The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

142 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
a greatly extended area, but it is not so clear that its contraction has been a steady
progress. We have already seen, from the evidence cited by Ellsworth Huntington,^*
that this contraction and expansion has probably been intermittent. In any case,
the contraction has been due to hght rainfall, and it is this hght rainfaU which has
produced the desert condition of the Ust Urt. When the Caspian expanded, it was because
of increased precipitation, when such parts of the Ust Urt as were not inundated would
have been a grassy steppe.
Dr. Giles suggests that at one time the Caspian and Aral seas were one great
inland sea, and that such was at one time the case is implied by extracts from the
writings of Herodotus.^' But though this was almost certainly the case during periods
of relatively heavy rainfall, the level would have to have risen well above the 200 metre
contour to have obstructed the passage between the Russian and Turkestan steppes.
Such a rise is quite unthinkable during the last 6000 years, for had the surface been
raised 220 feet above the present sea level the Caspio-Aral Sea would have been
connected with the Euxine.^* Even had the impossible occurred and the 200 metre
contour been reached it would have been quite easy to pass from one steppe area to
another, by crossing the southern slopes of the Urals, which are raised very little above the
plain and would form no obstacle to nomad tribes.
The Anatolian passage was by no means an easy route to the east, for had the
Wiros kept to the north they would have found difficulty in crossing the Armenian
mountains ; further south they wovdd have come into contact with the peoples of
Mesopotamia, and we should have found evidence of their presence. That some of
them passed this way about 2200 B.C. we have aheady seen, but others had passed
eastwards earlier, apparently by a different route, for otherwise it is difficult to account
for the presence of the Kassites on the Iranian plateau in the time of Hammurabi. The
complete absence of any evidence of a movement eastward from the Himgarian plain
in neolithic days, and the fact that any such movement would have been compelled to
cross the area occupied by the settled Tripolje-folk, seem to be fatal to the hteral
acceptance of this hypothesis.
34 Huntington (1907), (1911). 3' Casson (1918-19) 178.
3J Herodotus i. 203, 204 ; iv. 40 ; Casson (1918-19) 175-183.