The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

68 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
That these people were nomads seems clear from the little evidence we possess
and from the poverty of their tombs and the absence of dwelling sites. We have, in
one grave at least, evidence that they possessed the horse,** and since the grassy
steppe lands are the home of wild cattle, we shall not be far wrong in believing that
they were by this time passing from a hunting to a pastoral stage. They were, in
fact, owners of large bands of cattle, which, like cow-boys, they drove from pasture
to pasture.
Professor Myres has argued for a very wide distribution of these people, in fact
from the Elbe to Tobolsk, and southwards to Bosnia and Thrace.^'' Some of these
extensions seem, as we shall see, to date from a later period, and during the time which
we are discussing, roughly the period of Hissarhk IL, the bulk of them seem to have
been restricted to the steppe regions east of the Dnieper, though they roamed the
belt of parkland lying to the north, and perhaps even penetrated the dense woodland
beyond. How far they had extended eastward is uncertain, but, as we shall see in the
next chapter, their more distant excursions in this direction may well have been later.
We know something of their physical type. Bogdanov tells us that they were
a robust race, with a large and long head, an elongated face, and, according to some
examples, with hair more or less fair.*^ The colour of the hair has been disputed, as
there is a tendency for hair in graves to become pale. The cranial index is not quite
certain. Sergi states that it varies from 65 to 81,"' but it seems likely that among
his collection of kurgan skulls are some of other types. Bogdanov tells us that in the
kurgans to the west of the area several broad skulls occur, but with less robust
skeletons, and the average index is higher. This may be due to admixture with Alpine
or Beaker types. In the north, too, as one approaches the middle valley of the Volga,
the broad tj^e appears also ; in this case I have suggested that it is due to admixture
with a Mongoloid type which was already occupying this region.^" From the kurgans
at Souja,3' in the government of Kursk, where the steppe lands reach further north than
elsewhere, came twenty-three skulls which showed singular uniformity ; nineteen
^ Zaborowski {1895) 310. ^ Sergi (1908) 309-316.
27 Myres (1906) 542. 3" Peake (1919) 197.
»8 Bogdanov (1892). 31 Bogdanov (1892) 4.