larger cattle may have been paved by a long period of drought driving them from the steppe into the better-watered oases, and thus into association
At present nearly all our knowledge of what was going on in this dim and remote past must be gained by a study of savages still holding the customs of the past in a somewhat or greatly modified form and spirit. Certain very general inferences may be made without great danger. But to frame clear and exact conceptions of life
We may well connect and condense the chief results of our study in this chapter. It seems to be clear that a culture essentially similar to that of the European lake dwellers existed at Anau, in the piedmont zone, a little north or northeast of the Iranian plateau, with which it had trade relations. The oldest turbary forms of domesticated animals appear here at least 1,500 years before the founding of the Swiss lake dwellings. They were mostly introduced from some mountain region, the nearest probable
We can only frame conjectures as to the origin of agriculture. It seems to have been introduced by the women of hunting and fishing tribes. The first agricultural implement was probably the digging-stick, which was followed by the hoe. Hoe-culture is still common in Asia and Africa. Finally, during the first part of the Bronze period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, the plough drawn by cattle and guided by a man superseded the hoe as a means of breaking up the soil for the culture of grain.
CHAPTER VI
MEGALITHS
MEGALITHS, those great stone monuments of prehistoric time, have always excited the wonder and interest of all observers.
The simplest, and apparently the oldest,
Even these small chambers were intended for long use, and to contain more than one body; some contain the remains of a dozen. The bones lie in layers covered with flint chips, or in little heaps where they have been collected to give room for new interments. Many of the smaller chambers were too short to allow the body to lie fully extended; in some it was evidently placed in a sitting posture leaning against the wall.
These smaller dolmens were surrounded by a heap of earth reaching nearly to the top of the side stones, but not covering the roof, and hardly deserving to be called a tumulus. The roof was usually composed of one great stone, flat below but arching above and forming a sort of monument. In one chamber this roof-stone is eleven feet long and three feet thick.
The earthern tumulus may be round in outline or elliptical, forming the long grave—the Hunnenbett of popular German speech. The round tumuli rarely exceed 40 feet in diameter. They were as a rule surrounded by a circle of upright stones, now generally removed. The long tumuli are rarely more than 5 or 6 feet high, and 20 to 30 feet wide. The length varies greatly: usually between 50 and 100 feet, but infrequently from 100 to 200 feet; one is 500 feet long with over 100 of the marginal stones still standing.
The chambers in the round and long tumuli in Denmark are very similar, but in the long tumuli there are usually two or more dolmens, often symmetrically located. In other cases it looks as if a tumulus had been lengthened to cover chambers added later. A large amount of variety in such details is not surprising. More rarely we find two or more small tumuli side by side, each with one or two chambers. That those smaller dolmens or chambers are the oldest
| “CROUCHING BURIAL” (HOCKER-BESTATTUNG) ADLERBORG, NEAR WORMS | MENHIR, CARNAC, BRITTANY |
| DOLMEN, HAGA, ISLAND OF BORUST | |
The wide distribution of these simplest stone monuments is exceedingly interesting. They occur in Denmark and Sweden, in North Germany and Holland, in Great Britain and France, Portugal and Spain, in North Africa, in the Ægean Islands, in Palestine and farther eastward, in Thrace and Crimea, along the eastern shore of the Black Sea. They are very numerous in India.
The inner surface of the great stones forming the sides of the chamber is fairly flat. It could have been no easy matter to find in any region
It is surprising to find that these smaller and larger chambers were erected without any deep foundation for the upright stones. Many of them have fallen from the heaving of the frost. The monuments were generally adequately protected against this by the thick tumulus.
The tumulus was enlarged proportionately and usually completely covered the chamber. Its height averages ten to fifteen feet, and its diameter over ninety. The culvert-like entrance had to be lengthened accordingly.
But one large chamber did not suffice for successive generations. It was often extended or additions were made so that quite complicated forms occur. In England we find frequently a row or cluster of small chambers. Here the roof is sometimes made of successive layers of stone
Some of these “gallery chambers” were very large and contained a large number of bodies; sometimes from 40 to 60, in one case 100. The tumulus at Mont St. Michel measures 115 by 58 metres, and forms a veritable hill. Thirty-five thousand cubic metres of stone were employed in the construction of the chamber. Other chambers are from 30 to 50 feet in length. The celebrated chamber at Bagneux, 25 feet long, is composed of fourteen great blocks, of which three form the roof. The great tumulus at Fontenay-le-Marmion in Normandy covered eleven chambers in two parallel rows. All the material for these great structures could hardly have been found in the same vicinity. In one case it appears to have been brought from a quarry two miles away. Some large stones, weighing thousands of tons, seem to have been transported many miles.
Some of the latest structures show a certain amount of degeneration. Certain galleries were
The age of these stone monuments can generally be fairly closely determined by the contents, unless these have been removed or destroyed by treasure-hunters, as is often the case. In many cases the objects originally deposited seem to have been few and insignificant. Later, secondary interments were often made in tumuli, but these usually betray their later date by their position above the original chamber or near the side of the mound. We must keep in mind that chambers in the north containing only stone implements may be often of the same age as those farther south containing copper or even bronze, for metal made its way northward only gradually. The custom of building dolmens seems to have persisted later in England than in France. The English round tumuli or barrows belong to the Bronze period. It is not surprising that one country should be more conservative than another, especially if it is somewhat remote.
In Brittany we find the Menhirs or “standing stones,” unhewn pillars, regularly accompanying the dolmens. They are by far most abundant in northwestern Europe, but occur elsewhere also. The largest known is the Menhir of Locmariaquer in Morbihan, now fallen and broken. It was almost 21 metres long, and weighed nearly 300,000 kilograms. But specimens are usually much smaller. They seem to characterize the Æneolithic Epoch and the early Bronze Age.
Their meaning is often uncertain. Some of them standing singly were probably erected much later, serving merely to mark boundaries. When associated with dolmens they are probably objects of a religious cult associated with the burial, rather than mere monuments to the dead. They may well be examples of the world-wide pillar-cult. They remained objects or centres of worship until late in historic time. The church had a long and hard battle with their cult. Some of them appear to have been thrown down and churches to have been erected over them. On some of them Christian symbols have been carved. Among the people they are still held in reverence or awe. Whatever may have been their origin, they must have had some religious significance or association.
These pillars may be grouped in circles, cromlechs, or in long radiating rows, alignments. Stone circles occur in the Mediterranean region, in Syria, Upper Egypt, and in India. But circles and alignments belong especially to Brittany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. The most noteworthy are the three adjacent or connected at Carnac, in Morbihan, extending nearly 4,000 metres, and composed of nearly 3,000 Menhirs. Stonehenge and Avebury in England are almost equally celebrated. They represent the culmination of megalithic development, but are essentially places of worship and assembly rather than of burial, though tumuli may be clustered around them like graves in a churchyard.
The changes in the mode of disposal of the dead are evidently the results of changed views concerning the future life. In early Paleolithic times man buried his dead with the best flint axe in his hand, with his ornaments and a supply of food, and often a quantity of shells brought from a distance and evidently objects of value. The dead man took with him his weapons and all his wealth. For the living to keep back a portion of what belonged to the departed was robbery, which might be avenged by all sorts of evils and plagues; for all this material
Soon we find them buried in a crouching position, with knees and hands brought close to the chin. Sometimes we find rows of shells, which may have been attached to cords or bands used to hold the body in this forced position. This mode of burial in a contracted or crouching position (Hockerbestattung) was usual in Europe in Neolithic time, but has been discovered in all continents, even in America and Australia. Very different explanations of this peculiar custom have been offered by different observers, e. g., that it saved the labor of digging a larger grave, an excellent economic argument; that the dead was laid in its Mother Earth in the same position which as a foetus it had maintained in the maternal body, etc., etc. But the predominant thought appears to have been that the spirit remained in, with, or near the body, and that binding the body prevented the spirit from walking and returning to see the survivors. To the same end the most valuable possessions of the dead had been buried with him. This does
ALIGNMENT, CARNAC, BRITTANY
This mode of burial continued common through upper Paleolithic time; was very common, if not the rule during the Neolithic period in various parts of Europe. Pumpelly found at Anau children, and only children, buried under the floors of the houses, and notices that this custom was general throughout the life of the Kurgan.
As time went on and communities became more closely united leaders must have arisen for whom the people had only affection, in whose wisdom and willingness to help they had full confidence, and who were gratefully remembered as fathers, elders, and wise in counsel, and whose return would have been gladly welcomed. This thought seems to be the foundation of the wide-spread and ancient cult or worship of ancestors. Such cases were certainly common at a somewhat later date, as in the Greek cities, where the bones of the dead leader or hero were guarded as the chief protection of the state. This feeling seems to find expression in the dolmen or house of the dead, with a carefully prepared opening in the door as if inviting the spirit to free egress. Anniversary feasts in honor of the departed were certainly common in ancient days. Close friendship and social relations were cultivated with the departed as knowledge and culture increased.
The Egyptian pyramids and mummies, the graves and older dolmens, seem to testify to a very close and dependent relation between spirit
But one fact leads us to hazard a question. Not very far in the Bronze Age the first great wave of Celtic migration seems to have broken into northern Europe, as the AchÆans had already found their way toward or into Greece. The Celts seem to have had their Vale of Avalon and Islands of the Blessed, whither the spirits of the departed migrated. We remember that when Ulysses went in search of the spirit of Achilles, and of other comrades in the war before Troy, he sought him in no underground world, but sailed far across the seas into the west. Such beliefs, and customs like incineration, are a slow growth, probably far older in origin than the Indo-European or Aryan migrations, of which some have thought them characteristic. May not this old and wide-spread belief be merely a continuance of views and conceptions already held by our Neolithic folk?
We have already noticed the wide distribution
It is exceedingly difficult to say just where the first dolmens were built. Opinions differ widely. They could have been built only in an area which had a fairly large and settled population
CHAPTER VII
NEOLITHIC INDUSTRIES
OUR very hasty glance at different aspects of Neolithic culture has shown its marked diversity in different regions. Its essential and fundamental characteristic was the introduction of tillage and cattle-raising, gradually replacing the mere collecting stage of hunting life, and accompanying a steady growth of independence or control of nature’s bounty or stinginess of food supply. This change increased rather than diminished the diversity of culture in different regions. In the rich soil of the loess country and the Danube valley there were genuine farms; in the north cattle and hog-raising probably prevailed, gradually shading over into hunting as one neared the forests. Along the Baltic and the great lakes of Sweden and on all the European rivers fishing was an important source of food. Differences in size, form, and comfort of dwellings tell the same story. In the north we find half-underground huts, probably with shelters of logs or skins in or along the forests. At Grosgartach and in
The same must be said of all industrial products. Every one of them tells a story, if we can understand and interpret it. We are not surprised to find in the late Paleolithic (or early Neolithic) paintings at Cogul women dressed in waist and short skirt not unlike those worn to-day. The dress represented in the idols of southeastern Europe has persisted in the peasant dress of certain isolated regions, especially in Albania, almost or quite into the present.
MODERN ALBANIAN PEASANTS IN NEOLITHIC GARMENTS
Two manufactured articles are of especial interest to the archÆologist: the stone axes and the pottery. They occur in every settlement. Stone is imperishable, and clay well fired lasts almost as well. They vary according to age, place, fashion, and conditions, and form the foundation for all comparative, “typological” study.
The Neolithic period gained its name from the polished stone implements which then appeared. Paleolithic man had learned by long experience the value of flint as the best material for his tools. He had learned to chip and flake it; first by blows, then by pressure, until the
During the upper Paleolithic period, especially in the Magdalenian Epoch, daggers, lance-heads, awls, and needles were made of bone. For pointed implements, flint, while sometimes used, was far less suitable, except when the point was very short, as in engraving and carving tools.
In Scandinavia the kitchen-midden period was followed by an “arctic” culture, so called because of its distribution in the far north. Here we find implements of slate or schist polished only along the edges. This seems like a very natural intermediate stage. We do not know just where those attempts were first made. They may have been made at different points in Asia and Europe and at different times, and thus there may have been several independent centres of discovery and of radiation.
