POTTERYPOTTERY
POTTERY
Banded pottery.
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).
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,Egypt, Italy, and in western Europe along the whole zone of megalithic monuments, whence it spread northward and eastward into middle Europe.
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.
“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 thegreat wave of Neolithic migration established itself in that region.”118
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.119
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 weneed not be surprised if we find that the retreat of the great Baltic or Scandinavian ice-sheet does not keep step exactly with that of the Alpine.120
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 hundredmetres above tide-level. But to the southward the depression was only slightly marked.
RECONSTRUCTED LAKE-DWELLINGSSUCCESSIVE STAGES AND FORMS OF BALTIC SEA1. Culmination of last advance of ice.2. Yoldia Sea during retreat of ice.3. Yoldia Sea at greatest size.4. Scandinavia during Ancylus Epoch.(The white represents the ice; dark gray represents the land; light gray the Baltic Sea.)
SUCCESSIVE STAGES AND FORMS OF BALTIC SEA
1. Culmination of last advance of ice.2. Yoldia Sea during retreat of ice.3. Yoldia Sea at greatest size.4. Scandinavia during Ancylus Epoch.
1. Culmination of last advance of ice.2. Yoldia Sea during retreat of ice.3. Yoldia Sea at greatest size.4. Scandinavia during Ancylus Epoch.
1. Culmination of last advance of ice.2. Yoldia Sea during retreat of ice.3. Yoldia Sea at greatest size.4. Scandinavia during Ancylus Epoch.
1. Culmination of last advance of ice.
2. Yoldia Sea during retreat of ice.
3. Yoldia Sea at greatest size.
4. Scandinavia during Ancylus Epoch.
(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, likeYoldia arcticaandAstarte 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 Finlandcompleted the change of this sea into a great landlocked body of water called the Ancylus Lake, from the most common and characteristic mollusk,Ancylus fluviatilis. The glaciers had shrunken to a narrow band covering the mountains between Norway and Sweden. The climate, while moderating, was still cold. The Arctic flora retreated northward and was followed in Denmark by woods and even forests of willows, aspens, and poplars, entering from the south and southeast. These were followed by pines, especially in the dryer districts, later by alders, coming from the east across Finland, according to Hoops.121The Ancylus Epoch forms our third stage. The settlement at Maglemose probably took place toward its close.
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. Oakshad already begun to crowd out the pines, and will be followed after a time by the beeches loving a soil rich in humus, rather than the sandy barrens occupied by the pines. A similar evidence is furnished by other plants, some of which reached a higher latitude than now. The summer temperature was perhaps 2-1/2º Cent. higher than at present, an “optimum temperature” for the plant life of this region. This improvement of climate is most marked in northeastern Europe and seems far less noticeable even in Germany. Our fourth stage is marked by a greatly improved climate and the spread of the shell-heaps.
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 dayfurnish data for a reliable system. For the sake of convenience we will begin by attempting to set a date for the close, rather than the beginning, of the whole Neolithic period. We have seen that this was brought about by the introduction of the metal bronze. Copper had come into use somewhat or considerably earlier, but it seems hardly worth while to consider it as characterizing a distinct period. It is rather the last phase of the Stone Age, when wider communications and trade were making the transition to the use of metals like bronze and iron.
According to Montelius,122who is our best authority on chronology, the use of bronze in sufficient quantities to mark the beginning of a new period took place in different countries at the dates given in the second column of the following table, the first column showing the date of the first use of copper:123
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.124Forrer dates the beginning of both epochs a little later than Montelius. The date 2000 B. C. would seem to mark the end of the Neolithic period in middle Europe with approximate accuracy.
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.125He places the beginning of the Neolithic deposits here at 6000 B. C., and considers 20,000 years as a fair estimate for the time elapsed since the first occupation of this locality by Magdalenian hunters at some time during the Bühl Epoch. Obermaier, summing up the evidence, concludes that the beginning of the Magdalenian Epoch could not have been later than16,000-18,000 B. C., and that it ended not far from 12,000 B. C. Osborn says: “Bühl moraines in Lake Lucerne are estimated as having been deposited between 16,000 and 24,000 years B. C.” He also appears to place the Maglemose culture at about 7000 B. C.126
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 Ragundalately drained shows the number of years since the lake was uncovered almost at the end of the retreat of the Scandinavian ice.
