It was about this time that others set out from Hungary through the Moravian gate, and while some went northwards, the majority passed along Galicia, across the Bukovina and Podolia, and arrived at length by the banks of the Koban. Here they settled for a time, and entered into trade relations with a humble tribe, living on the southern slopes of the Caucasus, from whom they learned the knowledge of iron. Armed with swords with iron blades, they returned to the Danube basin about 1100 B.C., and perhaps worked the iron mines at Gyalar, in Transylvania. Then they settled in the Hungarian plain and in the north of the Balkan peninsula. About 1050 B.C. a large body of these people from the Koban passed southwards and descended the Vardar valley. By degrees they passed thence to Thessaly. Then they began that slow but steady conquest of the Greek states, which is known as the Dorian invasion.
A little later, about 1000 B.C., the Koban folk, with their iron swords, began pushing up the Danube, the Drave and the Save. In the valley of the last they found whole mountains of iron, which they began to work, and by 900 B.C., if not earlier, they had reached Styria and the Salzkammergut, and were working the salt mines at Hallstatt. It was, perhaps, earlier than this that they moved up the Danube valley as far as Ulm and Sigmaringen, and soon after their arrival there quarrels arose between them and the lords of the mountain zone. It must have been before 900 B.C. that the newcomers destroyed the lake-dwellings and expelled their inhabitants, who fled from them to the north and west.
The refugees who went northwards were few in number, though some of them seem to have fled a long way, perhaps even to Finland. Large numbers escaped to France, and spread over most of that land except Brittany and the extreme west. But here they were followed by the men of the iron sword, who pursued them in every direction, except down the valley of the Seine.
A great number of these refugees reached Britain, landing mostly at the mouth of the Thames, and sailing up it as far as Reading. An important settlement was made at “Old England,” at the mouth of the Brent, and doubtless elsewhere by the Thames. They advanced across the south of England, where, as we have seen, some of their predecessors were living, and settled at All Cannings and doubtless other places in Wiltshire. They pushed on into South Wales, making settlements on the open hills above Cardiff. Some of these, too, reached Ireland.
Meanwhile the men of the iron sword, pursuing these refugees, followed them in every direction across France, except down the valley of the Seine. They went northwards down the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle, entered Belgium,[420] and perhaps even entered Denmark. There seems no evidence, however, that they crossed to Britain.
One further raid was made by the men of the iron sword, and this was on an extensive scale. Some time after 900 B.C. a number of them, coming from the Save valley, crossed the Predil pass. Some of these stayed for a time at Santa Lucia Tolmino, in the Isonzo valley, while the majority proceeded to Cividale in the Friuli plain. They passed on rapidly to the Po valley, and destroyed the villages of the Terramara-folk who lived there, expelling the inhabitants as seems to have been the invariable custom of these men of blood and iron.[421] The Terramara-folk fled, some to Etruria, others to Taranto and others again to Rome, where they built a dry terramara on the Palatine Hill.[422] The iron sword people passed on and settled at the foot of the Apennines, with their centre at Bologna, introducing into all the region north-east of the mountains the culture known to archæologists as that of Villa-nova.[423]
As we have seen in Chapter IV., the Etruscans had been for some little time settled in Tuscany, where they had established their trading cities governed by religious magistrates. Before long these Etruscan Prospectors found themselves face to face with this newly-arrived war-like people. I have already given my reasons for thinking that the Villa-nova folk conquered the Etruscans, and that together they extended their empire, which is said to have reached to Pompeii. They perhaps succeeded in pressing back the leaf-shaped sword people from the neighbourhood of Lake Trasimene, but did not apparently succeed at first in dislodging them from the valley of the Velino.
Thus we see that the leaf-shaped sword folk, mainly the people of the mountain zone, have at one time or another invaded and in some way or another conquered nearly all Europe except the Iberian peninsula, while at the close of the bronze age they arrived as refugees in Celtic lands. The iron sword folk, the people of the plain, who had learned the use of iron in the Koban, followed them, making a complete conquest of Greece, of Italy north of the Apennines, of France all but the west and the Seine valley, Belgium and perhaps other regions further north. These people did not conquer Scandinavia, nor did they reach Britain, at any rate until several more centuries had elapsed.