The lake-dwellers used a variety of material; indeed, they seem to have been quite expert practical mineralogists. Characteristic is their use of certain rocks which combined great toughness and hardness, and were thus superior to flint; so chloromelanite, saussurite, nephrite, and jadeite. These minerals are rare, and the implements made of them were small chisel-like
The axe of the kitchen-midden
AXES FROM LAKE-DWELLINGS SHOWING ATTACHMENT TO HANDLES
The lake-dwellers followed a different and improved method. They selected from the bed of a stream a smooth pebble of somewhat flattened and elongated egg shape. With a flint flake or saw
We cannot trace the variety of axes characteristic of different times, places, and uses. One, which from its resemblance to a shoemaker’s last has been called by the Germans the “Schuhleistenbeil,” demands mention.
Bone was still used for pointed tools and weapons. A bundle of sharp pointed ribs found at Robenhausen had probably been used for hackling flax, Horn was used for sockets for the smaller chisels, and for a variety of other purposes. Wooden bowls, scoops, and other articles occur among the remains of the lake-dwellings.
Flint held much the same place in Neolithic industry as iron or steel with us. Its quality varied greatly in different localities. Our Neolithic ancestors had discovered that it worked better when freshly mined than when long exposed and weathered. Hence a mine of flint of the best quality was as valuable as a field of iron ore or a gold mine to-day. The most celebrated source of flint in France was Grand Pressigny, near Tours, Department of Indre-et-Loire.
At Spiennes, in Belgium, they sunk shafts
During the Bronze period Halle was a seat of wealth, and the large amount of copper found here suggests that the production of salt had begun here before the close of Neolithic times. Hoernes says that the production of salt at Hallstadt, a source of great wealth and luxury during the earliest Iron Epoch, and of no small extent during the Bronze period, had its beginnings in Neolithic days. The value of salt in trade or barter can hardly be overestimated.
A very small amount of gold, mostly in the form of beads, has been found in the Neolithic monuments of France erected at the very close of this period. Occurring native in small nuggets
Objects of copper were found by Pumpelly at Anau contemporary with the appearance of turbary sheep, about 6000 B. C.
Copper was very useful for ornaments, especially rings, armlets, and bracelets; for pointed objects like needles, pins, awls, and even daggers; to a certain extent for knives and razors. Copper axes were modelled at first after old stone patterns. This metal had one fatal defect, however; it would not hold an edge. Copper
We must bear in mind that the means of transportation were few and inadequate. The wheeled cart appeared during the Bronze period, but we have no proof of its use earlier. The horse was not yet domesticated in Europe, and did not come into use in the Orient much before 2000 B. C.
We know that the people of the shell-heaps must have ventured some distance from shore, fishing for cod. The transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic might almost be characterized as a
Returning to the Baltic region,
Our knowledge of Neolithic boats is still very incomplete.
The wares exchanged in this trade were limited in material and value. Metals and metallic objects were still unknown, except as copper and gold came in before the end of the period. Still, there were many objects which met a fairly wide demand. We have already seen that
The nephrite and jadeite of the lake-dwellings were long supposed to be imports from eastern
Scandinavia was already showing its appreciation of beauty of form and finish, which made
BOATS FROM ROCK CARVINGS IN BOHUSLAN, SWEDEN (EARLY BRONZE AGE)
As Hoernes
Thus the two most beautiful, precious, and desirable materials of the time have come together. Both are easy of transport. A trade which has long been preparing or proceeding on a small scale expands rapidly, perhaps suddenly, and ushers in a new period, which, after all, chiefly carries on or brings into prominence that which had begun or advanced during the preceding age.
More interesting and, perhaps, more important than exchange of flint axes and amber is the spread of patterns, methods, influences; of new ideas and stimuli from mind to mind and people to people. A new implement, like the mace-heads and arm-rings, of which we have spoken; a new form of axe or dagger; the form and ornament of pottery; the building of dolmens or the spread of immigration with the accompanying change of cult and thought—all these brought not only economic improvement but growth of mind. Sophus MÜller, and Montelius in a less degree, may have been somewhat extreme in their emphasis on the importance of oriental and Mediterranean influences and leadership, but their main thesis was correct.
This does not mean that northern Europe was a passive recipient. It accepted and adopted whatever and only what it would, and probably refused many a valuable suggestion. In many cases it improved on the patterns or example of its teacher and inspirer. The art of
The result of this exchange of products and ideas will be more apparent during the next period. Trade-routes and lines of communication will then become far more clear and fixed. But it is important to notice that these routes are already opening in all directions, perhaps more numerous because still experimental, tentative, and somewhat vague. The
In any study of the industries of this period the manufacture of pottery is of the greatest interest and most fundamental importance. Pottery is to the archÆologist what characteristic fossils are to the paleontologist. It is almost indestructible. In its texture, form, and ornament it affords wide scope for individual or tribal skill and invention, and yet over wide areas the general type shows a remarkable unity and persistency. A single sherd may often tell a long and reliable story. The pottery of the Mediterranean basin and of many oriental localities is a fairly sure guide to the age of a long-buried settlement and to the relations of its people with other, often distant regions. The chronology and much of the history of Egypt, Troy, and Crete, and many ancient settlements of Greece and Italy, are based largely on the study of their pottery. It is far more expressive and informing than the average stone or bone implement.
The time is not yet ripe, however, for such deductions from the study of the pottery of
Pottery appears first in the transition epoch from Paleolithic to Neolithic, at Campigny and in the kitchen-middens. Long before this time there must have been containers for fluids. A concavity in the rock may have been the first reservoir and a mussel-shell the first drinking-cup. Wherever gourds occurred they were doubtless hollowed out and made most convenient jars and dishes. Vessels of bark and wood probably came into use early in the north. Skins of animals tightly sewn with sinew and with well-greased seams formed excellent bottles, still used in the Orient. Where the art of plaiting twigs, splints, or reeds into mats and baskets had been discovered, it was not a long step to coat the inside with clay and dry or
POTTERY FROM NEOLITHIC GRAVES
The pottery of northern Europe can be distributed into a few groups or general types, every one of which is wide-spread and fairly distinct, though mixture or combination of types is not uncommon, especially along the boundaries of distribution where two types meet. There is much difference of opinion and discussion concerning details, but general agreement as to fundamentals and essentials.
Intermediate or “hybrid” forms also occur. The classification is hardly natural and is responsible for much confusion and dispute. It can have only temporary and provisional value. These three groups are:
1. Banded pottery, CÉramique rubanÉe, Bandkeramik.
2. Corded pottery, CÉramique cordÉe, Schnurkeramik.
3. Calyciform pottery, Vases caliciforms, Zonenbecher.
They differ mostly in ornamentation, but often also as distinctly in form.
1. Banded pottery occurs all over Europe except northeast of the Oder, perhaps also in Great Britain. Its shape is usually that of a spheroidal gourd with the upper fourth removed; and its system of ornament may have been derived from the system of cords by which the jar was once suspended. Sometimes we find a low neck, rim, or collar around the large mouth. The ornament in what seems to be its most primitive form consists of lines marked in the clay, arranged parallel to one another in bands covering most of the body of the jar. These bands, either broad or narrow, run in a zigzag or saw-tooth pattern horizontally around the base. By doubling each saw-tooth we get a diamond-shaped area. Even this simple ornament admits of a large variety of patterns. But the bands may be curved instead of angular, forming scrolls, meanders, or spirals. Logically, these should represent the latest development of the type. But the spiral may yet prove to be actually older than the angle. The bands may be raised and projecting (Bosnia) or be merely painted on a flat, sometimes burnished,
The banded pottery of southwest Germany and the Rhine region is found in dwellings as well as graves, usually accompanied by the mattock or the deer-horn pick, but lance-heads fail. The rectangular houses belonged to people of a settled and quite advanced agriculture. We find cellars, and barns or granaries. The dwellings are single or in groups, sometimes, as at Grosgartach, forming quite a village or town. They are situated by preference on the loess terraces of the streams and rivers, near enough to the water for boat communication. The pottery varies in fineness and beauty according to the size of the dwelling and therefore the wealth of its owner. Social differences, rank, and fashion are appearing in truly modern form.
2. Corded Pottery. The most characteristic and, perhaps, culminating form is the Amphora
3. Calyciform Pottery, Zonen-or Glocken-becher, has been by some united with Corded Pottery. It has the shape of a goblet or inverted bell with flaring rim and flat base.
POTTERY
| A. | Banded pottery. |
| B. | 1. Origin of banded ornament from cords suspending a more or less hemispherical vessel derived from the hollow gourd. |
| 2. Corded ornament derived from suspension of flask (Amphora). | |
| C. | Cups and Kugelamphore (globular flask) from Groszgartach. |
The ornament is in circular zones separated by bands of well-polished surface covering the whole outside. It is found in Asia Minor,
The incrusted pottery characterized by incised lines filled with a white material may have had a distinct origin and development, though its technique has often been borrowed and applied to other types. The pottery of the oldest lake-dwellers is crude, coarse, with little or no ornament. Hence it is difficult to connect it with any other type.
Form and shape of pottery are often quite or very persistent. We cannot understand why the base of so many jars was left rounded, or in some old lake-dwellings pointed, when it might easily have been flattened, apparently to good advantage. But even the form, and still more the ornament, changes according to time, place, and fashion; hence these are very useful in tracing periods and cultures and their relations. Where different types meet there is usually more or less change or modification, often difficult to interpret. Our knowledge of European pottery is still small and unsatisfactory, but it has already been of much use in tracing migrations of culture and relations between provinces often widely separated.
CHAPTER VIII
NEOLITHIC CHRONOLOGY
“WE must imagine Europe in upper Paleolithic times again as a terminal region, a great peninsula toward which the human emigrants from the east and from the south came to mingle and to superpose their cultures. These races took the grand migration routes which had been followed by other waves of animal life before them; they were pressed upon from behind by the increasing populations from the east; they were attracted to western Europe as a fresh and wonderful game country, where food in the forests, in the meadows, and in the streams abounded in unparalleled profusion.... Between the retreating Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers Europe was freely open toward the eastern plains of the Danube, extending to central and southern Asia; on the north, however, along the Baltic, the climate was still too inclement for a wave of human migration, and there is no trace of man along these northern shores until the close of the Upper Paleolithic, nor of any residence of man in the Scandinavian peninsula until the
We must now attempt to determine the succession of these great changes in the climate and face of Europe, and then see if we can fix any dates for some of the changes and for the introduction of new cultures.
In the oscillations of the ice-front marking the final retreat of the Alpine glaciers there were three epochs of advance. Two of these, the BÜhl and Gschnitz advances, with the interval of retreat between them, were occupied by the Magdalenian or last epoch of Upper Paleolithic time. The third advance, the Daun Epoch, or perhaps the latter part of the Gschnitz and the first part of the Daun, is represented by the Azilian-Tardenoisian Epoch, a period of transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic time. These changes have been clearly traced by Osborn.
We are most closely concerned with the changes which took place around the Baltic in Denmark and Scandinavia during this post-glacial retreat of the ice. Here also we find the same disappearance of the tundra and “barren-ground” fauna already noticed in France, and the appearance of a park-flora of forests interspersed with open glades or meadows. But we
1. The last ice-sheet had covered most of Scandinavia except the western half of Denmark and, perhaps, the most southern portion of Sweden. But a broad mass of ice covered most of Schleswig, at least the eastern half of Holstein, and a fairly wide zone of land south of and more or less parallel to the south shore of the Baltic. To the eastward and northward a great sea extended to the Arctic Ocean. This earliest stage marked the farthest advance of the ice just before the final retreat.
2. Slowly and gradually the ice retreated until finally it occupied only the mountains of the backbone of Scandinavia. The region of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, a large part of Sweden and a good portion of Finland were covered by a great sheet of water, the Yoldia Sea, connected by a broad sound at the present Skager Rack with the North Sea and Atlantic, and still opening widely into the Arctic Ocean northeastward. The submerged regions had been greatly depressed, especially in the north. The clays deposited along the shores of the sea are now raised often to a height of one hundred
SUCCESSIVE STAGES AND FORMS OF BALTIC SEA
(The white represents the ice; dark gray represents the land; light gray the Baltic Sea.)
