The New Stone Age in Northern Europe Part 9

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.[139] Contour lines are of vast, often dominant, importance in the life of every nation. John Bull has been moulded, if not made, by his island. Italy could never be safe until its boundary followed the crest of the Alps. Great mountain chains mark limits, and river valleys are thoroughfares. Whoever holds Constantinople controls the trade of a boundless area. If this is true to-day, it must have been far more important in prehistoric times, when man had only begun to gain a certain degree of independence or mastery of nature. Culture was then very largely determined by position and routes of communication. The Alps and Pyrenees formed a long, impa.s.sable barrier between northern and southern Europe, broken only by the Rhone valley; and northern Europe was split into an eastern or middle and a western province by the Juras, the Vosges, and the forested Ardennes.

Then, as now, the Pa.s.s of Belfort was the narrow opening, and Belgium, always the battle-ground of nations, the great thoroughfare between middle Europe and France. From the south, and to a certain degree from the west, middle Europe was not easy of access. But to the eastward there are few or no natural boundaries as it goes over into the great Russian plain, of which North Germany is practically a westward projection. We might possibly go farther and accept literally the somewhat exaggerated statement that all Europe is only a peninsula of Asia.

Osborn has called attention to the fact that from Paleolithic to Neolithic time Europe gave rise to no new races.[140] The immigrants entered their new home with all their physical and mental characters already fixed or determined. The routes of migration of the successive waves of lower Paleolithic immigrants are still unknown. Remains of Ch.e.l.lean 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 sh.o.r.es 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 Brunn people, who probably came through Hungary and up the Danube, but its origin and route of migration is still very obscure. Breuil's arguments for the migration of Magdalenian culture from Poland across Europe are very strong, and his view seems to accord well with the facts, though Osborn seems to lean toward a somewhat different interpretation.[141]

The broad-headed people of Furfooz and Grenelle apparently came by the central European route. The only race showing any Negroid characters is that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe, and the genuine Mediterranean race may have arrived here bringing the Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic Epoch in France.

Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are the Hamitic peoples along the southern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean.[142]

His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. It was a work of observation, insight, and genius, and was a landmark in the progress of the science of anthropology.

The area of distribution of the race takes the form of a Y, the arms following the north and south sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean while the stem or lower portion extends through Asia Minor. It includes the Hamitic peoples, also the Pelasgi and the Hitt.i.tes, but leaves out the Semites.

Huxley had described the distribution of his Melanochrooi, or dark Europeans, very similarly, except that in his group the stem of the Y lay farther south and extended into Arabia. In locating the origin of the Mediterranean race in Africa, Sergi was doubtless influenced by the opinion of Darwin and others that man's birthplace was in Africa. Nearly all paleontologists to-day favor the Asiatic origin; and the stem of the Y stretching eastward toward Asia Minor or Arabia points to a possible or probable primitive route of migration. The Asiatic cradle is really in better accord with Sergi's theory, and meets some objections or difficulties better, than the African.

We vaguely located this Asiatic cradle somewhere westward or northwestward of the great plateau of Thibet. We may call it the Iranian plateau, using the term in the broadest possible sense, including Afghanistan and perhaps western Turkestan: a great area extending more than 1000 miles from northwest to southeast, where it sinks into the valley of the Euphrates. We found a branch of the great Negroid race starting very early from this region and migrating westward past Arabia into Africa. This was an easy line of least resistance through regions where the moist, cooler climate of the glacial period brought only blessing instead of calamity and curse. The Hamitic and Semitic peoples naturally followed the same route, travelling as one people or nearly together, if the relations between the languages are as fundamental and close as some good authorities think. The Semites settled in Arabia, while the Hamites went on westward and found a home along the southern sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.s through Italy or Spain before reaching northern Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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._ Gra.s.s-lands and steppe. _B._ Iranian Plateau (central portion). _C._ Valley of Mesopotamia.]

