The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

62 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
Remains of such pile-dwellings have been found throughout all the mountain
zone, from Geneva and Neuchatel in Switzerland, and Annecy and Bourget in Savoy,^ to
Laibach in Carniola on the edge of the Hungarian plain.* We learn, too, from classical
writers that similar pile dweUings existed in Paeonia,' probably in Lake Beshika north of
Salonika, as well as in Asia Minor.* This is additional proof, if that were needed, of
the route by which these people had arrived in Europe.
Several anthropologists have made a study of the mental characters of these
Alpine people, and, although these studies have been made for the most part in France,
the description holds good for the inhabitants of the Alpine region. These have thus
been summed up by Ripley :'
" A certain passivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. This
is true aU the way from north-western Spain, where Tubino notes its degeneration into
morosity in the peasantry, as far as Russia, where the great inert Slavic horde of
north-eastern Europe submits with abject resignation to the pohtical despotism of
the house of the Romanoffs. ... As a rule . . . the Alpine type makes a
comfortable and contented neighbour, a resigned and peaceful subject. . . . The
most persistent attribute to the Alpine Celt is his extreme attachment to the soil, or,
perhaps, better, to locahty. He seems to be a sedentary type far excellence ; he
seldom migrates, except after great provocation ; so that, once settled, he clings to his
patrimony through aU persecution, cUmatic or human. If he migrates to the cities,
. . . he generally returns home to the country to spend his last days in peace."
Ripley says that they are socially conservative, and this is true in the sense that
they dislike change ; but an examination of the constitution of their villages leads one
to beheve that they are very democratic and, in fact, inclined to communism, though
this tendency is usually confined to village affairs, and rarely penetrates national
pohtics. It must be remembered, however, that Soviet Russia is mainly Alpine, and
that Marx came from the Alpine zone.
3 Keller (1866) ; Munro (1890) ; Schenk {1912).
4 Smid (1908), {1909) 117-126 ; other authorities are cited in fn. p. 118.
5 Herodotus v. 16.
' Hippocrates xxxvii.
7 Ripley (1900) 549, 550.