It is important to our later study to notice that these clays, which are thick and fine-grained, are composed of thin layers of alternating dark material deposited in fall or winter, and lighter, more sandy, brought down by the spring freshets. The temperature of the sea could hardly have been much above freezing-point, as is shown by the presence of arctic forms of mollusks, like Yoldia arctica and Astarte borealis. The land-plants of this epoch, the so-called Dryas flora, are dwarf cold tundra forms, now occurring in Spitzbergen, Lapland, and Arctic Russia and Siberia. But certain plants, especially in Sweden, lead us to infer that while the winters were long and severe, the short summers were warm or even hot. This does not surprise us in northern tundra regions. Reindeer still lived in the region. This Yoldia Epoch is our second great post-glacial stage. Man had apparently not yet reached Denmark, though some reindeer hunters probably roamed over Germany.
3. Toward the end of the Yoldia Epoch the land rose in southwest Sweden, connecting this country with Denmark and cutting the connection of the remains of the Yoldia Sea with the North Sea. A similar emergence in Finland
4. The elevation and emergence of land so characteristic of the Ancylus Epoch was followed by a depression of this region, especially in its southern portions. That part of the Ancylus Lake corresponding to the Baltic regained broader and deeper connections with the North Sea than it has at present. Hence the waters of the Baltic contained a larger percentage of salt than now. The marine life, Littorina littorea, Tapes, and others, testifies to a rise in temperature since the Ancylus Epoch. Oaks
5. A fifth stage ushers in the full Neolithic period. Between the Littorina stage and the genuine Neolithic culture of lake-dwellings and megaliths there is a considerable gap in our knowledge, a period during which agriculture and domestic animals were brought in and utensils and pottery and general conditions were greatly improved.
We may now venture to attempt to gain an absolute chronology of more or less definite dates for the appearance of the cultures which we have noticed. We must clearly recognize that our best results can be only tentative and provisional. A careful study and comparison of the pottery of northern Europe will some day
According to Montelius,
| REGION | YEAR B. C. | |
| COPPER | BRONZE | |
| Egypt and ChaldÆa | 5000 | 3000 |
| Troy, Greece, and Sicily | 3000 | 2500 |
| Hungary and Spain | 3000 | 2000 |
| Middle Europe and France | 2500 | 2000 |
| North Germany and Scandinavia | 2500 | 1900 |
These dates mark the beginning of the more or less general use of metals, not the first appearance of a few imported articles. Some authorities would place the beginning of the Bronze period a few centuries earlier, and that of the introduction of copper some 500 years earlier.
In attempting to determine the date of the beginning of the Neolithic period we may begin with a remote point of departure for comparison and select the BÜhl stage and the beginning of the Magdalenian Epoch. Nuesch made a careful estimate from the deposits at Schweizersbild near Schaffhausen, Switzerland. His method of estimating is described fully by Obermaier.
We may now turn to the great Scandinavian ice-sheet, whose retreat may have begun somewhat later and proceeded more slowly on account of its more northerly position. Here De Geer has made a report based on a very careful study of the annual layers of deposition formed during the glacial retreat. We have already seen that the material brought down by the spring freshets differs in color and texture from that of late summer and autumn. Hence these annual layers are almost as distinct and as easily counted as the rings in the trunk of a tree. This method promises great accuracy of results, and the thickness and character of the layers and their included organic remains throw much light on the climatic and other conditions under which they were laid down. But even here the length of certain periods of halt in the glacial retreat can be only very roughly approximated. The number of annual layers of deposit in the Swedish Lake Ragunda
Says Sollas: “The Ancylus Lake was in existence at a time when the ice had very nearly, though not quite, accomplished its full retreat, i. e., a little more than 7,000 years ago (the length of post-glacial time); and Baron de Geer, although he has not yet been able to bring the beach of the lake into connection with his system of measurements, thinks, as he has kindly informed me, that its probable date may be 7,500 years counting from the present.”
Menzel, in a chart embodying the results of his study of De Geer’s work, places the beginning of the retreat of the ice in Germany at 21,000 B. C., the maximum of the Littorina depression and epoch of kitchen-middens at 6000 B. C., full Neolithic at 4500 B. C., beginning of Bronze period 1700 B. C.
Keilhack, basing his study on the silting and dune-formation at Swinepforte, estimates that the time elapsed since the maximum of the Littorina depression down to the present has been about 7,000 years, making the date of the depression about 5000 B. C. He considers his estimate as somewhat more probable than De Geer’s.
Anderson has called attention to the change of position of the earth’s axis at different times. When the position of the earth’s axis was such as to give most sunlight in Sweden, the midnight sun was above the horizon at Karesuanda, the most northern astronomical station, 62 days. During the time of most unfavorable position it was above the horizon only 38 days, a difference of 24 days. This change should influence climate and vegetation. The period of maximum sunshine, according to this view, was 9,000 years ago, about 7000 B. C., somewhat earlier than the maximum of the Littorina depression. It would tend to give a climatic optimum at nearly the same time as estimated by Menzel.
Steenstrup
The pines had a hard struggle for life at first. They are dwarfed and their rings of annual growth are very thin, sometimes as many as seventy to the inch of thickness. Still some of these dwarfs attain the very respectable age of 300 to 400 years. Gradually they prospered, and in the upper layers there are trunks more than a metre in diameter. All these facts point to early and long occupation. Steenstrup reckoned the age of the oldest layers of these accumulations at 10,000 to 12,000 years, dating their beginnings therefore at 8000 to 10,000 B. C. Pine was still growing in the neighborhood of the shell-heaps, or the capercailzie or pine partridge would probably not have occurred.
But in the shell-heaps we find only oak charcoal, not pine. This was at least beginning to retreat and give place to the oak. At Maglemose we find pine charcoal but oak pollen grains in layers apparently of the same age as the settlement. Placing the shell-heaps in the early part of the pine epoch would date them as early as 7000 B. C., or even earlier, according to this chronometer. Hence the older writers, who placed the shell-heaps in the pine
Steenstrup’s study, a work of genius, is entirely compatible with and probably implies a considerably later date than we used to accept.
The following table shows the dates assigned by different students to Maglemose and the shell-heaps:
| B. C. | B. C. | |||
| Obermaier | Maglemose, | 10,000 | Shell-heaps, | 8000 |
| Forrer | Shell-heaps, | 8000-6000 | ||
| Sollas | Maglemose, | 7,500 | ||
| Osborn | Maglemose, | 7,000 | ||
| Menzel (Chart) | Shell-heaps, | 6000 | ||
| Keilhack | Shell-heaps, | 5000 |
The shell-heaps and Maglemose hardly seem to differ in age as much as Obermaier thinks; De Geer’s study was very careful and certainly demands respectful attention. The tendency toward later dates for these cultures seems to be strong and increasing. If we place Maglemose at 7000 to 7500 B. C., and the shell-heaps 6500 to 6000 we have probably made them as ancient as the facts can well allow. It is better to hold judgment still somewhat in suspense. Even if Obermaier should yet prove to be correct in his apparently extreme dates, it is still evident that the Neolithic period began late
Our records are scanty for the earlier portions of the more or less than 5,000 years which we have allowed for the Neolithic period.
We have already described the rude, somewhat triangular axe of the shell-heaps. The axe of Paleolithic time had had nearly the shape of an almond. We will compare the pointed end to the back, and the cutting edge to the edge of our axe or carpenter’s hatchet. The earliest polished axes of Denmark still retained nearly the shape of a somewhat long and thin almond.
The second form, the dunn—or schmalnackiges Beil—may be compared to a long and flattened almond with a small part at the pointed end removed and a narrow strip cut off from each side. The flatter surfaces nearly meet at the end opposite the cutting edge, leaving this end thin. The surfaces have become much more nearly flat, and the cross-section a rectangle with somewhat short ends and slightly curved sides. These belong to the period of the earliest stone graves or still earlier. They could be easily fastened in a wooden handle. This form is very common in Scandinavia.
The third form, the breit—or dick—nackiges Beil, has almost exactly the shape of a thick chisel-blade with broad and thick back opposite the edge, and is rectangular in cross-section. It appears in the later megalithic tombs and the underground stone vaults or cists.
| Thin-backed axe. | Hammer axes—Late Neolithic. |
| PalÆolithic hand-stones—“Coups-de-Poing.” |
FORMS OF PREHISTORIC AXE
Late in the Neolithic period, usually after the introduction of copper, we find an axe—or “hammer-axe”—shorter and much thicker, somewhat in the shape of a very light stonemason’s hammer, and with a hole for the handle.
We have thus in the axes and the megaliths a well-established sequence of forms, but no means of fixing dates except at the beginning and end of the whole period. Apparently there was a long time between the Scandinavian shell-heaps and the fully established Neolithic culture, of which we have practically no records.
Peculiar types of axes (except the mattock), and the megaliths do not occur in the province of the banded pottery, which itself will probably some day give us the clew to a system of chronology. The pottery of Thessaly, Thrace, and certain parts of the Balkan Peninsula is being gradually synchronized with that of MycenÆan and pre-MycenÆan Greece. Important discoveries seem reasonably certain in a not distant future. We can only wait for them with what patience we can assume.
Our real and definite knowledge of the age of the lake-dwellings is hardly better. Hoops tells us that they belong to the Beech period of the Swiss flora. But this period may be much older in Switzerland than in Scandinavia; how much older we do not know. The underground stone burial-cysts of Switzerland look late. The small number of the villages containing no trace of copper and the high grade of household arts and technique in even the oldest of them suggest the same conclusion. Here again it seems dangerous to even conjecture a date.
Montelius, whose opinion on these subjects is certainly of great value, says: “All things considered, I am convinced that the first stone graves were erected here in the north more than 3,000 years before Christ.”
CHART I. POSTGLACIAL STAGES
RETREAT OF ICE AND CHANGES
| SCANDINAVIA | WESTERN AND MIDDLE EUROPE | PARALLELS IN ASIA AND ELSEWHERE | DATE |
| 1. Aachen Stage. | 24,000 (to 40,000) B.C. | ||
| Ice-retreats in northern Germany. | Solutrean. Dry and Cold. Steppe and Tundra Fauna. | ||
| Swedish-Finnish Moraines. | 2. BÜhl Stage. EarlyMagdalenian. Moist and cold. Tundra. | 16,000 (to 24,000) B.C. | |
| Yoldia Period. Dryas Flora. | Middle Magd. Steppe Loess formed. | Susa founded. | |
| Glaciers in Mountains. Ancylus Lake. Dryas, Birch, PineMaglemose. | 3. Gschnitz Stage. Late Magdalenian. | Anau founded. Neolithic Settlements in Crete. | 10,000 B.C.? |
| Littorina Depression. | 4. Daun Stage. | 6,000 B. C.? | |
| Optimum Climate. | Azilian-Tard. | (7,000)B.C.? | |
| Oak. Shell-heaps. | Campignian. | Sumerians in Babylonia. | |
| Full Neolithic. Beech. | Full Neolithic. | Predynastic Egyptians. Copper Period. | 4,000 (-6,000) B. C.? |
| Bronze Period. | Bronze Period. | XI-XIII Egyptian Dynasties. | 1,900- 2,500 B.C. |
CHART II. CHANGES OF CLIMATE IN DENMARK
1. Arctic climate. Temperature about 8° Cent. Younger Yoldia layers, Older Dryas period. Flora: Dryas octopetala, Salix polaris.
2. Subarctic climate. Temp. 8°-12° Cent. Older Dryas. Flora as in 1.
3. Climate becomes moderate, continental. First maximum temp. 12°-15° Cent. Birches, poplars, junipers.
4. Climate subarctic. Temp. 8°-12° Cent. Birches.
5. Climate arctic. Temp. 8° Cent. Salix polaris.
6. Climate subarctic. Temp. 8°-12°. Younger Dryas period.
7. Temperature moderates. Dry continental climate. a. Aspen Epoch; b. Pine period with oaks beginning to appear=Ancylus period.
8. Moderate insular climate. Temp. 15°-17° Cent. Climatic optimum. Older Tapes layers, Maximum of Littorina depression. Shell-heaps.
9. Temp. 15°-17° Cent. Probably slightly cooler than 8. Oak Epoch. Beech begins to appear but is still rare. Younger Tapes (Dosinia) layers.
10. Moderate insular climate about 16.1° Cent. Beech Epoch. Mya layers.
These climatic changes seem to argue for a comparatively recent date for the Littorina depression and the shell-heaps.
CHAPTER IX
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.