A second great western route must have begun very early to compete with the African. This led along the curve of the mountain ranges of Persia and Armenia, with Breasted's fertile crescent at their base, up the valley of the Euphrates and elsewhere into Asia Minor. This route continued in use as a great thoroughfare for migrating peoples and invading armies through historic times. Xenophon and his 10,000 explored it. It is surrounded on three sides by water, although mountain chains cut off the influence of the sea to some extent. It is a plateau of glade and forest, though the forests have now largely disappeared. It has the features of a semitropical climate; here the flora of northern and southern provinces meet and overlap. One great characteristic of the region is the abundance and variety of its fruit-trees. It was apparently the original home of apricot, peach, fig, and orange, as well as of other fruits introduced into Italy from this region by the Romans.

The vine is luxurious. Somewhere along the line of this great thoroughfare the wild olive was domesticated, improved, and transformed.

Oaks, walnuts, chestnuts, and many smaller growths furnish a variety of nuts. The open glades tempted to agriculture and furnished no small contributions of grain to Rome. Though suffering from dessication, it may yet again become the garden of the world.

When once a wave of westward migration had entered Asia Minor it was walled in on the north and south by mountain and sea. There were no by-roads. Crowded and pressed from behind, it could not stop until they reached the sh.o.r.es of the aegean 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 h.e.l.lespont and around the aegean 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 b.u.t.ter and cheese of northern Europe were neither needed nor desired.[143] Most of these habits, tastes, and desires had become fixed during the march through Asia Minor.

The peoples which gradually went westward from the Iranian plateau through Asia Minor, across or around the aegean Sea into Greece and Italy and Spain, generally found a very similar environment from beginning to end of their long journey. There was little in food, climate, or conditions to compel or stimulate change. Everything tended to more firmly fix in their structure the already long-inherited characters of their Iranian ancestors. These characteristics thus fixed have become stable and persistent, and have remained so in modern times in spite of repeated invasions and infusions of northern blood. We are perhaps justified in speaking of a Mediterranean race.

It seems strange that Sergi should find traces of his Mediterranean race in Russia. Did these find their way so far northward directly from the Mediterranean area or are they merely sporadic groups more resistant to modifying influences; or are they perhaps groups which have separated from the westward migration at the h.e.l.lespont 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 h.e.l.lespont. 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 pa.s.sage at each end is left. East of the Caspian Sea must lie the point where a more northerly westward route diverges from the road through Asia Minor. Our third route starts, therefore, from the northern edge of the Iranian plateau, perhaps mostly from Turkestan, and runs westward north of the great barrier of seas and mountains just described. It follows the great steppe or prairie which stretches through southern Siberia and Russia into Hungary. Its western portion lies along the valley of the lower Danube, the great east and west artery of communication and migration through Europe. It lies farther north than any other great route, and leads over steppe instead of through forest. As the Arabia-Africa route was the first to be traversed, this may well have been the last. Furthermore, the route through Asia Minor, ending in a sort of _cul de sac_, may easily have become well inhabited and hence less open before the Neolithic period had begun in northern Europe.

It was by no means the most attractive route. It offered far less to people in the collecting stage than the well-watered parklands of Asia Minor. The steppe offers to the hunter few means of concealment or approach to the game. The animals are swift and wary. In any migration of peoples toward the frontier, the hunters lead the advance and spread out like an army of scouts. Every river which crossed the steppe would offer to them a tempting by-road leading off into the forests of Siberia or Russia. How deeply they would penetrate into the primeval forest or away from the river valleys is still a question. Very likely they would find their best hunting-grounds not very far from the northern edge of the steppe, where the forest is less dense. This question we cannot yet answer. But most of European Russia is well watered, and here these hunters would find themselves at home. The main route of the steppe would be left for a very different population. The piedmont zone of gra.s.slands in Turkestan was an ideal land for primitive agriculturists practising a hoe-culture, as at Anau. The northern edge of this steppe zone, where it joined the forest, may have been equally favorable.

But the piedmont zone and the river banks of the steppe must have been occupied by agriculturists before 10,000 B. C., probably much earlier.