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.”127
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.128
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.
Steenstrup129discovered the succession of forest growths in the peat-bogs or moors of Zealand, north of Copenhagen. In the layers of some of the depressions he found what seemed to be almost a complete record of forest life from the time of the retreat of the glaciers. The upper layers of peat contained remains of trees still flourishing in the surrounding country: alders, birches, and beeches. Then came oaks, and still deeper the pines. Beneath these were aspens, arctic willows, and other plants of the far north. Remains of the reindeer occur in theirlowest layer. The pines hardly, if at all, reached Denmark before the Ancylus Epoch, preceding periods showing only the Dryas flora.
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 pineepoch, dated them considerably farther back than we do now.
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:
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 lateand was of short duration compared with the millennia in which Paleolithic time was reckoned.
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.130We find the shell-heap culture spreading from Denmark into Sweden and Norway. Following closely, or overlapping it, crossing Norway from the region of Christiania, we find the Nostvet and Arctic cultures, perhaps nearly related, perhaps distinct, but leading over to the genuine Neolithic Scandinavian culture. Here we find forms intermediate between the axe and “pick” of the shell-heap and the axes of later epochs.
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.131Their cross-section might be compared to an ellipse with pointed instead of rounded ends. This is the “spitznackiges Beil” of Müller and Montelius. It occurs all over Europe and still farther, while the two following forms have acontinually more restricted distribution. It is not found in the village settlements or stone graves, and evidently characterizes a period between these and the shell-heaps.
The second form, thedunn—orschmalnackiges 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, thebreit—ordick—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.
FORMS OF PREHISTORIC AXEThin-backed axe.Dunn-nackiges Beil—Earlyand Mid-Neolithic.
Thin-backed axe.Dunn-nackiges Beil—Earlyand Mid-Neolithic.
FORMS OF PREHISTORIC AXEHammer axes—Late Neolithic.
Hammer axes—Late Neolithic.
FORMS OF PREHISTORIC AXEPalæolithic hand-stones—“Coups-de-Poing.”
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.These axes sometimes had two cutting edges, sometimes one edged and the other blunt for hammering. Many of them were exceedingly beautiful in form, design, and finish. But this method of fastening the head to the handle greatly weakened the brittle stone. Many of them were probably merely articles of luxury or adornment. The hole was made by twirling a stick or bone, with plenty of sand, water, and patience.
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.”132(It may be safe, therefore, to date them provisionally between 3000 and 4000 B. C.) “The epoch of the dolmens with covered entrance (Gangräber) begins about the middle of the third millennium B. C., and the epoch of the stone vaults or cysts (Steinkisten) corresponds to the centuries about 2000 B. C.”
Ice-retreats in northern Germany.
Solutrean. Dry and Cold.
Steppe and Tundra Fauna.
Swedish-Finnish Moraines.
Early Magdalenian.
Moist and cold. Tundra.
Middle Magd.
Steppe Loess formed.
Susa founded.
Glaciers in Mountains.
Ancylus Lake.
Dryas, Birch, Pine Maglemose.
Late Magdalenian.
Anau founded.136
Neolithic Settlements in Crete.
Littorina Depression.
Optimum Climate.
Azilian-Tard.
Oak. Shell-heaps.
Campignian.
Sumerians in Babylonia.
Full Neolithic. Beech.
Full Neolithic.
Predynastic Egyptians.
Copper Period.
Bronze Period.
Bronze Period.
XI-XIII Egyptian Dynasties.
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.
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.