Osborn has called attention to the fact that from Paleolithic to Neolithic time Europe gave rise to no new races.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
It would hardly have crossed Europe from the west. Breuil
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,
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
CHAPTER X
NEOLITHIC RELIGION
MAN’S ancestors, as we have seen, owed their progress to their training, policing, and harassing by stronger and better-armed competitors. The earliest vertebrates developed a notochordal rod of cartilage, and then a backbone, by the habit of swimming forced upon them by the mollusks and crustacea which held the rich feeding-grounds of the ocean bottom along the shores. In early Paleozoic time the sharks crowded the ganoids in successive waves toward and into fresh water, until finally some crawled out on the shore as amphibia.
Land life and air-breathing gave the possibility of warm blood and high development of brain, and a strong tendency toward viviparous and finally intrauterine development of the embryo. Reptiles harassed mammals into the attainment of a certain amount of wariness and intelligence. The comparatively weak Primates were kept in the trees and forced to develop hand and brain by the fierce and well-armed
The apes had become accustomed to life in the trees, and found it safe and comfortable. A change of climate compelled those dwelling farthest north to seek their living on the ground. Most of them fled southward, many became extinct, a few came down and adapted themselves to the new mode of life. Nature was in no sense a “fairy god-mother” to them, but a stern, harsh disciplinarian whose method of education was “not a word and a blow and the blow first, but the blow without the word, leaving the pupil to find out why his ears had been boxed”
Some things he could understand: he learned to avoid or to ward off many dangers. Others seemed altogether beyond his understanding or control. Here he could only wonder; but the wise old Greeks knew that wonder was the mother of wisdom. He wondered at storm, lightning, hail, and flood; at disease and death, and a hundred other things. He sat in the mouth of his cave and watched that strange creature fire devouring the wood and sending smoke and sparks skyward. He thought a very little in a dull, stupid way, dozed and dreamed and awaked to wonder again. Or he saw fire raging through the forest and fled for his life. But it was warming and fascinating, and somehow akin to himself. Did it not devour wood and lap up water on the hearth?
He seems to have come to feel rather than recognize that he was surrounded by invisible powers, in some respects like himself but vastly more powerful, who knew what he was doing, and who would hurt him if he did certain things and might help him if he did others. Certain places were to be strictly avoided, certain objects must not be touched, certain things must never be done, or could be permitted only
How had he come to believe this? Largely through hard experience of nature’s buffets, whenever he acted contrary to this hypothesis or feeling. His religion was largely one of fear fitted for a savage mind, though not without a mingling of hope.
Of course in us cultured folk perfect love, sentimentality, softness of fibre, heedlessness, forgetfulness, and general superficiality of life—to make a very inadequate list—have combined to cast out fear, “for fear hath torment”; and we thank God loudly that we are so much wiser than our benighted ancestors. Even our New England fathers feared God, though they feared nothing else, but we fear only everything else except God and law. But the unlucky scientific wight living and working in the shadow of adamantine law remains in hopeless bondage to fear.
These great powers might not necessarily be hopelessly hostile. They might be appeased or won over, possibly controlled. What could he
The pictures on the cave-walls of France probably had a magical or religious purpose. Here we find very few representations of human beings. But in a rock-painting at Cogul, possibly Neolithic though probably older, we see a group of women apparently engaged in some rite of magic or religion. The occurrence of amulets also does not surprise us.
We cannot make a study of primitive ritual magic and religion, their origin, form, and content. But even our hasty glance shows us that
The conspicuous features of the religion of this ancient period of primeval stupidity, or Urdummheit, to borrow the German word, were the host of invisible powers or dÆmons, and the law of taboo, the forbidden thing. Breach of taboo rendered not only the individual lawbreaker but the whole tribe, however innocent, liable to punishment. The whole community was responsible for every deed of any and every one of its members, and suffered or prospered accordingly. When Agamemnon had wronged the priest of Apollo, the god shot his arrows not at Agamemnon but throughout the innocent Greek host. The children of Israel were routed at Ai, because Achan had taken the devoted or forbidden thing. This stage of tribal responsibility seems to be practically universal. It gave the law an iron grip on the people, tamed them, and made them march in lock-step, a necessary
All these forces and influences were acting throughout the Neolithic and later periods, and are still with us. Perhaps we can gain a tolerably distinct and correct view of Neolithic religion among the Mediterranean peoples by a glance at the ancient Greek mysteries. Students of Greek art and literature quite naturally have been very slow to take interest in these crude, often ugly and indecent, rituals. But for this very reason the primitive stands out all the more sharply defined against the brilliant, beautiful, artistic Olympian religion of Greek art and literature, and particularly of Homer. Students like Professor Murray could hardly be expected to explore these lower strata with great sympathy. For this very reason, as somewhat unwilling witnesses to whatever is good or great in primitive Greek ritual, their testimony is all the more valuable, though probably hardly as just as that of Miss Harrison.
We find here very few traces of the chief Olympian divinities, which belong to a later age than the objects of worship or cult of these ancient peoples whom we venture to call Pelasgi. They worshipped powers or dÆmons in indefinite numbers, but with no individual names: represented, if at all, by emblems or symbols, very rarely in bodily human form. Of these spirits of death, disease, madness, and calamity there were “thousands upon thousands, from whom man can never escape or hide.” So much is mainly a heritage from Paleolithic times. But the conception of spirit has grown more clear, distinct, and elevated, as we saw in our study of burial rites.
But Neolithic men lived in communities and devoted themselves largely to tillage of the
Neolithic man, with his new discoveries and industries, had given new hostages to fortune, and a new and wider scope of application to the old doctrine of taboo and of tribal responsibility. This strengthened the hold of the priest or magician on the hopes, fears, and faith of his people. The law is going deeper as well as wider. There arises an individual feeling of pollution and of the need of expiation which will blaze out in the oldest Greek tragedies as almost a veritable sense of sin. We might almost say that a sense of morality toward the spirit world is now appearing in a religion previously almost or quite unmoral. We may easily overestimate the extent and power of the change, but we can hardly be mistaken in recognizing its dawn and the vast germinal possibilities of this dim feeling or conception.
In agriculture and throughout nature seed-time was followed by harvest, fall, and winter’s gloom and death. Then in the next spring there was a return, a rebirth or a resurrection. If the seed failed to come up, if the blade withered or was blighted, it was because the vegetation spirit or dÆmon had failed to reappear or had been reborn weak or sickly, and all this because some one had broken taboo, had touched the forbidden thing. This must be prevented at all cost, they must help the spirit. Hence there must be every year a time of purification, of renovation, when the old garments and utensils and everything which could carry the pollution of death were cast off or cleansed.
All these conclusions, and some others of equal importance to which we will return later, are expressed or symbolized in the great Dromena, festivals, mysteries, or whatever you may call these rites of pre-Homeric Greece. Then, for a time, they are partially, though never totally, eclipsed, by the brilliant beauty of the Olympian religion with its glorious temples, statues, and other works of art.
The Olympian gods had conquered the world. They practise neither agriculture nor industry, nor any honest work. They fight and feast and drink and play. They are conquering chieftains, royal buccaneers. The Olympian religion had
There was vastly more vitality in the ancient crude symbols and chaos of conceptions than in the ordered and artistic Olympian hierarchy with its marvellous representations of the gods in human or superhuman form and beauty. Even its art and literature could not save it. It had lost its mysticism. The old Neolithic religion, handed down by peasants and artisans reoccupied the field, transformed sometimes almost beyond recognition, like the Ugly Duckling of the fairy tale. It returned triumphant through sheer power of unlimited vitality and adaptability. Plato draws his finest illustrations from its mysteries, out of which, also, the Greek drama arose. Paul quotes from them or from a similar stratum of belief.
Some of the many sources of its vitality are obvious. It was rooted in the firm conviction of the existence of a spiritual world toward and into which its every rootlet was forcing its way and from which it drew nourishment and power. We might better change the illustration and say that it was slowly developing a spiritual eye which peered into a higher world and developed in keenness and clearness of vision in response to the higher pulsations. By patient experiment and experience, which produced a hope that could not make ashamed and a faith in which hope and experiment combined, it was feeling its way into spiritual knowledge. It knew nothing of practical science or of material cause and effect. But its world pulsated with the universal life. It recognized the law of forbidden things and the sure penalty of law-breaking. It had a tribal conscience and recognized the need of purification. It had the promise, at least, of individual conscience and consciousness of sin.
Its symbol was the mystery which lifted only a corner of the veil and left an abundant opportunity for wonder, imagination, thought, and mysticism, which was entirely lacking in the perfect statue and the finished creed. It made man, through its sympathetic magic, a co
The introduction of agriculture had produced another most important change in religious views and ritual. In tillage the earth brought forth and gave birth to the crops which furnished their chief food supply, and probably, in their view, to animals and men also; just as the human mother gives birth to the child. Hence there was a wide-spread belief in, and cult of, an earth divinity, of course female, or in a goddess or dÆmon of fertility. She is sometimes or usually accompanied by a male partner, companion or son, but he occupies a lower place.
| FEMALE IDOLS, THRACE | |
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| FEMALE IDOL, ANAU Reproduced from “Explorations in Turkestan.” Carnegie Institute of Washington, Publishers. | |
This cult of the goddess seems to have been a marked feature of Neolithic religion.
We have studied these ancient cults in Greece and the Mediterranean basin because here they are easily discovered and can be restored. They are covered by only a thin layer of later cults which could not destroy their vitality. When
We notice first of all that we find one race extending northward along the coast of France into England and Denmark, the zone of the megalithic monuments. In this zone we find figurines and carvings of divinities. Here DÉchelette tells us that the female divinity was undoubtedly preferred as the guardian of the tombs.
In southeastern Europe, around the valley of the Danube, at Cucuteni, Jablanica, and elsewhere, we find figurines, and here again the female divinity is at least the more prominent, if
The Balder-myth is familiar to us all. He is a “rare exotic,” entirely out of place in that circle of berserker gods and brutal giants who lived in or over against the Norse Valhalla, but would have found himself at home in the land and times of Dionysus. Have we possibly here an intrusion of a far more ancient religious element which even the rude dwellers in a harsh Northland could not forget, and would not allow to die?
Usually accompanying the cult of the goddess we find frequent and wide-spread traces of a related trend of thought, mother-right (Mutterrecht), maternal kinship, matriarchy: under which were generally included the reckoning of descent in the female line, rights of inheritance by the daughter, hence female rights of property and general high social and economic position of woman. These features need not be united—they
Mother-right, to use the most general term, survived, partially at least, down to historic time in Egypt. It persisted in Asia Minor. Perhaps it crops out in the story of the Amazons. We find traces of it in ancient law and custom in northern Europe. Says Hoernes: “Among the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, and Slavs, remains of mother-right occur even in historic times.”
Something akin to mother-right, and to a high position and dominating influence of woman in the family and in society, is only what we should expect at this time. We have seen that women were the first great discoverers and inventors; discoverers and founders of all our household arts and crafts as well as of most of our science. Women were the first spinners
The establishment of agriculture was followed by the cult of the earth-mother, who gave birth to all the fruits of the ground and probably to all life. The goddess, with or without a male companion, was the head of the hierarchy. This again could not have been without its influence. Says Miss Harrison: “Woman to primitive man is a thing at once weak and magical, to be oppressed, yet feared. She is charged with powers of child-bearing denied to man, powers only half understood, sources of attraction but also of danger and repulsion, forces that all over the world seem to fill him with dim terror. The attitude of man to woman and, though perhaps to a less degree, of woman to man is still
One other fact deserves notice. In times of dearth the savage man always eats up all the grain reserved as seed for the next year, and there is none to sow. This is the rock on which attempts to introduce agriculture among savages or nomads have usually been shipwrecked. Here the priest, or perhaps priestess, of the goddess came to her aid, armed with the weapon of taboo. Against this alliance the poor, stupid, clumsy, and slow-witted Neolithic man struggled in vain. He could vent his fury by pulling his wife about by the hair, but this availed little or naught. He had to submit and be resigned.
Female magic increases in power as we approach the frontier and frontier life. At the fall of the Roman Empire northern tribes swept away the old civilization. Grass grew in the ruined cities, only villages remained inhabited. The priests, by a liberal preaching of hell and other dire torments, attempted to subdue these barbarians to law and to introduce order. Agriculture and industry rearose or returned slowly. Finally after the “dark ages” great cathedrals
Some one has said that our Neolithic ancestors, especially the megalith-builders, were priest-ridden. If he had added that they were tamed and led, and very possibly diligently hen-pecked, by a veritable matriarchate, I suspect that he would have discovered and correctly estimated the two great sources of their marvellous progress. For at this stage, as at some others, the priests and the women were the Élite, and the government was, therefore, ideal for its day.