Pumpelly's explorations seem to warrant this view. Alongside of agriculture, but at a somewhat later date, sheep-herding and cattle-raising were practised. But the nomad of these days was a less dangerous neighbor than at later times because the horse had not yet been domesticated. During these post-glacial times he would be less dangerous here than farther south around Arabia, when the dryness which finally produced the Arabian desert was making itself felt, burning up the pastures and leaving only the choice between starvation and migration in ma.s.s. Again comparing this migration with the pioneer movements of peoples in historic times, we have good reason to believe that the sheep-herders and cattle men--and they were probably both at the same time--advanced faster than the agriculturists, who were more bound to the soil. Between herdsmen and farmers there were almost certainly many intermediate grades. We may be fairly confident, therefore, that the movement or tide along this route did not take the form of a procession marching in lock-step, but of a series of waves, generally with hunters in front and along the forest flank, herdsmen in the middle, and farmers bringing up the rear and making permanent settlements at favored spots.

Hunters had been spreading northward at least as early as the beginning of Upper Paleolithic times. Farming on the lowest grades of agriculture is essentially Neolithic. A town or village had risen at Susa 20,000 years ago. Neolithic civilization probably reached Crete nearly or quite 15,000 years ago. Small Sumerian cities were being founded in southern Babylonia at or before 5000 B. C. Population was increasing in density in the Iranian plateau, as almost every mountain region with its healthy atmosphere and low death-rate quickly becomes overpopulated. Our pioneer column was continually pressed forward by new recruits from the rear as well as by its natural increase. We have practically no records of the march. But our sketch is no mere invention of fancy. It applies to every great migration of peoples extending over centuries or millennia. The last ill.u.s.tration was the great westward movement in America beginning a century or two ago, and still far from completed.

The Hungarian plain is the last extension of the great south Russian steppe far into Europe. West of this anything like nomadic life was practically impossible. Here our pioneers scattered and followed the river valleys, settling more or less permanently the loess deposits as farmers, but on less favorable soils devoting themselves more largely to cattle-raising. The latter form of life seems to have been more common on the great North German plain, though accompanied by much hunting, a genuine pioneer life.

We may now turn to Europe and consider the distribution of its races and peoples.

Of the route of migration of the Neanderthal race we have no sure knowledge. The wide and rich distribution of ancient Paleolithic implements in Egypt and northern Africa tempts us to guess that it represents a very early migration along the Arabian route after the negroids and before the Hamites and Semites. We have glanced at the origin of the Cro-Magnon people, and have discovered our uncertainty.

The Tardenoisian culture, with its pygmy flints, is exceedingly wide-spread,[144] and seems to have started in Europe in the Mediterranean region, arriving from still farther east. We are tempted to guess that the great bulk of westward migrations in Paleolithic times followed the southern, Arabian, route, but there were probably exceptions.

Coming down to Neolithic times we find the Hamitic peoples in Africa, apparently representing the first wave in the migration of the Mediterranean race. It may well have arrived at its present home long before the beginning of the Neolithic period. It had followed the southern route. Peoples physically and racially closely akin to the Hamites followed, probably in successive waves. The Tardenoisian people, if their culture was carried by a distinct people, may represent an early wave. The bulk of the population of Greece, Italy, and Spain followed, but migration seems to shift gradually from the Arabian route to that through Asia Minor, as the zone of most favorable climatic conditions moved slowly northward. Before the close of the Neolithic period the relations between Greece, Crete, and western Asia Minor have become so marked and close that they almost represent one culture and people.

The Mediterranean race, thus established in Europe, spread northward. It could not cross the Alpine barrier. It followed the Rhone valley and the Atlantic coast, and furnished the basic population in France and Great Britain, though here frequently crowded back into corners or submerged by later invasions, peaceful or otherwise. It furnished the great link or means of communication between the Mediterranean basin and the far north of Europe. Schliz has some reason for calling these megalith people largely traders.

In a cave near Furfooz, Belgium, there were found crania, probably of Azilian-Tardenoisian time, noticeably distinct from those of the long-headed or dolichocephalic Paleolithic peoples in being short--and broad-headed, brachycephalic.[145] Brachycephalic crania, perhaps early Neolithic, were also found at Grenelle near Paris. We remember their occurrence in the sh.e.l.l-heaps at Mugem, Portugal. Similar crania were found of about the same age at Ofnet, Bavaria, on a tributary of the Danube.

