The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

Chapter VII
THE EVOLUTION OF THE LEAF-SHAPED SWORD
WE have seen that the Alpine people were the earliest inhabitants of the
mountain zone, west of the Hungarian plain, and that they had arrived
there at an early date, bringing with them from the east the custom of living
in pile-dwellings and the germs of agriculture. Whether they were hving also in
Hungary seems uncertain, though it is possible that they dwelt in the ring of mountain
land that surrounds the plain.
Nordic folk had arrived in both areas by 3000 B.C., coming, it has been suggested,
from the Russian steppes. It is also more than probable that fresh invaders from
the steppes arrived about 2200 B.C., especially in the Hungarian plain. Thus, though
the population of the whole of the area, which we have termed the Celtic cradle, was
to some extent ahke, there were considerable differences, both in the proportion of
racial elements and in the methods of life, between the people of the mountain zone and
the inhabitants of the plain.
Though members of both the Alpine and Nordic races inhabited the
mountain zone, and are found living together in the same villages, they appear not to
have intermarried, at any rate to any considerable extent, for at a much later date
we find skulls both of the long-headed and the broad-headed tj^es, but few if any which
show evidence of mixed ancestry.' The evidence obtained from the cemetery at
Hallstatt, which dates from 1000 years or more later, seems to point to the same
conclusion.^
Now the Alpine people, as we have seen, are thrifty, steady, hard-working tiUers
of the soil, patient but lacking in the spirit of adventure. The Nordics, on the other
hand, are strong, active, courageous and adventurous, devoted to the horse and
• Schenk (1912) 191, 536-539. 544- ^ Peake (1922) 1. 70.
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