But the tendency was based upon something far broader and deeper than changing social and economic conditions and religious feeling. Even the “mere man” must admit that it was biological and natural. “Nature,” says Humboldt, “has taken woman under her special protection.” She has always been partial to the female. Throughout the long period of mammalian evolution she has showed very little regard for the males. The more they fight and kill one another off, the fewer useless individuals to feed. The same tendency reaches its logical
Zieht uns hinan.”
The buried Pelasgic religion regained its rightful place. It had more vital reality than the Olympian. Has the great Roman Catholic Church, in its worship of the Virgin, retained at least the symbol of an element of vital reality which we Protestants, in our recoil from so-called “Mariolatry,” have neglected to our cost in favor of a purely paternal conception of God? We leave this question to the theologians.
CHAPTER XI
PROGRESS
IT is a far cry and long and weary road from the ape descending from the trees and the ape-man shuffling over the ground, keeping close to his arboreal refuge, to the lake-dweller and builder of stone monuments. There was very little in the appearance or structure of the ape-man to encourage great hopes for the future. The sleek, graceful, wiry, well-armed cats were far more attractive, promising, and thrilling actors on the world’s stage. Why did not they progress, win the future, and insure that all the future meetings of art and learning should be held on the back fence? They certainly did not progress—that is a stubborn fact.
They had largely or completely exhausted the possibilities of their special line of development; as cats they were perfect and could dominate the portion of the world in which as cats they were solely interested. This was an impassable bar to progress. Why should they change? They were so thoroughly conformed to the environment of their time and conditions that any marked change would have been a disadvantage. But when conditions did change, and the fashion
Man did not make this mistake. Isolated tribes and even races might settle down in contentment, become completely adapted to easy conditions of life, and stagnate or degenerate. But a saving remnant was always marching out into new physical or social surroundings, exposed to new needs, fears, and opportunities, and readapting itself to meet and profit by them. Man was not, and could not be, precocious. He was always a bundle of possibilities and great expectations, which he has even now only begun to realize.
Overpopulation, or other pressure in his primeval home, resulted in great racial migrations, sending him all over the world to seek his fortune. He became one of the very few physically cosmopolitan animals, living everywhere from the equator to the Arctic zone. He became toughened and hardened and adaptable, able to live under the most trying circumstances. Everywhere he had to be a close observer, watch
There was faith and hope and whacking and despair.”
Man was experimenting with all kinds of climates and conditions. It was in the hard and cold northern regions that he developed farthest, though less rapidly at first. We have already glanced at the educational results of language, of family life in the rock-shelter around the fire, of the fashioning and use of tools, of his love of ornaments and display, of his dawning and clearing self-consciousness, of the beginnings of ownership. We have noticed his burial rites and their suggestions. All these may have been rude and crude, but they contained the germs of vast possibilities, though painfully slow of development. His “castles in Spain” were his richest possessions, though he probably never knew or suspected them. One hundred thousand years of human life in Europe produced nothing higher than Neanderthal man.
Suddenly, at the beginning of Upper Paleolithic time Cro-Magnon man appeared. His splendid physique and large brain, his production and appreciation of art, and many other qualities, have led some one to speak of him as the “prehistoric Greek.” In our enthusiasm we may easily overestimate his powers; but, as we study him and his work, we feel that here was a great race, and that now some great human possibilities are to be fully attained and made permanent. Apparently he had come from the plateau region of western Asia. Near his birthplace there must have been other peoples capable of great things. We remember that Susa was probably founded not much later than the beginning of the Magdalenian epoch in Europe. But the Cro-Magnon folk decreased in numbers, in stature, apparently also in ability and vitality. During the period of transition to Neolithic time Europe was occupied only by a sparse population of fishermen along the rivers, while barbarous hunting tribes were working their way northward toward the Baltic. The shell-heaps of Denmark are the monuments of the attainments of this epoch.
A higher civilization had already entered the Mediterranean basin. It was building houses, villages, possibly forerunners of the Greek city-states.
It spread through France into England and Denmark. As time went on this northward current increased and strengthened until, during the Bronze period, the Baltic region, especially Denmark, became almost a second Mediterranean centre of culture and art; just as at a far later time Flemish cities became the Venices of the north. But the north was never a beggarly dependent and imitator of the south. It selected and accepted only what it would, almost always modified and frequently improved what it had selected.
ANCIENT FISHERMEN
From the mural painting by Fernand Cormon in the MusÉum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.
The larger part of central and northern
What then was the real source of Neolithic progress?
There was little wealth to tempt invasion.
The people of the banded pottery were evidently peaceful. They left no weapons except mattocks and hammers. No one, I believe, has ever accused the broad-heads of blood-thirst. The graves of northern hunters with corded pottery are all about Grosgartach. The little village was deserted and decayed. It showed no signs of having been burned. The lake-dwellings were open to attack at all times, especially after the ice had formed during the winter. Robenhausen during its long history burned several times; hardly as often as most of our New England villages. Here a single brand
Only in northern Europe, in the country of the corded pottery, do we find great attention paid to the making of fine weapons like the flint daggers and axes. Here we have chiefly herdsmen and hunters. Here there were probably village incompatibilities—Donnybrook fairs, cattle-lifting, and forays. But these should hardly be dignified with the name of wars. We find then some North German peoples at the very end of the Neolithic period pushing southward, often by peaceable infiltration, sometimes perhaps by violent incursions, when the resistance was great.
Says Wundt:
We remember, also, the fewness of fortified
Political or economic revolutions could hardly occur when there was probably little organized government and even less wealth and class difference.
Conditions in France may have been somewhat different. Here the great stone monuments suggest a denser population under a more advanced organization, religious or political, or both, reminding us of conditions in the Mediterranean region, with whose culture it was closely connected. Here fortifications seem to have been quite numerous.
EARLY AGRICULTURE
From the mural painting by Fernand Cormon in the MusÉum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.
In the southeastern part of Europe we find the people of the banded pottery who practised an advanced form of agriculture. Here apparently the men as well as the women worked in the fields. We find their stone mattocks and
He has a permanent home even if it is hardly more than a hut, which is the centre of his life and thought. It is a hard, healthy life, and population increases rapidly under such conditions. He probably has a large family of children, and they educate and socialize him and
He lives in a village or neighborhood, which is hardly more than a great patriarchal family, closely united by intermarriage, and by the pressure of common work to satisfy common needs, common ownership of the soil, mutual aid in hard times. The religious rites and ceremonies, the feasts and mysteries, the prayers or magic, are all community affairs. Many of the divinities are local. These religious bonds are all the firmer and more compelling because, in the lack of any developed and permanent political organization, religion is the great tribal bond. We easily forget the civilizing, refining, and improving unremitting pressure and power of these simple, uninteresting peasant influences. He is learning to get on with the members of the family and neighborhood. He is experimenting upon his neighbors: his experiments and experiences may often be very trying to himself and them; the results may sometimes be discouraging. But he is not only practising the essentials and fundamentals of morality, very
We have already seen that his religion had grown out of the experiences of his daily life. May we not claim that science and a sort of philosophy may have sprung from the same source? He knew nothing of cause and effect in the material world. But he was seeking diligently the invisible bond of relations of things and events. The relation, according to his views, was mainly of a spiritual character through the agency of dÆmons. His ritual, call it magic if you will, was the expression of his conviction that results in the material world might be modified by his lending a helping hand to all the beneficent spirits. He indulged freely in hypotheses, but these were the outgrowth of millennia of experience and life, a very healthy form of pragmatism. He who has never laughed at a modern scientific theory, useful and fruitful in its time but now outgrown and replaced by a somewhat better one, may cast the first stone at his “benighted” Neolithic ancestor.
We might even venture to suspect that in his own crude way he was a philosopher. He must
Says Miss Harrison: “Dike” (usually translated justice), “in common Greek parlance is the way of life, normal habit. Dike is the way of the world, the way things happen, and Themis is that specialized way for human beings which is sanctioned by the collective conscience, by herd instinct. A lonely beast in the valley, a fish in the sea, has his Dike, but it is not till man congregates together that he has his Themis. Greeks and Indians alike seem to have discovered that the divine way was also the truth and the life. This notion of the way, which was also the truth and the life, seems to have existed before the separation of Indian from Iranian. Closely allied to Dike and to Vedic Rta is the Chinese Tao, only it seems less moralized and more magical. Deep-rooted in man’s heart is the pathetic conviction that moral goodness and material prosperity go together, that if man keep the Rta, he can magically affect for good nature’s ordered going.”
Thus primitive man, long before the dawn of anything like civilization, was seeking, finding, clearing, and treading out the “way” to an ordered, right, and healthy individual and social
We have tried to express briefly the results of a glance at the agriculturists of southeastern Europe. Before the close of the Neolithic period they were in fairly close communication with Ægean culture and owed considerable or much progress to stimuli from this source. In the great essentials of human training and development something quite similar might be said of the lake-dwellers and the broad-heads of eastern France. North Germany had a different culture and probably somewhat different religious cults and general views and conceptions. France and England, too, represented a quite distinct province whose peoples were always under Mediterranean influence. Denmark
Peoples were gradually closing in from all directions on the central provinces of northern Europe, and here apparently they met. We find here a mixture of head-forms, of culture; mixture or modifications of styles of ceramic ornament, of burial customs—all suggesting a mingling of peoples of a variety of cultures. Here at or toward the end of the Neolithic period was the “melting-pot” for the fusion of these peoples and their cultures. There was conflict of customs and ideas, of ways of life. There was probably much incompatibility, many broken heads. The pacific people of the banded pottery seem largely to have withdrawn, or been driven out, before the infiltration or invasions of northern folk. It was hardly a comfortable place for conservative pacificists. There were doubtless battles in many regions—perhaps now and here we might speak of wars. In some places there may have been extermination of the fighting men. But in most parts there was large fusion, and out of this mixture of cultures, ideas, thoughts, and habits of life came the culture of the beginning of the Bronze Age.
The great characteristic of Neolithic culture seems to be a rude, often barbarous, sometimes
Green refuses to write a “trumpet-and-drum history of England.” “Happy the people—here we cannot say nation—that has no annals.” Here is surely a certain amount of truth which we may be in danger of forgetting. In plants, and often in men, a long period of silent unnoticeable growth usually precedes the brief season of flowers and fruit. Is this the rule in racial, or internal, development?
Is it true, as some historians tell us, that a dormant period of national history best repays investigation, and that dormant peoples will bear watching? Is the dormant nation often storing up nutriment, strength, vitality, just as the plant is doing in its ugly underground roots and stem? Are fallow periods necessary to its
Is China awakening from just such a dormant period? What of India, still the home of philosophy? Because a nation, after bearing a marvellous harvest of culture, thought, art, or religion, seems barren and exhausted, does this discourage or arouse the hope that it will some day produce an equal or greater fruitage?
How about “darkest Africa”? Here surely we have a case of degeneration beyond all hope of recovery, not to mention a great future. But is this quite as certain as some of us seem to think? Is not much of our so-called Occidental progress really an orgy of wasted energy, neurotic excitement, half-camouflaged decadence, which will end in degeneration? We do not know yet. May there some day be a family rather than league of nations to which every one will contribute according to its special ability? If this be granted, will Huxley’s statement concerning the individual be applicable to races and peoples: “Its aim will be not so much the survival of the fittest as the fitting of as many as possible to survive”? These are
But one question confronts us directly. Is our whole estimate and valuation of Neolithic life, work, and progress extreme and practically worthless? Were they, in spite of all our arguments, a mob of crude, worthless barbarians, undeserving of any gratitude or sympathy, much less of respect? Do we really owe anything to them?
One historic event of great importance had its growth and rise during the Neolithic period out of Neolithic life, conditions, and culture. This was the Aryan culture of Persia and India, of Greece and Rome, and of our northern ancestors. No one seems to deny its importance and value. We must glance at its origin and growth, and see if it supports at all the tentative and often conjectural conclusions at which we have arrived. This will be the object of our work and study in the next and closing chapter.
