The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

64 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
by supposing that the Alpines occupied the whole mountain zone, and the mountainous
regions surrounding the Hungarian plain, and that about 3000 B.C. Nordic intruders
entered Switzerland from the Rhine Basin, and the plain of Hungary, perhaps, through
the Moravian gate.
As we pass eastwards from the Carpathians the rainfall becomes less and the
woodland disappears ; we enter the steppe lands which reach far into Asia. This
steppe occupies the whole of the Rumanian plain, and north of the Dniester runs in
a belt, fifty miles wide, as far west as Lemberg. West of this he large stretches of
glacial sands and gravels, which must have carried an open heath vegetation, and so
almost continuous open land stretched at the northern foot of the Carpathians from
Odessa by Lemberg and Cracow to Breslau.'^
In this open region, bounded on the east by the Dnieper and on the north by the
Pohsh forest, we find at the time which we are discussing a very peculiar culture ;
this has been called the Tripolje culture,"* from the site near Kief where it was first
discovered. The people responsible for this culture hved in pit-dweUings, and set
aside certain " areas " for the disposal of their dead. Usually, if not invariably, they
burnt their dead and placed the ashes in urns, which they deposited in these areas, but
it has been said that they sometimes buried the corpses, though no descriptions of such
skeletons have appeared. They made vast quantities of pottery, much of it painted,
some of it incised, but they were ignorant of the potter's wheel. They cultivated the
land, at any rate during their later phase, for half-cooked corn has been found among
their remains.
This culture is found throughout south-western Russia, south of the Pripet
marshes, and west of the Dnieper ; it is sometimes found extending, too, east of
that river in the governments of Chernigov and Poltava. Southward it is found
throughout the steppe region of Rumania, while westward it extends through the
open country as far as Breslau. Pottery somewhat resembhng that of the Tripolje
culture has been found in Serbia, Thrace, Thessaly and the north-west corner of
Asia Minor.
'3 Vidal de la Blache in Lavisse (1896) I. i. 30-39, map facing p. 54.
'4 Minns (1913) 133-140.