The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

WE have
Chapter V
THE CELTIC CRADLE
seen that there is good reason for suspecting that it was from the
mountain zone of Central Europe, which we have decided to call the Celtic
Cradle, that the Celtic tongues spread over the west, and now that we have
traced the movements of foreign influences into Celtic lands during the earher phases of
the bronze age, we must inquire what was happening meanwhile in this Alpine cradle.
It was about 6000 B.C. that the Ofnet race had arrived in this region, where they
had mingled with some remnants of the Combe Capelle race, thus producing, it is
thought, the Alpine type, which we find dominant in the mountains to-day. We have
found reason for believing that further waves of Alpines, coming it is believed from
the Armenian highlands, had arrived by 4000 B.C., and that these had brought with them
domesticated animals, the germs of agriculture, and a few fruits, such as the apple,
plimi and cherry.'
These people settled down in the mountain valleys, by the margins of the lakes,
or more often at their heads, where broad expanses of marsh produced luxurious crops of
grass ;
this could be converted into hay, with which to feed their cattle during the long,
snow-bound winters. On the harder slopes above they tilled their patches of grain and
planted their orchards, while for security from the bears and wolves which infested
the forest-clad mountains, they built their dweUings upon piles in the marshes, or in the
shallow waters of the lakes. Thus they, and their cattle, which were stalled in the
same dwellings,'' could be safe from the attacks of wild beasts, or the more adventurous
and less scrupulous of their neighbours.
' Schenk {1912) 188.
» Keller (1866) 57. 297,
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