CHAPTER XII
THE COMING OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS
SAID Max MÜller in his Biographies of Words: “I have declared again and again that, if I say Aryan, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, and Slavs. When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics. The blue-eyed and fair-haired Scandinavians may have been conquerors or conquered, they may have adopted the language of their darker lords or their subjects, or vice versa. I assert nothing beyond their language.... To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”
We may well take this warning to heart, and remember that the first and most noticeable, if not the one essential, characteristic of the Aryans was their language. For the sake of convenience and clearness, and of avoiding misunderstanding
In its distribution from India to western Europe it must often have wandered far from its original home. Its introducers must often have been few compared with the large and dense populations among which they came. The Aryans could have been hardly more than a handful among the peoples of India. Something similar may be said of its introduction into Europe about the close of the Neolithic period. Middle Europe was at this time fairly well populated, at least in its more fertile regions. The bearers of the new language must have represented a ruling, conquering, or otherwise very influential class, else it would never have been accepted by the mass of the people.
When the original or modified Indo-European language, perhaps in several distinct dialects, was introduced into Europe, it was carried to peoples of several or many stocks and languages. These had to learn and acquire it as we acquire a foreign language, but only as a spoken, unwritten language. Probably no one of them acquired it exactly in its original form. It was
Under the new conditions content and meanings changed as well as forms of language. Words little used in the new home, especially names of objects, might easily be lost, while others would be replaced by favorite apt words from the aboriginal language. A name might be applied to a new object and thus change its meaning. To cite a familiar modern instance, the robin redbreast of America is quite a different bird from that of England. For a long time it was supposed that the occurrence of the root of the word “beech” in the European languages proved beyond doubt that the language must have originated in a region where the beech-tree was common. But the Greek word derived from the same root means oak; a similar, perhaps not the same, root word in Kurdish means elm. Our knowledge of the original meaning of the word is very uncertain. Through all the languages there runs a single word for weaving or plaiting, but whether the original
The work of discovering and restoring the original language is difficult and far from finished. But the comparative philologists or “linguistic paleontologists” have established certain facts, or at least theories, on which we may rely with a fair degree of confidence. We find names for all the most important domestic animals, including the horse. There are words for the wagon, its wheels, and various other parts. Words for tillage and land cultivation agree in the Western branch, but are far less noticeable in the Aryan languages. Here the vocabulary is rather that of the herdsman. This seems to allow us to conclude that, when Eastern and Western branches separated, and probably long before that time, the Eastern people were herdsmen paying slight attention to agriculture: the Western predominantly tillers of the ground.
The linguist, as we have already seen, is frequently or usually unable to discover the exact meaning of the word in the original language, and hence is uncertain as to the degree of development of any art or technique. But the culture, as far as discovered, seems to be that of the average of Neolithic peoples, perhaps fairly well represented by that of the Swiss lake-dwellers.
The original language contains words for summer and winter, ice and snow; it tells of a fairly cold climate. They had a common word for metal, probably copper, hence they were living together after the introduction of this metal. They lived in villages apparently surrounded by a hedge or wall, or some sort of fortification.
The family was decidedly patriarchal. Of the older mother-right scarcely more than traces remain, survivals from an older alien culture. The goddess is no longer supreme. A new divinity, a sky-god, or sun-god, or manifestation of light or brightness had already appeared—the Greek Zeus, Latin Ju-piter, with the same root appearing in all the languages. The earth-goddess is not banished, but remains as consort
Indo-Europeanism must have had something to recommend it and make it highly attractive to enable it to spread so fast and far. The language itself, while apparently somewhat clumsy, was certainly rich in conceptions and shades of expression. The clearness and beauty of the religious cult may have attracted some, though this seems doubtful. All these features are inadequate to explain the rapidity and extent of its spread. We must leave this problem for the present.
Even the original language frequently describes the same object or even action by words having very different roots. It shows great variety in synonyms and inflections. Feist compares it with English and considers it a “mixed language” almost from the start, and many facts seem to favor this view. This does not surprise us when we remember that its
The date of the earliest migrations of Indo-European peoples is roughly indicated by the presence of a word for metal, probably copper, in the original undivided language. Aryan names appear in western Asia about 1400 or 1500 B. C. Meyer says that the AchÆans had arrived in the southern Balkans as early as 2000 B. C. and reached Greece about 1200 or 1300 B. C.; the Dorians followed about 1100 B. C. We can hardly be far from the truth if we consider that they were in their original home until about 2000 B. C., and that the separation began very soon after. Their development was a product of the Neolithic period, their spread was the striking event of earliest historic times.
Inasmuch as their migrations are so recent, especially when compared with those of the Semites, it ought to be possible for us to discover certain traits which they brought with them from the homeland. The AchÆans had apparently marched southward from Hungary or thereabouts through the Balkans into Greece, arriving there not far from 1200 B. C. They
Their chieftains married the princesses of the old rÉgime, who seem to have held the right of succession in the kingdom or city-state. The wooing was rough and more or less forceful; but I suspect that the princesses yielded not altogether unwillingly, even if the course of true love did not always continue to run smooth in after years. They married their gods to the
In comparison with the native peoples who had builded Tiryns and MycenÆ the AchÆans were probably few, scattered over Greece. They probably robbed the subject peoples with one hand, but with the other they defended them against the forays of sea-pirates and other enemies. They were no worse than former native rulers, far better watch-dogs of the city, attractive leaders of an admiring crowd, the best possible missionaries of a new culture and language. They turned the old Neolithic world upside down. Evolution had brought revolution: old things passed away and, for a time, all things became new. We cannot easily overestimate the extent and importance of the change.
The leaders, and naturally their followers to a less degree, show clearly the characteristics of the new era, which Wundt has called the Age of Heroes in distinction from the Age of Totemism and the iron supremacy of tribal custom. The chief feature was the rise, development, and dominance of individual personality in the leaders and the enthusiastic, individual loyalty of the members of the brotherhood or clan. Up to
City-states are beginning to appear, but their success depends very largely on the wisdom and power of the ruler, who seems at first to be largely irresponsible, a despot in the ancient sense of the word. It is anything but a true democracy, but it is government by the Élite of their day and world. The new era or Zeitgeist is putting its stamp on all its peoples. Homer’s description of the AchÆans would apply almost equally well to the Celts when they first appear in history; and kindred spirits are marching and fighting in India and Persia. All seem to represent
The chieftains, with this clan or brotherhood of warlike followers, came into a country occupied by agriculturists or peasants unused and untrained to war, such as we have found in the Mediterranean region and in most of northern Europe. Conquest was usually easy and left little bitterness. There was no national consciousness or pride to arouse resistance. It was a totally different kind of invasion from that of nomadic Semites in Asia, or of Mongols into Europe. It came almost as a new movement, a renaissance for which the people were ready. Celt and Greek alike were usually absorbed and lost in the masses of the people to whom they came. Physically they produced little permanent change in the people with whom they mingled. They seem to have accepted fully as much as they contributed, and may often have received credit for many improvements which they really had little share in bringing about.
We have already seen that Greek philosophy and religion, while retaining much of the Olympian or Indo-European form, sprang essentially from the old Pelasgic cults with their greater vitality. How far were AchÆans and Dorians responsible for the glory of Greek art, especially
How far was Roman government and law due to Indo-European influence? Neither Greeks nor Celts seem to have been very successful in founding great or permanent states. Italy was far less easy of access from the north than from Greece, and Rome lay well southward beyond the Apennines. Some of its most important political features seem to have sprung from uprisings of the Plebs, the common people, probably mostly of native stock; others, perhaps, from the Etruscans. I cannot attempt to answer this question or any one of many similar ones. The Indo-Europeans brought in a new era and started a new world; but just what was their definite and permanent contribution to European culture?
Europe had been long enough in the school of Neolithic discipline. Agriculture and settled home life had trained peasants to do many things which they disliked to do, to observe taboo and to obey ancient custom, to march in rank and file, and even in lock-step. It was a hard school in which savage man had been tamed, home-broken, and socialized, and he had learned its lessons thoroughly. It was high time that
It was a critical and revolutionary change. It had been rendered easier by the accumulation of wealth, and of a certain amount of personal property in cattle and other goods. In centres of trade the individual was thrown more and more on his own resources and initiative. With exchange of goods came exchange of knowledge, ideas, and methods undermining the ancient customs and traditions. Movements or migrations of peoples or smaller bands called for leadership by the most capable. And those became more and more numerous about the close of the Neolithic period. Neolithic culture had been largely the product of peace and isolation; it was inadequate to the new conditions. Matriarchy and the cult of the goddess were unsuited to times of struggle and migration; with the rise of the chieftain comes the worship of the war-god.
Where did this change or revolution and the rise of this new language and culture and remarkable people take place? All agree that the cradle or original homeland must have been
The discovery of Sanskrit and the belief that it represented the parent of the Indo-European languages led students to place the original centre of their dispersal far toward the eastern end of this zone. When it became evident that this view of Sanskrit was untenable, they began to locate the centre in Europe. Finally some or many students have sought it in the extreme west and north in Germany or also in Scandinavia. When careful and thorough scholars have arrived at so many and so different conclusions, we may well be cautious and remember that new discoveries may necessitate a change in our own views.
The chief argument in favor of the North German homeland is anthropological. The earliest Indo-Europeans both in Europe and Asia were apparently blonds, with light hair and eyes; and such people have lived along the shore of the Baltic since early Neolithic times.
The claim that the ancient Celts and AchÆans were physically more like Germans and Scandinavians than any other European people is certainly not without foundation. It has been urged that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the sea and with the eel, which is said to be unknown in the tributaries of the Black and Caspian Seas, as also their acquaintance with the beech. Other arguments can be found in special articles. We have seen that arguments based on the meaning of words like beech, eel, and sea, rest on a very insecure foundation. The Finns are almost as blond as the Germans, and Kossina
The objections to this view are weighty. One marked feature of Indo-European culture was the use of the horse, which held the highest rank among their domestic animals. But the domestic horse seems to have been introduced into Europe from the East. The few traces of its presence in northern Europe during Neolithic times are usually explained as remains of wild animals killed in the hunt. If they played so large a part in Indo-European culture, it is strange that they have left so few remains.
Kossina, in one of his studies, places the cradle of Indo-European culture in “Scandinavia, Denmark, and northwest Germany, wherever megalithic monuments with their characteristic pottery occur.” Wherever such monuments occur we find incineration coming in late in Neolithic time, or more exactly with the Bronze period, except in Brittany and England, of which later. But incineration seems to accompany the progress of the European branch, and must have come into use among these peoples well back in their history to explain its wide occurrence.
The word town, in the original language, seems to signify a settlement surrounded by a hedge or wall, or some sort of defense. But fortified towns are hardly known in North Germany at this time. All these cultural features seem to appear somewhat or considerably too late in North Germany to suit Kossina’s theory.
A second feature of Indo-European culture is the rise of the chieftain. But the Germans seem to have borrowed the name for king and other expressions for military organizations, as well as many culture-words, from the Celts. This fact has led some good authorities to declare that the Germans received their Indo-European language from the Celts.
The homeland of the Indo-Europeans must have supported a large population to send out all the tribes which went out from it. Only such a region can satisfy our requirements, and such was Germany, an Officina gentium, some 2,000 years later. But we notice that the migrations of peoples have always set westward into Europe, not in the reverse direction. Similarly the new discovery or idea has come westward or northward from western Asia or from the Mediterranean region. The north has almost never been a centre of origination of new ideas and movements. It has borrowed from the richer south. We would not expect that the
Now Kossina finds evidence of the spread of the corded pottery southward at the close of the Neolithic period, and infers that it was carried by a migration from the north. I am inclined to think that his conclusion is correct, though it may be doubtful whether the invasion went so far into the province of the banded pottery as he thinks. He sees in this the first stage of the Indo-European movement which was to sweep eastward as far as India. The people of the banded pottery apparently retreated eastward before this movement, and thus tended still further to increase the density and power of resistance in these regions. Furthermore, had this southeastward movement continued, it would have met the first of a series of waves of invasion which would surely have turned it backward.
