The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study

by C. F. Keary

The condition of the German people, even so late as the time when they began their invasion of the Roman territory, was far behind that of the majority of their Aryan fellows. It is likely that they were little more civilized than the Greeks and Romans were, in days when they lived together as one collection of tribes. For the moment when we catch sight of these—the Greeks and Romans—in their new homes, we see them settled agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. It was not so with the Teutons: they knew agriculture certainly, they had known it before they separated from the other peoples of the European family (for the Greek and Latin words for plough reappear in Teutonic speech[146]); but they had not altogether bid adieu to their migratory life—we see them still flowing in a nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even the Tartars of our day—the very picture of a nomadic people—practise some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, which, growing up in a few months, allows them to reap the fruits of their industry without tying them long to a particular spot. The Teutons were more stationary than the Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their homes—choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, wherever any spot, or grove, or stream attracted them. The condition of society called the village community, which has been described in a former chapter, though long abandoned by the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was still suitable to the exigencies of their life; but these exigencies imposed upon it some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of those who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was essentially that of conquerors; for they must keep in subjection the original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts; and so all their social arrangements bent before the primary necessity of maintaining an effective war equipment. Age and wisdom were of less value to the community than youthful vigour. The patriarchal chief, chosen for his reputation for wisdom and swaying by his mature counsels the free assemblies of the states, gives place with them to the leader, famous for his valour and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike times, until by degrees his office becomes hereditary; the partition of the conquered soil among the victors, and the holding of it upon conditions of military service, conditions which led so easily to the assertion of a principle of primogeniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to the conditions of tenure known as feudal; these are the marks of the early Teutonic society.

Such germs of literary life as the Teutons possessed were enshrined in ballads, such as all nations possess in some form. The re-echoes of these have come down to us in the earliest known poems by men of Teutonic race, all of which are unfortunately of very recent date. All are distinguished by the principle of versifying which is essentially Teutonic; the trusting of the cadence, not to an exact measurement of syllables or quantities, but to the pauses or beats of the voice in repetition, the effect of these beats being heightened by the use of alliteration. Poems of this true Teutonic character, though many of them in their present shape are late in date, are the well-known old German lay of Hadubrand and Hildebrand, the old Scandinavian poems which we call Eddic poems, our old English poem Beowulf, and the Bard’s Tale and the Fight of Finnesburg, and finally that long German poem called the Nibelungen, or say the poem out of which this long one has been made. These poems repeat old mythic legends, many of which have for centuries been handed down from father to son, and display the mythology and religion of our German ancestors, such as in a former chapter we endeavoured to sketch them out. Slight as they are, they are of inestimable value, in that they help us to read the mind of heathen Germany, and to weigh the significance of the last great revolution in Europe’s history—a revolution wherein we, through our ancestors, have taken and through ourselves are still taking part, and in which we have therefore so close an interest.

But having carried the reader down to this point, our task comes to an end. Even for Europe, the youngest born as it were in the world’s history, when we have passed the epoch of Teutonic invasion, the star of history sera rubens has definitely risen. Nations from this time forward emerge more and more into the light, and little or nothing falls to the part of pre-historic study.

APPENDIX.
NOTES AND AUTHORITIES.

⁂ For the convenience of the reader, authorities are cited whenever it is possible in an English form, and if not in an English, in a French.

CHAPTERS I. AND II.

Christy and Lartet, Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ.
Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica.
Dawkins, Cave Hunting.
Dawkins, Early Man in Britain.
Evans, Stone Implements of Great Britain.
Evans, Bronze Implements of Great Britain.
Geikie, The Great Ice Age.
Greenwell, British Barrows.
Keller, The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland (trs. Lee).
Lyell, Antiquity of Man.
Lubbock, Pre-historic Times.
Mortillet, Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche.
Mortillet, Promenades Préhistoriques à l’Exposition.
Mortillet, Le Préhistorique, L’Antiquité de l’homme.
Montelius, La Suède Préhistorique.
Tylor, Anthropology.
Tylor, Early History of Mankind.
Tylor, Primitive Culture.
Troyon, Habitations Lacustres.
Worsaae, The Pre-history of the North (trs. Simpson).

And numerous articles in the Archæological and Anthropological journals of England, France, and Germany.