The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE CELTIC CRADLE 63
Thus we find that these people were patient, plodding, and hard-working,^ while
the long, snow-bound winters had encouraged habits of thrift, for it was necessary to
provide during the summer a sufficient store of food to last through the cold weather.
They were not hunters, and in no sense sportsmen, and seem to have been lacking in
the spirit of adventure. They feared the waste and its wUd inhabitants, and lived in
their self-contained villages, with the drawbridge up, and had little contact with their
neighbours. As we have seen, they were extremely democratic in their outlook,
probably with a strong tendency to communism, and they shared everything in common,
perhaps even their wives.'
During the early days of these lake-dwellings, in what is known as the Archaic
period, there seems to have been little to disturb their peace," for the remnants of
Combe CapeUe man seem to have become extinct or to have merged with the rest of
the population. But towards the close of the second period, that called the Robenhausen,
about 3000 B.C., or perhaps rather later, there is evidence of the appearance of
intruders into this region.
The newcomers were few in number, and seem to have arrived from the north
up the Rhine valley. From the skeletons found in the tombs of this period we find that
they were tall, long-headed men, with strongly marked eye-brow ridges, and bear a
close resemblance to those tall, fair-headed, grey-eyed men, who are still dominant in the
north of Europe, and who are known to anthropologists as the Nordic race."
Such were the people of the mountain zone during neolithic times, and it is
possible that the inhabitants of Hungary were similar in type, though the long-headed
race seems to have appeared here earlier. It is true that we have few remains from
the Hungarian plain which we can attribute with certainty to this period, but the
broad skuU found at Nagy-sap belongs, in all probabihty, to this time, though a greater
age has been claimed for it." Perhaps the few facts available would be better explained
' In this connection compaxe the thrifty Paeonian maiden mentioned by Herodotus v. 12, 13.
9 Peake (1922) 1. 30, 31, 54, 55, and for a late survival of communal marriage, Kovalevsky (1891).
10 Schenk (1912) 191, 344-
" Schenk (1912) 460, 461, 544.
" Keith (1915) 2. 18.