Somewhat later we find broad-headed people occupying the higher lands of southeastern France, the _Ma.s.sif_, Juras and Vosges, forming thus a north-and-south zone separating France from middle Europe. They seem later to have gradually spread westward, somewhat irregularly, and to have mingled with the Mediterranean peoples of France.

The relation of these "Protobrachycephals" to the great Alpine race, most of which arrived later, is still a matter of discussion, and the whole problem of the brachycephalic peoples bristles with interesting questions. They seem to have originated in the mountain regions of western Asia, possibly in or near the Armenian highlands, though this has been disputed.[146] It looks as if they came originally from a region bordering on or overhanging the steppe route and came into Europe by way of the valley of the Danube. There were certainly several if not many waves of brachycephalic migrations into Europe, of which this was the first. Other waves may have come from different parts of a great area, and hence show modifications of type. Everywhere the Neolithic brachycephals seem to inhabit mountainous or rough country, perhaps because of preference, perhaps because as they gradually made their way they found these regions unoccupied. They seem to be an una.s.suming, unpretentious, peaceable, exceedingly persistent and enduring stock, which has held on its way with remarkable pertinacity. Some still maintain that brachycephaly is everywhere largely an adaptation to conditions and habits of life.[147] The rough country, generally heavily forested, and well populated with this quiet but firm and solid people, greatly hindered free communication between France and central Europe.

No human remains have been found in the Danish kitchen-middens, which may well have been heaped up by broad-heads from Belgium but apparently mingled with eastern immigrants who brought with them the domesticated dog not found at Mugem. They left their axes and picks in Sweden and across into Norway. Behind them came people bearing the Nostvet culture.[148] Our knowledge of Russian prehistory is still very scanty.

But we find here a variety of cultures, such as we should expect from a confusion of hunting tribes far from their original home much broken up and remingled during the long migration. We find in Poland the remains of a culture akin in its carvings to the Magdalenian culture of western Europe.

It would hardly have crossed Europe from the west. Breuil[149] seems to consider it as the station from whence it was carried to France. The question is exceedingly interesting and important, but is one to which we can give no sure answer. The carved bone implements are certainly to be found in Poland and to the northward.

Behind these bits and wrecks of tribes and cultures, for they were hardly more, came the first great recognizable body of Nordic peoples, probably also in successive waves mingling on this northern coast toward which they had been drawn by the climatic optimum. Kossina,[150] who has given an excellent account of these early northern migrations, speaks of them as _Urfinnen_ and _Urgermanen_, primitive Finns and Germans.

_Urskandinavier_, primitive Scandinavians, would seem to be a more appropriate name. For the centre of the least mixed blood of this group is to be found in the Scandinavian peninsula.

These Scandinavian representatives of the so-called Nordic race or stock are characterized by tall stature, blond complexion, light hair, blue eyes, and long head and face. Their origin is still a matter of much discussion. Kossina and others derive them from Cro-Magnon people, following the reindeer in its migration northeastward from France at or toward the end of the Magdalenian epoch. Some suggest that the Cro-Magnon people were also blonds. If this were so they formed a marked exception to the color of Paleolithic stocks coming from and through southern regions. The possibility cannot be denied. But, if the Cro-Magnons were light-colored, they have left no traces of this in their descendants at Perigeux and elsewhere. The face of the Cro-Magnon was short and broad, that of the Scandinavian long and narrow. It might have changed but has not done so at Perigeux. The Cro-Magnon race was already declining in physique and numbers during the Magdalenian. Even if all migrated, could they have furnished enough descendants to give rise to the Scandinavian population? It seems to me far more probable that the Scandinavians were hunters or partially herdsmen, who had wandered by the steppe route through the forests or along their edge, and had lost the dark pigmentation in the northern climate. This has been noticed, perhaps to a less extent among Asiatic steppe-dwellers.