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.139Contour lines are of vast, often dominant, importance in the life of every nation. John Bull has been moulded, if not made, by his island. Italy could never be safe until its boundary followed the crest of the Alps. Great mountain chains mark limits, and river valleys are thoroughfares. Whoever holds Constantinople controls the trade of a boundless area. If this is true to-day, it must have been far more important in prehistoric times, when man had only begun to gain a certain degree of independence or mastery of nature. Culture was then very largely determined by position and routes of communication. The Alps and Pyrenees formed a long, impassable barrier between northern and southern Europe, broken only by the Rhone valley; and northern Europe was split into an eastern or middle and a western provinceby the Juras, the Vosges, and the forested Ardennes. Then, as now, the Pass of Belfort was the narrow opening, and Belgium, always the battle-ground of nations, the great thoroughfare between middle Europe and France. From the south, and to a certain degree from the west, middle Europe was not easy of access. But to the eastward there are few or no natural boundaries as it goes over into the great Russian plain, of which North Germany is practically a westward projection. We might possibly go farther and accept literally the somewhat exaggerated statement that all Europe is only a peninsula of Asia.
Osborn has called attention to the fact that from Paleolithic to Neolithic time Europe gave rise to no new races.140The immigrants entered their new home with all their physical and mental characters already fixed or determined. The routes of migration of the successive waves of lower Paleolithic immigrants are still unknown. Remains of Chellean and Acheulean cultures are rich and widely distributed everywhere around the Mediterranean, especially in northern Africa, at this time well watered. The entrance of Neanderthal man into Europe may well have been from this direction.
The Cro-Magnon race very probably came along the northern or southern shores of the Mediterranean, and then pushed northward into France; though the evidence is far from compelling. The race is evidently Asiatic in its physical characters, reminding us of tribes still living along the Himalayas, most strikingly of the Sikhs. If they entered from the south, northern Africa was a station on their march, not their original home. The Solutrean culture may have been brought by the Brünn people, who probably came through Hungary and up the Danube, but its origin and route of migration is still very obscure. Breuil’s arguments for the migration of Magdalenian culture from Poland across Europe are very strong, and his view seems to accord well with the facts, though Osborn seems to lean toward a somewhat different interpretation.141The broad-headed people of Furfooz and Grenelle apparently came by the central European route. The only race showing any Negroid characters is that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe, and the genuine Mediterraneanrace may have arrived here bringing the Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic Epoch in France.
Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are the Hamitic peoples along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.142His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. It was a work of observation, insight, and genius, and was a landmark in the progress of the science of anthropology.
The area of distribution of the race takes the form of a Y, the arms following the north and south shores of the Mediterranean while the stem or lower portion extends through Asia Minor. It includes the Hamitic peoples, also the Pelasgi and the Hittites, but leaves out the Semites.
Huxley had described the distribution of his Melanochrooi, or dark Europeans, very similarly, except that in his group the stem of the Y layfarther south and extended into Arabia. In locating the origin of the Mediterranean race in Africa, Sergi was doubtless influenced by the opinion of Darwin and others that man’s birthplace was in Africa. Nearly all paleontologists to-day favor the Asiatic origin; and the stem of the Y stretching eastward toward Asia Minor or Arabia points to a possible or probable primitive route of migration. The Asiatic cradle is really in better accord with Sergi’s theory, and meets some objections or difficulties better, than the African.
We vaguely located this Asiatic cradle somewhere westward or northwestward of the great plateau of Thibet. We may call it the Iranian plateau, using the term in the broadest possible sense, including Afghanistan and perhaps western Turkestan: a great area extending more than 1000 miles from northwest to southeast, where it sinks into the valley of the Euphrates. We found a branch of the great Negroid race starting very early from this region and migrating westward past Arabia into Africa. This was an easy line of least resistance through regions where the moist, cooler climate of the glacial period brought only blessing instead of calamity and curse. The Hamitic and Semitic peoples naturally followed the same route, travelling as one people or nearly together, if the relationsbetween the languages are as fundamental and close as some good authorities think. The Semites settled in Arabia, while the Hamites went on westward and found a home along the southern shore of the Mediterranean. We do not know when this migration took place.
