The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

Chapter XI
A RECAPITULATION
WE are now in a position to interpret the meaning of the evolution and
distribution of these leaf-shaped swords, though there are many details,
which we would gladly know, but of which we must remain in ignorance, perhaps
for ever. We can, however, form some general idea of the events which were
taking place in Europe during the centuries under review, and it wiU, perhaps, make
for lucidity if they are here recapitulated as a continuous story.
Since 4000 B.C. some Alpine people, coming originally from Asia Minor, had
occupied the mountain zone, where they had erected their pile-dwellings and had
cultivated their strips of cornlands. Meanwhile on the Russian steppes, east of the
Dnieper, Nordic steppe-folk mounted on horses, were driving cattle from one pasture
to another, sometimes dwelling in the open steppe, at others pasturing their beasts
in the park-lands and woods to the north. Between these two peoples were the
Tripolje-folk, Uving in pit-dweUings, cultivating the soil, and later on importing
copper axes from ^gean traders.
About 3000 B.C., or perhaps rather earlier, a drought caused some of the
steppe-folk to emigrate. It was perhaps at this time, though probably later, that some
passed through the woodland to the middle Volga valley, where, mixing with
communities of Mongoloid fishers, they developed the Fationovo culture and became
ancestors of the red Finns.' Others in small numbers certainly advanced towards
the Baltic, and passing along its southern shore, appeared later at Furfooz, in Belgium.'
The majority of these moved slowly up the Rhine valley, whence some entered
Switzerland from the north, and made themselves lords of the lake-dweUing villages.
' Peake (1919) 200-202. ' See ch. vi.
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