Time will show whether the suggestion, which I have put forward, that the Prospectors, who seem to have been responsible for introducing the use of metal into the west and north, to which they came in search of precious ores, started originally from the Persian Gulf, or whether, indeed they were but sojourners in southern Mesopotamia, having arrived there by sea from some more distant land, bringing with them the seeds of civilisation, as the legends of Oannes, the exalted fish-man, as given by Berosus, seem to indicate.[173]
Be this as it may, there seems to be adequate evidence of a trade, starting in the eastern Mediterranean and going first to Malta and Sicily, and thence to Spain, Brittany, the British Isles and the Baltic. That the prime object of such trade was the procuring of gold, copper, tin and amber, seems equally certain, as does the fact that megalithic monuments are found associated with all the sites whence these commodities could be obtained, as well as upon the land routes connecting them. Further, a certain type of man, whom we term the Prospector, is found living in no small numbers in most of these megalithic areas, as well as becoming a successful merchant at many of the sea-port towns of Europe. Lastly we have seen that this trade, then in the hands of Babylonians, had reached the Mediterranean by 2800 B.C., was in touch with Malta, Sicily and Spain between 2600 and 2300 B.C., and scarcely later had reached Brittany, Ireland and the Baltic.
Thus it seems clear that the Prospectors, in search of metal, reached Celtic lands, where their descendants may yet be found. What language they spoke is uncertain; it may have been allied to Etruscan or to Sumerian. But judging from their cosmopolitan habits, one may surmise that they were polyglot, and adopted the language of the country in which they settled. We can, then, hardly expect to detect any survivals of the Prospector tongue in the modern Celtic languages, unless indeed it be some loan words connected with the metal trade.
CHAPTER V
THE CELTIC CRADLE
WE have seen that there is good reason for suspecting that it was from the mountain zone of Central Europe, which we have decided to call the Celtic Cradle, that the Celtic tongues spread over the west, and now that we have traced the movements of foreign influences into Celtic lands during the earlier phases of the bronze age, we must inquire what was happening meanwhile in this Alpine cradle.
It was about 6000 B.C. that the Ofnet race had arrived in this region, where they had mingled with some remnants of the Combe Capelle race, thus producing, it is thought, the Alpine type, which we find dominant in the mountains to-day. We have found reason for believing that further waves of Alpines, coming it is believed from the Armenian highlands, had arrived by 4000 B.C., and that these had brought with them domesticated animals, the germs of agriculture, and a few fruits, such as the apple, plum and cherry.[174]
These people settled down in the mountain valleys, by the margins of the lakes, or more often at their heads, where broad expanses of marsh produced luxurious crops of grass; this could be converted into hay, with which to feed their cattle during the long, snow-bound winters. On the harder slopes above they tilled their patches of grain and planted their orchards, while for security from the bears and wolves which infested the forest-clad mountains, they built their dwellings upon piles in the marshes, or in the shallow waters of the lakes. Thus they, and their cattle, which were stalled in the same dwellings,[175] could be safe from the attacks of wild beasts, or the more adventurous and less scrupulous of their neighbours.