This route was easy and wide, and led into a broad, favored continent. It would not be surprising if for a very long time most of the travel went this way. We may venture to guess that Neanderthal man may have followed it long before the beginning of the Hamitic-Semitic migrations, but this is only a guess. While rich, well-watered, and probably park-like in its flora during the moist climate of the glacial epochs, it was sure to degenerate into desert as the climate became warmer and dryer; as the Sahara Desert is dotted with the remains of Paleolithic settlements where the explorer to-day is in danger of perishing from thirst. Any traveller by this southern route must pass through Italy or Spain before reaching northern Europe.
MIGRATIONS OF PEOPLESF. B. Loomis, del.MIGRATIONS OF PEOPLES1. 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.
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 Euphratesand elsewhere into Asia Minor. This route continued in use as a great thoroughfare for migrating peoples and invading armies through historic times. Xenophon and his 10,000 explored it. It is surrounded on three sides by water, although mountain chains cut off the influence of the sea to some extent. It is a plateau of glade and forest, though the forests have now largely disappeared. It has the features of a semitropical climate; here the flora of northern and southern provinces meet and overlap. One great characteristic of the region is the abundance and variety of its fruit-trees. It was apparently the original home of apricot, peach, fig, and orange, as well as of other fruits introduced into Italy from this region by the Romans. The vine is luxurious. Somewhere along the line of this great thoroughfare the wild olive was domesticated, improved, and transformed. Oaks, walnuts, chestnuts, and many smaller growths furnish a variety of nuts. The open glades tempted to agriculture and furnished no small contributions of grain to Rome. Though suffering from dessication, it may yet again become the garden of the world.
When once a wave of westward migration had entered Asia Minor it was walled in on the north and south by mountain and sea. Therewere no by-roads. Crowded and pressed from behind, it could not stop until they reached the shores of the Ægean Sea.
Here there were two possible outlets. One was by sea, using as stations the islands with which the sea is dotted and leading to Crete and to Greece. Crete, according to Evans, was settled some 14,000 years ago, and is on the whole less easily reached by short voyages than Attica. A second outlet led across the Hellespont and around the Ægean Sea into Greece, or still farther northward and westward around the Adriatic and down into Italy. We might add still a third fork of this great highway running northward to the Danube. When we remember how Neolithic settlements in northern Europe clustered around the lakes and dotted the river valleys, the primitive minor routes of communication, how early islands like Crete in the south and Gothland in the Baltic were settled, we can imagine the importance of a city—or even a village—like Troy even in prehistoric times. Here a sea route running east and west crossed a great land route running north and south. Here was a point of exchange, trade, and transshipment—if we may use the word. We do not wonder that before the close of the Neolithic period, and perhaps far earlier,patterns and influences were radiating through the Balkan region, far up the Danube, and we know not how far into Russia.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Greece, and Italy to a less extent, were in climate and many other features bits of Asia Minor, almost shut off from northern Europe by the great Alpine barrier. The two regions were entered by different routes, each of which had left its mark on its travellers. Immigrants seeped into Italy and Greece through broken and rough mountain regions. Great invasions were difficult or impossible. They were sunny, smiling lands compared with the grim and dreary north. Men living in this milder climate did not need to be gross eaters. They lived from the fruits of their orchards to a far larger extent. Nuts were in early times almost a surrogate for grain. The olive furnished a delicious oil, and the grapes wine. The butter and cheese of northern Europe were neither needed nor desired.143Most of these habits, tastes, and desires had become fixed during the march through Asia Minor.
The peoples which gradually went westward from the Iranian plateau through Asia Minor, across or around the Ægean Sea into Greece and Italy and Spain, generally found a very similarenvironment from beginning to end of their long journey. There was little in food, climate, or conditions to compel or stimulate change. Everything tended to more firmly fix in their structure the already long-inherited characters of their Iranian ancestors. These characteristics thus fixed have become stable and persistent, and have remained so in modern times in spite of repeated invasions and infusions of northern blood. We are perhaps justified in speaking of a Mediterranean race.