We have seen that all through the Neolithic period brachycephals of the Furfooz or Grenelle race have been spreading from Belgium and the
Were these people Celts or at least partially celticized? To express an opinion on a Celtic question is to accept an invitation to a Donnybrook fair. Anthropologically they differ markedly from the later Celtic invaders. But their custom of incineration is certainly suggestive,
There is at present a strong tendency to seek the original Indo-European homeland neither in the extreme east or extreme west or north, but somewhere in the open country of southern Russia lying to the north of the Black Sea or farther eastward toward the Caspian. Here they locate them mainly in a long zone of parkland extending along the southern edge of the forest zone and in the valleys of the great rivers. Here at a much later date Scythians were settled who raised large quantities of wheat, while others were nomadic. We remember that Neolithic trade-routes followed mainly rivers and seashore. The islands of the Mediterranean were occupied early and sea commerce found a centre in Crete. A great centre of trade arose very early at Troy (Hissarlik), on the high
DÉchellette has called attention to the striking analogies in form of settlement, in primitive idols, in pottery with painting and spiral ornament between the villages of the Balkans, Troy (Hissarlik) and of the Troad and Phrygia, and of the pre-MycenÆan culture of Crete and Greece. “Between Butmir and Hissarlik these discoveries mark the routes which already undoubtedly connected pre-Hellenic peoples and pre-Celtic tribes.”
Meyer tells us that the banded pottery shows the same motives in ornament in Butmir and Tordos as in Troy and the Ægean, and spreads thence northward and westward; and that painted pottery in Europe starts at the end of the Neolithic (2500-2000 B. C.) in the great plain east of the Carpathians in the region of the Dniester and Dnieper, a region of high culture in other respects. “Here the connection with the Ægean world is evident (augenfÄllig).” This people was agricultural. They burned their dead, and Meyer thinks that incineration spread northward and westward from this centre. They show no use of metal. Their culture
Here is a region which stands in free communication with the agricultural population of the parkland zone, open to influences from the steppe, accepting the higher civilization of Phrygia and the Ægean. It is a people of advanced agriculture, hence probably of rapidly increasing population, open to trade and commerce. Here wide and free communications would be likely to prevent the formation of an unyielding cake or crust of custom. People meeting from all lands and cultures might well make and use a language capable of expressing a great variety of shades of thought peculiar to a variety of peoples and cultures; we might safely call it a mixed language springing from a mixture of peoples. Here, as in the Ægean region, the more or less fortified town or village would be a necessity. Here the horse and wagon would be early introduced from the east. Here the patriarchate, so characteristic of nomadic tribes, would be early imported from the steppe, or may have been developed independently.
There is a universality in the Indo-European religion, a sanity and proportion in their whole mode of thought, a broad sympathy, a willingness
But we must carefully avoid too great certainty and definiteness of assertion. The weight of probability seems to be against any theory which locates the first, original homeland in the far east or in the far northwest. But we deal only with probabilities, and may well “carry our theories on our finger-tips.” If the cradle was somewhere in southern Russia north of the
The Indo-Europeans were settled in a goodly land capable with their improved agriculture of supporting a very large population. Why did they migrate in all directions? Here, again, we are left much in the dark. But Pumpelly, in his explorations at Anau, found the settlement deserted during the Bronze period about the same time when we find the Indo-Europeans leaving the homeland. At Anau there are signs that the desertion was due primarily to aridity or to disturbances accompanying such a change. It seems highly probable that climatic changes may have played a most important part in this movement, as they seem to have done in the later historical migrations from this region or from farther eastward.
We may close this chapter of uncertainties with one deduction which seems fairly evident. If the Germans were the first and original Indo-Europeans, the movement developed here directly out of preceding Neolithic conditions.
The Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples were not precocious, and appear in history very late. But here apart, in the misty northland, a people was very slowly developing who, after the decadence and fall of Rome, could come forward and slowly and wearily rebuild a civilization better than that which had fallen, and a government of, by, and for the people, guaranteeing to the individual the right of free action and development, the grandest feature of Indo-European culture. This, rather than any precocity, is the glory of the northern peoples. Once again we find history in the making in an inconspicuous people during an apparently dormant period.
He that believeth will not despise the day of small things, neither will he make haste. If the vision tarries long, he will wait for it. “It shall
There seems to be a wide-spread opinion that the rise of the Indo-Europeans was the first dawn of day in a benighted world. Their migrations were a missionary movement on a grand scale. They dispelled darkness, ignorance, and superstitions, broke the crust of a stagnant conservatism, overthrew outworn customs, brought an entirely new culture, and revolutionized life and the world. We might call attention to the fact that Indo-European culture and life were a product of Neolithic experience, that it was the blossoming of Neolithic growth, that it represented only one part or phase of Neolithic attainment. “The best traditions make the best rebels.”
We notice first of all the commonness or community of Neolithic feeling and life, its almost monotonous uniformity, over Europe, eastern
The Neolithic period coincides roughly with the latter part of Wundt’s Totem Age: the Bronze period ushered in his Age of Heroes.
We read in the history of Israel that the long
Prehistoric man was guided and controlled by feelings usually expressing the dictates of a long experience out of which instincts had crystallized. His feelings were his instinctive responses to new emergencies. He could not analyze them, reason or argue about them; he was spared the “malady of thought.” He had little or no logic or science; his philosophy, as we have seen, was a way smoothed by the feet of his ancestors. He was a man of taste in the literal sense of the word. He knew what he liked and what he disliked; probably he could not have explained the reason for either feeling. He was wise in following these instinctive feelings and tastes; they represented the accumulated and assimilated experience of millennia.
Of course the experience had been that of individuals.
Most of his higher education—and hence of his feeling, conscience, religion, and life—was tribal. Laws, or rather customs, were propounded by the elders of the tribe or priests, an exceedingly conservative court. The chief aim was not rapidity of progress, but confirming and practising that which long experience had proved to be good. Slowly but surely the fund of wisdom increased. “It is the three-per-cent man who gets all the money in the end.”
Responsibility was tribal. The man who tried experiments or “fooled” with the forbidden thing was a common nuisance summarily and thoroughly abated by the tribe.
Land was common property, though the individual had probably gained some rights of use. It is doubtful whether he could use the whole
The ritual which still made up most of his religion was also tribal.
These dÆmons seem to have been supposed to be almost innumerable. No one was supreme, but some were more important than others. Here then was room for variety of opinion, of ritual, of the spirit occupying the most important place; hence also of change and development. The gods in one country were those of the hills; in another, those of the plains; in a third, of the forest. Fishing and agricultural tribes had different dÆmons. The wandering trader, passing from tribe to tribe, in his own heart respected or neglected all alike. Every land had its own gods or goddesses. When a man migrated to another country he usually
A religious hierarchy seems to have grown up during the Neolithic period headed by the goddess-mother of life. Her rise seems to have accompanied the introduction of agriculture, which must have brought great changes in religious ritual and belief. DÆmons who had heretofore held a high place in the fear or affection of hunting tribes gradually lost their supremacy or were neglected.
The dethronement of gods or dÆmons was usually not sudden or revolutionary. The new mode of life and its accompanying cult gained ground slowly. Probably it was at first an extension or modification of some older one. The dethroned divinity long retained his hold on the fears or affections of many of the tribe. Finally he was remembered only by certain old wives in remote or isolated settlements. With the rest of the people he, or she, was fast becoming an imp, kobold, or fairy—the subject of fascinating stories, still tinged with mystery, joy, or fear, but not to be taken too seriously.
Here, apparently, is one, by no means the only, source of folk-lore and fairy-tale. Folk-lore is an exceedingly wide field and our path
It was always intended to be told to a group of sympathetic listeners or to the whole community. It is genuine literature, but when reduced to writing or cold print it chills and dies. The story-teller must feel at once the sympathy or coldness of his listeners. The substance may remain unchanged, but the shading and emphasis must vary with the feeling and temper of the audience. Thus in a very true sense it was moulded by the people. If a story survived with certain forms and content, it was because it was essentially common and human, appealing to that which is not individual but at least tribal or racial.
Says Mr. Chesterton: “Our modern novels, which deal with men as they are, are chiefly produced by a small and educated section of the society. But this other literature (the kind now called folk-lore, the literature of the people) deals with men greater than they are—with demigods and heroes—and that is far too important
“As our world advances through history toward its present epoch, its becomes more specialist, less democratic, and folk-lore turns gradually into fiction. But it is only slowly that the old elfin fire fades into the light of common realism. For ages after our characters have dressed up in the clothes of mortals they betray the blood of the gods.”
The charm and wisdom of folk-lore and fairy-tale are mostly due to the commonness, in the best sense, of their subject, thought, and feeling.
Neolithic feeling, belief, ritual, religion; its music, art, and literature; its customs, institutions, morals, ways, and life—all these sprang from the life and experience of the tribe or community. They were essentially growths in and from the mass of the people, usually owing comparatively little to the genius of any individual inventor or discoverer. We have called them Neolithic, but some or many of them were old far back in Paleolithic time. Like the tree Ygdrasil their roots lay hold on the foundations of the world.
So deeply rooted a growth or culture is almost ineradicable, though it has a marvellous adaptability and possibilities of growth and modification. It could never have been destroyed by its own Indo-European children, however rebellious. It must survive somewhere though probably changed for the better. We have found reasons to doubt whether Roman capacity for discipline and government, Roman laws and institutions, were predominantly of Indo-European origin. We were still more
We have seen the fate of Olympian religion and AchÆan thought in Greece. The AchÆans were a small minority completely outnumbered by an exceedingly conservative native population. They were absorbed and became a part of the Greek people, and their contribution must not be underestimated. We have noted the marvellous vitality of the old Neolithic thought, its re-emergence, its influence on Greek philosophy. We remember that the great seat of progress was not in Dorian Sparta but in “Pelasgic Athens,” almost unknown to Homer.
The Celt was, if anything, a better “mixer” and more adaptable than even the AchÆan. His prejudices and zeal in regard to morals and religion seem not to have been deep or strong. The Celts were finally absorbed, affecting the
Through all these revolutions, as well as those which were to follow, family and neighborhood retained their compact unity, perhaps with all its mutual attractions strengthened by the pressure of the conquerors. They were still the controlling influence in the life and education of the individual, as they probably remain to this day. The power of these smaller communities may have waxed, as tribal control waned. What they had lost in the mutual support within the tribe they made good by leaning more closely on their neighbors.
This solidarity makes the common people very stiff-necked, in an excellent sense of the word. Like the Neolithic folk of Scandinavia, they select and accept from their more cultured neighbors only that which they can assimilate to the stores of experience and instincts which they already possess. The fickleness, of which they are often accused, is characteristic of a very different class or stratum of the population, and of far later origin and development. Their own development is naturally slow, gradual, and continuous.
We have ventured the opinion that the essentials of Neolithic culture survived the conquests
During the Neolithic period everybody, except perhaps certain priests and elders, belonged to the common people. But accumulation of wealth, the rise of leaders, the conquest of new lands developed a distinct aristocracy of birth, wealth, prowess, leadership, and genius. The common people of to-day, whom, as Mr. Lincoln said, “God must have loved or he never would have made so many of them,” seem to
All the virtues, brains, and possibilities of progress can hardly be confined to this upper stratum. Can we define or describe our common people? They are a very mixed multitude. There is probably more individual variety than among the conventional refined and cultured, and this makes them more original and interesting. Hence any composite picture is usually a blur; a definite picture of any group or part would be partial and one-sided, very possibly a caricature of the whole. We dare not try to offer one.
Men and women like Mr. Robert Woods, of Boston, and Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, have set themselves patiently, persistently, sympathetically, respectfully, and wisely to study and help these people. They can and will describe them, if we will listen. Their faith in the people seems to be deep and strong.
We all recognize that in times of trial and emergency, when great testing moral issues are at stake, the people are practically unanimous in recognizing and supporting the cause of justice and right, unless befogged, divided, or misled by statesmen. Their taste for right ends is
They are not inarticulate, though their speech is often interjectory. They are only beginning to produce a large number of spokesmen. Now and then their demands are voiced by a prophet, asserting that what Jehovah demands is “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God”; or the prophecy is sung by a poet, like Burns. They may sometimes or often be misled; but if their heart and feeling is not healthy we may well despair of the republic.
But the true prophet is very rarely a statesman. His feeling and taste for ends is marvellously good. Here his word, like the feeling of the people from whom he sprang, is almost infallible. But the choice of means and policy, the selection of the next step toward the attainment of the end, is the real business of the statesman.