The study of prehistoric anthropology in Russia, a vast territory, is still in its infancy. We have touched upon only one or two of the questions concerning this so-called Nordic race, which is probably hardly more than a name for a mixture of peoples.[151] We must not forget that even in Scandinavia we find traces of a very early immigration of short-headed people.[152] We still know little concerning life in North Germany during the Neolithic period. It was probably what we should call pioneer life, where hunting and cattle-raising and a rude tillage combined to furnish support.

We must now turn to the valley of the Danube. Here we find a population characterized by similar ground form of skull, although according to Schliz[153] showing two fairly distinct varieties, a longer and a shorter cranium. Probably this population arrived in several successive waves. Its culture is evidently h.o.m.ogeneous. 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 h.o.m.ogeneous physically and culturally. They may, or may not, have reached the Danube valley as early as the Germans and Scandinavians arrived at the Baltic, for they had far less distance to march. They spread out westward and northward. Here we trace them by their pottery. Starting from Hungary and the surrounding regions we find them in Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia, across south and middle Germany as far as the Rhine. We have already noticed that the banded pottery covered all this region, while the home of the corded pottery was North Germany.

But, while the form of the banded pottery is quite constant, the ornament varies greatly. We find the plain, often rude, saw-tooth pattern, the meander and scroll, the spiral-painted pottery--sometimes in the southeast plant patterns, perhaps introduced. I regret that I cannot find any clear or definite theory as to the exact relations of any of this pottery to that of Anau or Susa. The greatest variety, as well as the most complex patterns, seem to occur in most southeasterly regions, which, at least in later Neolithic times, were much under the influence of the aegean culture, just as western Europe borrowed from Italy and Spain.

Here there was evidently a great and very complex mixture of cultures, and probably of peoples all of one great primitive stock, shown least modified in the Mediterranean race, here more influenced, changed, and varied by steppe climate and conditions, and more or less admixture.

Along the Swiss lakes we find the lake-dwellers. The few human remains from the earliest lake-dwellings are all brachycephalic--short-heads.

Then in the period when copper was beginning to come in we find long-heads arriving in greater numbers, but the short-heads regain their superiority during the Bronze period. The weight of evidence seems to favor the view that these settlers did not come from the zone of "proto-brachycephals" inhabiting eastern France, but represent a new immigration from the east, and, according to Schliz, founded fortified settlements on the heights of Baden, Wurtemberg, and along the valley of the Rhine as far as Cologne.[154] We have seen that the pottery of these earliest immigrants was crude and almost or quite without definite ornament.

Northern and central Europe seem to have been settled mainly or almost entirely directly from the east, along western Russia and the Danube valley. But, especially toward the close of the period, people from the megalithic zone seem to have penetrated much farther southward into Germany than their monuments would prove. Schliz thinks that he has recognized their skulls as well as calyciform pottery over a wide region. Their presence seems fairly clear, but whether they were comparatively very few in number, or fairly numerous, is still uncertain.

There seems to be good reason for believing that in late Paleolithic time the population of middle Europe north of the Alps was very spa.r.s.e and the Baltic region hardly inhabited. A hunting population without domestic animals except the dog pressed northward through Russia in waves and fragments, and along the Baltic mingled with a strain coming from the west, probably broad-heads from Belgium. The great Scandinavian and North German peoples followed with a frontier culture, a combination of hunting, fishing, cattle-raising, and agriculture mingled in proportions varying according to time and place. Their exact route of migration from the region of the steppes must yet be traced. But the weight of evidence favors an eastern origin. At a time probably not so very far from their arrival in the north, agriculturists--we might safely speak of them as farmers--were coming into the Danube valley and spreading along its tributaries. Apparently somewhat or considerably later the lake-dwellers appear along the northern piedmont zone of the Alps as broad-heads, marking the arrival of the advance guard of the great Alpine race of to-day. But here again our certainty is not as firm as we could wish. They extend northward toward and along the Rhine valley. The close of the period is marked by the southward spread of peoples from northern Germany crowding back the farmers characterized by the banded pottery. This movement is augmented somewhat, perhaps very little, by recruits from the megalithic zone of northwestern Europe and Denmark. All these people are closing in on central or middle western Europe. In the Rhine valley along the middle of the course of the river we find a region of mingling or overlapping cultures which have not yet been satisfactorily disentangled.