It seems strange that Sergi should find traces of his Mediterranean race in Russia. Did these find their way so far northward directly from the Mediterranean area or are they merely sporadic groups more resistant to modifying influences; or are they perhaps groups which have separated from the westward migration at the Hellespont and turned northward? The Nordic peoples of Europe are perhaps after all not so far from their Mediterranean cousins. The Mediterranean race still holds its own around the Mediterranean. In France its blood is much mixed and greatly diluted with later infusions. In England it has generally been almost completely swamped by Aryan invasions.
Neither of the two routes already sketched leads directly into middle or northern Europe.The trend in both is toward the Mediterranean. We must now consider the third and last route, which is of chief interest to us. We have already seen that the Black Sea prevented all migrations northward from Asia Minor except at the Hellespont. Eastward from the Black Sea lies the Caspian, probably much larger in glacial times. The two seas are separated by the forbidding, almost unbroken, mountain barrier of the Caucasus; but a narrow passage at each end is left. East of the Caspian Sea must lie the point where a more northerly westward route diverges from the road through Asia Minor. Our third route starts, therefore, from the northern edge of the Iranian plateau, perhaps mostly from Turkestan, and runs westward north of the great barrier of seas and mountains just described. It follows the great steppe or prairie which stretches through southern Siberia and Russia into Hungary. Its western portion lies along the valley of the lower Danube, the great east and west artery of communication and migration through Europe. It lies farther north than any other great route, and leads over steppe instead of through forest. As the Arabia-Africa route was the first to be traversed, this may well have been the last. Furthermore, the route through Asia Minor,ending in a sort ofcul de sac, may easily have become well inhabited and hence less open before the Neolithic period had begun in northern Europe.
It was by no means the most attractive route. It offered far less to people in the collecting stage than the well-watered parklands of Asia Minor. The steppe offers to the hunter few means of concealment or approach to the game. The animals are swift and wary. In any migration of peoples toward the frontier, the hunters lead the advance and spread out like an army of scouts. Every river which crossed the steppe would offer to them a tempting by-road leading off into the forests of Siberia or Russia. How deeply they would penetrate into the primeval forest or away from the river valleys is still a question. Very likely they would find their best hunting-grounds not very far from the northern edge of the steppe, where the forest is less dense. This question we cannot yet answer. But most of European Russia is well watered, and here these hunters would find themselves at home. The main route of the steppe would be left for a very different population. The piedmont zone of grasslands in Turkestan was an ideal land for primitive agriculturists practising a hoe-culture, as at Anau. The northern edge of this steppezone, where it joined the forest, may have been equally favorable.
But the piedmont zone and the river banks of the steppe must have been occupied by agriculturists before 10,000 B. C., probably much earlier. Pumpelly’s explorations seem to warrant this view. Alongside of agriculture, but at a somewhat later date, sheep-herding and cattle-raising were practised. But the nomad of these days was a less dangerous neighbor than at later times because the horse had not yet been domesticated. During these post-glacial times he would be less dangerous here than farther south around Arabia, when the dryness which finally produced the Arabian desert was making itself felt, burning up the pastures and leaving only the choice between starvation and migration in mass. Again comparing this migration with the pioneer movements of peoples in historic times, we have good reason to believe that the sheep-herders and cattle men—and they were probably both at the same time—advanced faster than the agriculturists, who were more bound to the soil. Between herdsmen and farmers there were almost certainly many intermediate grades. We may be fairly confident, therefore, that the movement or tide along this route did not take the form of a processionmarching in lock-step, but of a series of waves, generally with hunters in front and along the forest flank, herdsmen in the middle, and farmers bringing up the rear and making permanent settlements at favored spots.
Hunters had been spreading northward at least as early as the beginning of Upper Paleolithic times. Farming on the lowest grades of agriculture is essentially Neolithic. A town or village had risen at Susa 20,000 years ago. Neolithic civilization probably reached Crete nearly or quite 15,000 years ago. Small Sumerian cities were being founded in southern Babylonia at or before 5000 B. C. Population was increasing in density in the Iranian plateau, as almost every mountain region with its healthy atmosphere and low death-rate quickly becomes overpopulated. Our pioneer column was continually pressed forward by new recruits from the rear as well as by its natural increase. We have practically no records of the march. But our sketch is no mere invention of fancy. It applies to every great migration of peoples extending over centuries or millennia. The last illustration was the great westward movement in America beginning a century or two ago, and still far from completed.