The Élite of wealth, learning, and culture to-day have generally given up the search for ends in life. The old question: “What is man’s chief end?” sounds archaic. We are doubtful as to the existence or desirability of such a thing. We are, in the language of the broker, very “long” on means, but terribly “short” on ends, for which there is no market. Some
If the aristocracy of wealth, learning, and culture can provide us no adequate system of ends and values in life, would it not be well for us to borrow temporarily a few from the people? Might we not to good advantage even go into partnership with them, cordially accepting their ends, and loyally and honestly attempting to find the means of attaining them? The result might be a solidarity of thought, feeling, action, and final attainment superior even to those of our Neolithic ancestors.
You may possibly say: “We in America are already living under a democratic form of government—‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” Is this the statement of an accomplished fact or the definition of a dim, far-off event toward which we hope we are moving?
How far did the framers of our Constitution desire or intend that the will of the people should
Perhaps our ancestors were wise in their caution. Perhaps a change has become advisable. We are asking how far government changes or modifies the people; how far governmental action, change of President or controlling party, their legislation and policies, affect the deeper currents of character and life. The people seem to me to be still continuing to go their own way and to follow quietly but firmly their own line of development, largely regardless of the votes of national Congress or State legislature, perhaps sometimes with a slight sigh of relief at their adjournment. It may be best that it is so. The independence and continuity of popular development is still maintained to-day as throughout prehistoric times.
How far do our vast accumulations of learning
The institution which has the widest and deepest influence on their feeling, thought, and life is the church. They generally love it, for they are “incurably religious.” It is conservative in the best sense of the word. It represents, of course imperfectly, the feelings, aspirations, and hopes of all men everywhere in all ages—in one word, of humanity. It stands for the worth, dignity, and brotherhood of man, and the fatherhood of God. It is almost alone to-day in recognizing that there are ends in life. It offers a way of progress and a reasonable ground of hope in a somewhat weary age inclined to indulge in criticism, fault-finding, and pessimism. The fact that it is generally roundly abused for its defects, mistakes, and sins of omission, for its inability to accomplish the impossible, is a sign of the great hope and confidence which we have rightly reposed in it.
The discordant chorus of mutually destructive criticisms arising from the cultured and intellectual
The existence of our nation evidently depends far more upon the fundamental and essential, nay obvious, old and common human virtues of very common people than upon our art and learning, the shrewdness of our politicians and profiteers, the amount of our wealth and exports, our inventions or luxuries, the winning of an election, or the defeat of any party. In one word, which we have already repeated ad nauseam, our chief business to-day is to continue the line of development clearly marked out by our benighted ancestors of prehistoric days—to exercise, develop, and strengthen the best instincts and feelings crystallized out of millennia of experience; to see to it that they are expressed in the law and practices of the
The old message comes to us: “If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed; and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
In the northern ocean we see icebergs moving slowly southward. They are not driven by the winds which to-day are blowing against their broad fronts. The most conspicuous feature of our field of vision is the white foam capping the waves. To-morrow it will be blown away, evaporate, and disappear in the shifting winds which have tossed it into view. The berg is carried by the great polar current, silent, inconspicuous, irresistible, unchanging in its course, guided by still deeper and more ancient and permanent cosmic forces.
We know something about oceanic currents. Of the current of the evolution of life we know almost nothing; but hope that our theories are no more inadequate than the feelings of our
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A FEW SUGGESTIONS
The first series of books referred to in the following lists (A-O) are general, and every one covers a large field. The works of DÉchelette and Hoernes (A and B) contain a very rich bibliography down to 1907 or 1908. They should be carefully studied first of all; afterward the remainder of the list. I have omitted from the following list many excellent articles to which they refer. This list will satisfy the needs of the ordinary reader.
The second list (1-378) contains references to articles or books on special subjects which I have been obliged to treat very briefly in this small book. These will introduce the reader to other writers on the same subject. He is urged to make his own bibliography, and will find that he has started on an endless chain of most fascinating research, for which I hope he may form an insatiable appetite.
The following list of abbreviations and corresponding complete titles may save the reader some inconvenience. In this connection he may well consult the Introduction to DÉchelette’s Manuel (A) I, pp. xv-xix.
| Amer. Nat. | American Naturalist. |
| Amer. Anth. | American Anthropologist. |
| Sci. Mo. | Science Monthly. (Continuation of Popular Science Monthly.) |
| A. f. A. (Arch. f. Anth.) | Archiv fÜr Anthropologie. |
| Zts. f. Eth. | Zeitschrift fÜr Ethnologie. |
| L’Anth. | L’Anthropologie. |
| R. E. A. | Revue d’École d’Anthropologie, Paris. |
| Rev. Arch. | Revue ArchÉologique. |
| Korr.-bl. d. d. Ges. | Korrespondenz-blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fÜr Anthropologie. |
| Cong. Int. | CongrÈs international d’Anthropologie et d’ArchÉologie. |
GENERAL
CHAPTER I—THE COMING OF MAN
PITHECANTHROPUS
See A, I, 273; B, I, 181; D, I, 370; 40, 73.
PRIMITIVE HUMAN MIGRATIONS
MAN’S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE
Danish Shell-heaps. See D, 465-476; G, I, 4; L, 226.
CHAPTER III—LAND HABITATIONS
CAVE-DWELLINGS
B, 31; C, 258; E, 120, 139.
HUTS AND VILLAGES
B, 51, 65, 84.
CHAPTER IV—LAKE-DWELLINGS
CHAPTER V—A GLANCE EASTWARD
ORIGIN OF AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE-RAISING
See B, I, 535-591; M, chaps. XII, XIII.
a. Vol. I, Die Erde und ihr Wirthschaftsleben.
b. Vol. II, Kulturgeschichte des Menschen.
c. Vol. III, Kulturgeschichte der Nutzthiere.
d. Vol. IV, Kulturgeschichte der Pflanzen.
CHAPTER VI—MEGALITHS
See A, I, chap. III; B, II, 440; D, 500; G, chap. V; J, 43; L, chap. V.
DISPOSAL OF DEAD
CHAPTER VII—NEOLITHIC INDUSTRIES
Clothing. G, I, 268; J, 19; 90, F.
Ornaments. B, II, 328; A, II, 570.
Implements. A, 513; B, II, 168; D, 472, 478; E, 178; F, Art. “Axt”; G, 22; 46, 133; J, 24.
Salt. B, II, 23, 89; F, Art. “Salz”; N, 114.
Gold. A, 627; B, II, 207; C, 320.
Copper. A, II; B, II, 546; D, 494, 499, 545; E, 278.
Ships, rock-carvings of. J, 126; C, 389; G, 466; E, 347.
Nephrite and Jadeite. A, I, 519, 573; B, II, 504; D, 510; 95, 116; 96, Index.
Amber. A, 623; B, I, 513; II, 345, 353; D, 556; G, I, 52.
Trade. B, II, 466-529; A, I, 619; 228; 154.
Pottery. A, 547; D, 481; 116, 195-207; F, Art. “GefÄsse,” 95, 184.
CHAPTER VIII—NEOLITHIC CHRONOLOGY
CHAPTER IX—NEOLITHIC PEOPLES AND THEIR MIGRATIONS
ATLASES
——“Die Ältesten Einwohner von Nordeuropa,” Arch. f. Anth., XXV, 1898, 88.
272a. A, 482; B, 298-303; 246.
FOR EFFECTS OF GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT
CHAPTER X—NEOLITHIC RELIGION
CULT OF GODDESS AND MOTHER-RIGHT
O, Index “Maternal descent”; B, II, 584.
CHAPTER XI—PROGRESS
CHAPTER XII—THE COMING OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS
—— (Trans. Jevons, F. B.) Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples. London, 1890.
INDEX
- AchÆans, 253, 281.
- Adaptation, extreme, 228.
- Agriculture, origin of, 101, 108;
- and religion, 218.
- Amber, 148.
- Anau, 93, 100, 125.
- Ancylus Epoch, 37, 164, 169.
- Apes, 4, 12.
- Arboreal life, 7, 13.
- Aryans, 246.
- Asia, 10, 91.
- Axe, 43, 136, 173.
- Azilian-Tardenoisian, 39, 48, 193.
- Babylonia, 92.
- Balder, myth of, 222.
- Balkans, 61, 100, 267.
- Baltic culture, 131, 144, 203, 232, 271.
- Baltic Sea, changes of, 36, 41, 161.
- Barley, 80, 94.
- Boats, 145.
- Brachycephals, 44, 51, 181, 195, 262;
- in lake-dwellings, 87.
- Bread, 82.
- Bronze, 141;
- age of, 166.
- Burial of dead, 31, 123.
- Campigny, 50.
- Cattle, domestic, 76, 91, 110.
- Cave frescoes, 31;
- remains, 53.
- Celts, 128, 263.
- Chronology, 37, 94, 101, 160, 166, 192, 253.
- Climatic changes, 4, 26, 32, 102.
- Copper, 140; age of, 166.
- Crescents of clay, 84.
- Crete, 144, 186.
- Cro-Magnon race, 29, 181, 231.
- DÆmons, 213, 276.
- Danube, 200.
- Dead, disposal of, 31, 123, 127.
- Dog, 42, 75.
- Dolichocephals, 44, 87, 198.
- Dolmens, 114.
- Domestic animals, 91, 110, 112.
- Dormant periods and nations, 243.
- Dress, 132.
- Education, Neolithic 237, 275.
- Family, Aryan, 251.
- Flax, 83.
- Flint, 86, 134, 138.
- Folk-lore and fairy-tales, 277.
- Forests, 32, 64;
- succession of, in Denmark, 38.
- Fortifications, 62, 236, 263.
- Glacial period, 24.
- Goddess, cult of, 220.
- Gold, 139.
- Greek mysteries, 212.
- Grosgartach, 59, 157, 234.
- Hamites, 19, 22, 182.
- Heidelberg man, 28.
- Hoe-culture, 104.
- Horse, 74.
- Houses and huts, 55, 72.
- Incineration, 127.
- Indo-Europeans, 247;
- Industries, 131.
- Iranian plateau, 12.
Lake-dwellings, 69, 202. - Littorina Epoch, 37, 165.
- Loess, 27, 65.
- Magelmose, 45, 172.
- Mattock, 137.
- Mediterranean race, 182, 187, 194;
- culture, 231.
- Megaliths, 114.
- Menhirs, 122.
- Microliths, 49.
- Migrations, Indo-European, 253;
- Millet, 80.
- Mother-right, 223.
- Mugem, 44.
- Neanderthal race, 29.
- Neolithic culture, persistence of, 272, 280.
- Nephrite and Jadeite, 146.
- Oaks in Denmark, 37, 171.
- Oats, 81.
- Paleolithic Age, Lower, 29;
- Upper, 32.
- Peace, 85, 235.
- Pelasgi, 257.
- Piedmont zones, 105.
- Pig, 77.
- Piltdown skull, 29.
- Pines in Denmark, 37, 171.
- Pioneer life, 191, 204, 237.
- Pithecanthropus, 15.
- Plough, 108.
- Pottery, 43, 88, 100, 153, 201.
- Primates, 6, 20.
- Progress, 228.
- Races, human, 19;
- Religion, Paleolithic, 208;
- Rinnekalns, 47.
- Ritual, 210.
- River-valleys as trade-routes, 143, 190.
- Roman law, 258.
- Sahara, once well-watered, 22.
- Salt, 139.
- “Schuhleistenbeil” (mattock), 137.
- Semites, 19, 22, 106.
- Sheep, 78, 91.
- Shell-heaps, 40, 172, 197.
- Siwalik strata, 14.
- Social development, 85.
- Steppe, 27, 32, 65, 189.
- Stutzheim, 57, 59.
- Susa, 99.
- Taboo, 211.
- Tertiary period, 9.
- Trade, 144;
- routes, 152.
- Tribal education, 275.
- Tridachna shells in Europe, 147.
- Tumuli, 116.
- Tundra, 26, 36.
- Weaving, 83.
- Wheat, 80, 94.
- Women, position in Neolithic time, 224, 249.
- Yoldia Epoch, 37, 162.
FOOTNOTES:
The dogma of the superiority of the dolichocephalic blond has been made a cult by Mr. J. H. Chamberlin and other far less brilliant writers. It has received little support in Scandinavia. The works of this school should not be taken too seriously.
Transcriber's Note:
In the Bibliography, p. 294, under "CHAPTER I", there was no number 4 in the original.
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