The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

by Harold Peake

We have found reason for believing that in neolithic days the Russian steppe east of the Dnieper was inhabited by a nomad steppe-folk, who had domesticated horses and cattle, and perhaps sheep. As they lived on a plain they had probably not met with the goat, which is a mountain beast, and it is to be noted that the name for goat varies in nearly all the Wiro languages.[452] These nomad steppe-folk, who buried their dead in a contracted position covered with red ochre under kurgans or barrows, were, we believe, Nordic or proto-Nordic in type, and some, at least, of their skeletons remind us of the Brünn-Brux-Combe Capelle type,[453] who hunted horses in late Aurignacian and Solutrean times.

The state of civilisation and the area of distribution of those nomad steppe-folk exactly corresponds with the requirements of the early Wiros as postulated by Schrader, though it differs in some respects from those demanded by Giles. On the other hand, in Magdalenian and Azilian times, and perhaps during the earlier phases of the neolithic age, the ancestors of these people may well have lived in the Hungarian plain, and we have seen how some of them survived in Switzerland, at Chamblandes, well into neolithic times.[454]

It is possible, then, that the circumscribed area, though not the settled agricultural condition, demanded by Dr. Giles, may have been true in the later phases of the upper palæolithic age. This, however, he will not agree to, for he is persuaded that the hiatus, assumed by the earlier archæologists, still exists, and that the upper palæolithic age, as well as the lower, preceded the last ice age and belongs to a very remote past.

Some archæologists, it is true, still hold to these views, and this inflated chronology has not yet been abandoned by all. During the last few years, however, the shorter dating[455] has become more generally accepted, and this brings the whole of the neanthropic period into relatively recent times, and gives us a continuous history from the Aurignacian period to the present day. If Dr. Giles could be persuaded to accept these more modern views on palæolithic chronology, many of his difficulties would be removed, and he might agree to place the Hungarian cradle of the Wiros in the latter part of the upper palæolithic age.

Dr. Giles raises objections also to the continuity of the Russio-Turkestan steppe, and maintains that a connection between South Russia and the east, north of the Black Sea, would have been impossible.[456] He is, therefore, disposed to take the Wiros to Persia and India by way of Asia Minor.

The great objection which he cites to the northern passage is the existence of the barren Ust Urt desert. Also the fact that the Caspian has steadily been becoming more shallow and contracting in area. These two points, if true, to some extent contradict one another. It is true, doubtless, that at one time the Caspian had covered a greatly extended area, but it is not so clear that its contraction has been a steady progress. We have already seen, from the evidence cited by Ellsworth Huntington,[457] that this contraction and expansion has probably been intermittent. In any case, the contraction has been due to light rainfall, and it is this light rainfall which has produced the desert condition of the Ust Urt. When the Caspian expanded, it was because of increased precipitation, when such parts of the Ust Urt as were not inundated would have been a grassy steppe.

Dr. Giles suggests that at one time the Caspian and Aral seas were one great inland sea, and that such was at one time the case is implied by extracts from the writings of Herodotus.[458] But though this was almost certainly the case during periods of relatively heavy rainfall, the level would have to have risen well above the 200 metre contour to have obstructed the passage between the Russian and Turkestan steppes. Such a rise is quite unthinkable during the last 6000 years, for had the surface been raised 220 feet above the present sea level the Caspio-Aral Sea would have been connected with the Euxine.[459] Even had the impossible occurred and the 200 metre contour been reached it would have been quite easy to pass from one steppe area to another, by crossing the southern slopes of the Urals, which are raised very little above the plain and would form no obstacle to nomad tribes.

The Anatolian passage was by no means an easy route to the east, for had the Wiros kept to the north they would have found difficulty in crossing the Armenian mountains; further south they would have come into contact with the peoples of Mesopotamia, and we should have found evidence of their presence. That some of them passed this way about 2200 B.C. we have already seen, but others had passed eastwards earlier, apparently by a different route, for otherwise it is difficult to account for the presence of the Kassites on the Iranian plateau in the time of Hammurabi. The complete absence of any evidence of a movement eastward from the Hungarian plain in neolithic days, and the fact that any such movement would have been compelled to cross the area occupied by the settled Tripolje-folk, seem to be fatal to the literal acceptance of this hypothesis.