The Hungarian plain is the last extension ofthe great south Russian steppe far into Europe. West of this anything like nomadic life was practically impossible. Here our pioneers scattered and followed the river valleys, settling more or less permanently the loess deposits as farmers, but on less favorable soils devoting themselves more largely to cattle-raising. The latter form of life seems to have been more common on the great North German plain, though accompanied by much hunting, a genuine pioneer life.
We may now turn to Europe and consider the distribution of its races and peoples.
Of the route of migration of the Neanderthal race we have no sure knowledge. The wide and rich distribution of ancient Paleolithic implements in Egypt and northern Africa tempts us to guess that it represents a very early migration along the Arabian route after the negroids and before the Hamites and Semites. We have glanced at the origin of the Cro-Magnon people, and have discovered our uncertainty. The Tardenoisian culture, with its pygmy flints, is exceedingly wide-spread,144and seems to have started in Europe in the Mediterranean region, arriving from still farther east. We are temptedto guess that the great bulk of westward migrations in Paleolithic times followed the southern, Arabian, route, but there were probably exceptions.
Coming down to Neolithic times we find the Hamitic peoples in Africa, apparently representing the first wave in the migration of the Mediterranean race. It may well have arrived at its present home long before the beginning of the Neolithic period. It had followed the southern route. Peoples physically and racially closely akin to the Hamites followed, probably in successive waves. The Tardenoisian people, if their culture was carried by a distinct people, may represent an early wave. The bulk of the population of Greece, Italy, and Spain followed, but migration seems to shift gradually from the Arabian route to that through Asia Minor, as the zone of most favorable climatic conditions moved slowly northward. Before the close of the Neolithic period the relations between Greece, Crete, and western Asia Minor have become so marked and close that they almost represent one culture and people.
The Mediterranean race, thus established in Europe, spread northward. It could not cross the Alpine barrier. It followed the Rhone valley and the Atlantic coast, and furnished thebasic population in France and Great Britain, though here frequently crowded back into corners or submerged by later invasions, peaceful or otherwise. It furnished the great link or means of communication between the Mediterranean basin and the far north of Europe. Schliz has some reason for calling these megalith people largely traders.
In a cave near Furfooz, Belgium, there were found crania, probably of Azilian-Tardenoisian time, noticeably distinct from those of the long-headed or dolichocephalic Paleolithic peoples in being short—and broad-headed, brachycephalic.145Brachycephalic crania, perhaps early Neolithic, were also found at Grenelle near Paris. We remember their occurrence in the shell-heaps at Mugem, Portugal. Similar crania were found of about the same age at Ofnet, Bavaria, on a tributary of the Danube.
Somewhat later we find broad-headed people occupying the higher lands of southeastern France, theMassif, 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.146It looks as if they came originally from a region bordering on or overhanging the steppe route and came into Europe by way of the valley of the Danube. There were certainly several if not many waves of brachycephalic migrations into Europe, of which this was the first. Other waves may have come from different parts of a great area, and hence show modifications of type. Everywhere the Neolithic brachycephals seem to inhabit mountainous or rough country, perhaps because of preference, perhaps because as they gradually made their way they found these regions unoccupied. They seem to be an unassuming, unpretentious, peaceable, exceedingly persistent and enduring stock, which has held on its way with remarkable pertinacity. Some still maintain that brachycephaly is everywhere largely an adaptation to conditions and habits of life.147The rough country, generally heavily forested,and well populated with this quiet but firm and solid people, greatly hindered free communication between France and central Europe.
No human remains have been found in the Danish kitchen-middens, which may well have been heaped up by broad-heads from Belgium but apparently mingled with eastern immigrants who brought with them the domesticated dog not found at Mugem. They left their axes and picks in Sweden and across into Norway. Behind them came people bearing the Nostvet culture.148Our knowledge of Russian prehistory is still very scanty. But we find here a variety of cultures, such as we should expect from a confusion of hunting tribes far from their original home much broken up and remingled during the long migration. We find in Poland the remains of a culture akin in its carvings to the Magdalenian culture of western Europe.
