Remains of such pile-dwellings have been found throughout all the mountain zone, from Geneva and Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and Annecy and Bourget in Savoy,[176] to Laibach in Carniola on the edge of the Hungarian plain.[177] We learn, too, from classical writers that similar pile dwellings existed in Pæonia,[178] probably in Lake Beshika north of Salonika, as well as in Asia Minor.[179] This is additional proof, if that were needed, of the route by which these people had arrived in Europe.
Several anthropologists have made a study of the mental characters of these Alpine people, and, although these studies have been made for the most part in France, the description holds good for the inhabitants of the Alpine region. These have thus been summed up by Ripley:[180]
“A certain passivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. This is true all the way from north-western Spain, where Tubino notes its degeneration into morosity in the peasantry, as far as Russia, where the great inert Slavic horde of north-eastern Europe submits with abject resignation to the political despotism of the house of the Romanoffs.... As a rule ... the Alpine type makes a comfortable and contented neighbour, a resigned and peaceful subject.... The most persistent attribute to the Alpine Celt is his extreme attachment to the soil, or, perhaps, better, to locality. He seems to be a sedentary type par excellence; he seldom migrates, except after great provocation; so that, once settled, he clings to his patrimony through all persecution, climatic or human. If he migrates to the cities, ... he generally returns home to the country to spend his last days in peace.”
Ripley says that they are socially conservative, and this is true in the sense that they dislike change; but an examination of the constitution of their villages leads one to believe that they are very democratic and, in fact, inclined to communism, though this tendency is usually confined to village affairs, and rarely penetrates national politics. It must be remembered, however, that Soviet Russia is mainly Alpine, and that Marx came from the Alpine zone.
Thus we find that these people were patient, plodding, and hard-working,[181] while the long, snow-bound winters had encouraged habits of thrift, for it was necessary to provide during the summer a sufficient store of food to last through the cold weather. They were not hunters, and in no sense sportsmen, and seem to have been lacking in the spirit of adventure. They feared the waste and its wild inhabitants, and lived in their self-contained villages, with the drawbridge up, and had little contact with their neighbours. As we have seen, they were extremely democratic in their outlook, probably with a strong tendency to communism, and they shared everything in common, perhaps even their wives.[182]
During the early days of these lake-dwellings, in what is known as the Archaic period, there seems to have been little to disturb their peace,[183] for the remnants of Combe Capelle man seem to have become extinct or to have merged with the rest of the population. But towards the close of the second period, that called the Robenhausen, about 3000 B.C., or perhaps rather later, there is evidence of the appearance of intruders into this region.
The newcomers were few in number, and seem to have arrived from the north up the Rhine valley. From the skeletons found in the tombs of this period we find that they were tall, long-headed men, with strongly marked eye-brow ridges, and bear a close resemblance to those tall, fair-headed, grey-eyed men, who are still dominant in the north of Europe, and who are known to anthropologists as the Nordic race.[184]
Such were the people of the mountain zone during neolithic times, and it is possible that the inhabitants of Hungary were similar in type, though the long-headed race seems to have appeared here earlier. It is true that we have few remains from the Hungarian plain which we can attribute with certainty to this period, but the broad skull found at Nagy-sap belongs, in all probability, to this time, though a greater age has been claimed for it.[185] Perhaps the few facts available would be better explained 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.