It would hardly have crossed Europe from the west. Breuil149seems to consider it as the station from whence it was carried to France. The question is exceedingly interesting and important, but is one to which we can give no sure answer. The carved bone implements are certainly to be found in Poland and to the northward.
Behind these bits and wrecks of tribes and cultures, for they were hardly more, came the first great recognizable body of Nordic peoples, probably also in successive waves mingling on this northern coast toward which they had been drawn by the climatic optimum. Kossina,150who has given an excellent account of these early northern migrations, speaks of them asUrfinnenandUrgermanen, primitive Finns and Germans.Urskandinavier, primitive Scandinavians, would seem to be a more appropriate name. For the centre of the least mixed blood of this group is to be found in the Scandinavian peninsula.
These Scandinavian representatives of the so-called Nordic race or stock are characterized by tall stature, blond complexion, light hair, blue eyes, and long head and face. Their origin is still a matter of much discussion. Kossina and others derive them from Cro-Magnon people, following the reindeer in its migration northeastward from France at or toward the end of the Magdalenian epoch. Some suggest that the Cro-Magnon people were also blonds. If this were so they formed a marked exception to the color of Paleolithic stocks coming from and through southern regions. The possibility cannotbe denied. But, if the Cro-Magnons were light-colored, they have left no traces of this in their descendants at Perigeux and elsewhere. The face of the Cro-Magnon was short and broad, that of the Scandinavian long and narrow. It might have changed but has not done so at Perigeux. The Cro-Magnon race was already declining in physique and numbers during the Magdalenian. Even if all migrated, could they have furnished enough descendants to give rise to the Scandinavian population? It seems to me far more probable that the Scandinavians were hunters or partially herdsmen, who had wandered by the steppe route through the forests or along their edge, and had lost the dark pigmentation in the northern climate. This has been noticed, perhaps to a less extent among Asiatic steppe-dwellers.
The study of prehistoric anthropology in Russia, a vast territory, is still in its infancy. We have touched upon only one or two of the questions concerning this so-called Nordic race, which is probably hardly more than a name for a mixture of peoples.151We must not forget that even in Scandinavia we find traces of a very early immigration of short-headed people.152We still know little concerning life in NorthGermany during the Neolithic period. It was probably what we should call pioneer life, where hunting and cattle-raising and a rude tillage combined to furnish support.
We must now turn to the valley of the Danube. Here we find a population characterized by similar ground form of skull, although according to Schliz153showing two fairly distinct varieties, a longer and a shorter cranium. Probably this population arrived in several successive waves. Its culture is evidently homogeneous. They are agriculturists forming fixed and permanent settlements, practising farming of a high grade. The characteristic implement is the mattock. Daggers and lance-heads are rare, or fail. They were a peaceful folk settling by preference, though not exclusively, in the loess districts, as at Grosgartach. We find, as we had every reason to expect, that northern Germany and Scandinavia were peopled by a pioneer folk not yet completely agricultural. The Danube people represent the farmers of the steppe whose migration probably went on more slowly and gradually, and who always remained more homogeneous physically and culturally. They may, or may not, have reached the Danube valley as early as the Germans and Scandinavians arrivedat the Baltic, for they had far less distance to march. They spread out westward and northward. Here we trace them by their pottery. Starting from Hungary and the surrounding regions we find them in Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, across south and middle Germany as far as the Rhine. We have already noticed that the banded pottery covered all this region, while the home of the corded pottery was North Germany.
But, while the form of the banded pottery is quite constant, the ornament varies greatly. We find the plain, often rude, saw-tooth pattern, the meander and scroll, the spiral-painted pottery—sometimes in the southeast plant patterns, perhaps introduced. I regret that I cannot find any clear or definite theory as to the exact relations of any of this pottery to that of Anau or Susa. The greatest variety, as well as the most complex patterns, seem to occur in most southeasterly regions, which, at least in later Neolithic times, were much under the influence of the Ægean culture, just as western Europe borrowed from Italy and Spain.
Here there was evidently a great and very complex mixture of cultures, and probably of peoples all of one great primitive stock, shown least modified in the Mediterranean race, here more influenced, changed, and varied by steppeclimate and conditions, and more or less admixture.
Along the Swiss lakes we find the lake-dwellers. The few human remains from the earliest lake-dwellings are all brachycephalic—short-heads. Then in the period when copper was beginning to come in we find long-heads arriving in greater numbers, but the short-heads regain their superiority during the Bronze period. The weight of evidence seems to favor the view that these settlers did not come from the zone of “proto-brachycephals” inhabiting eastern France, but represent a new immigration from the east, and, according to Schliz, founded fortified settlements on the heights of Baden, Wurtemberg, and along the valley of the Rhine as far as Cologne.154We have seen that the pottery of these earliest immigrants was crude and almost or quite without definite ornament.
Northern and central Europe seem to have been settled mainly or almost entirely directly from the east, along western Russia and the Danube valley. But, especially toward the close of the period, people from the megalithic zone seem to have penetrated much farther southward into Germany than their monuments would prove. Schliz thinks that he has recognizedtheir skulls as well as calyciform pottery over a wide region. Their presence seems fairly clear, but whether they were comparatively very few in number, or fairly numerous, is still uncertain.
There seems to be good reason for believing that in late Paleolithic time the population of middle Europe north of the Alps was very sparse and the Baltic region hardly inhabited. A hunting population without domestic animals except the dog pressed northward through Russia in waves and fragments, and along the Baltic mingled with a strain coming from the west, probably broad-heads from Belgium. The great Scandinavian and North German peoples followed with a frontier culture, a combination of hunting, fishing, cattle-raising, and agriculture mingled in proportions varying according to time and place. Their exact route of migration from the region of the steppes must yet be traced. But the weight of evidence favors an eastern origin. At a time probably not so very far from their arrival in the north, agriculturists—we might safely speak of them as farmers—were coming into the Danube valley and spreading along its tributaries. Apparently somewhat or considerably later the lake-dwellers appear along the northern piedmont zone of the Alps asbroad-heads, marking the arrival of the advance guard of the great Alpine race of to-day. But here again our certainty is not as firm as we could wish. They extend northward toward and along the Rhine valley. The close of the period is marked by the southward spread of peoples from northern Germany crowding back the farmers characterized by the banded pottery. This movement is augmented somewhat, perhaps very little, by recruits from the megalithic zone of northwestern Europe and Denmark. All these people are closing in on central or middle western Europe. In the Rhine valley along the middle of the course of the river we find a region of mingling or overlapping cultures which have not yet been satisfactorily disentangled.
We have spoken of them as pioneers. It was a time and place of pioneer, frontier life. And frontier men and life have their peculiar physical, cultural, mental, and temperamental characteristics, almost apart from time and place. The people have something, at least, in common with the great American westward migrations and frontiersmen of a far later date. We have the successive waves of hunters, herdsmen, and farmers often overlapping or mingling. We have a grand mixing of peoples and cultures, if notof races. Many a fine art or technique is left behind. Life is rude, hard, vigorous, vital, joyous. It was so yesterday, it was probably so millennia ago. For the stratum of frontiersman and barbarian—not to say savage—lies just below the surface in us all, and a scratch exposes it. This was a period of vitality, hope, and promise.
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-armedCarnivora. Only a “saving remnant” has progressed, and these mostly under stern and strenuous pressure. The “aspiring” ape exists only in our imagination.
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”155; and nature’s cuffs were frequently fatal. The pupil had to learn by others’ experience. Paleolithic man lived in France poorly armed and ill-protected against a threatening climate steadily changing for the worse. Food may have been abundant, but enemies hunting for him were also numerous. He was compelled to be keen, watchful, prying, wary; to discover distant danger, and to notice every trace of its approach. He learned the habits and behavior of animals, and the ways of things—an excellentcourse of study. He had to rely on his wits, and they were none too keen or many.