The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

by Harold Peake

We have seen reason for believing that a period of drought, occurring some centuries before 3000 B.C., drove some of them towards the Baltic. It is possible, though I think improbable, that these may have been the ancestors of the group who use Teutonic speech. I am more inclined, however, to see in them the original speakers of Lithuanian and the Baltic tongues. Whether there was also at this time a move to the east is uncertain. Kurgans are said to stretch to the north-east well into Siberia, but we have insufficient data at present to determine their age or indeed whether they belong to Wiro culture. It is possible, however, that the north-westerly movement was paralleled by one to the north-east, into the Obi basin, and the Wiros may have wandered as far north as Tobolsk, or even to the Arctic Circle.

But the great dispersal was about 2200 B.C. On this occasion the drought seems to have been more excessive or more prolonged, for it is believed that the steppe was left for awhile uninhabited. That the movements passed east and west is certain, for we find evidence of the abandonment of settled villages both in the Tripolje area and at Anau. With the westerly movement we have dealt at some length; that to the east must now demand our attention.

We have seen that shortly after 2200 B.C. nomad horsemen arrived on the Iranian plateau and that their appearance attracted the attention of Hammurabi and his counsellors. That these nomads, who were known as Kassites, were Wiros is certain, for philologists seem agreed that their language was of this type.[486] They were the first to introduce the horse into this area, and that this animal was held in reverence among them seems clear from the adoption of this beast as a divine symbol.[487] It seems unlikely that the Kassites were the sole representatives of this eastward move. It may be that it is to this date that we are to attribute the kurgans found in the Obi basin, or perhaps they found adequate pasture for their herds on the lower slopes of the Hindu Kush and the region around Balkh. We are as yet uncertain whether the group of Wiros, who may more properly claim the name of Aryas, and who spoke Indo-Iranian dialects, left the steppe at this time or on the earlier occasion but deductions drawn from linguistic evidence, from Vedic and Avestan sources, and from later Persian legend would lead us to expect that about 2000 B.C. the undivided Aryas were occupying the eastern parts of Russian Turkestan. A little later, perhaps, a group of these, speaking a language which had Iranian affinities, made themselves lords of eastern Armenia.

These are generally known as the Mitanni or Mitani barons; Professor Sayce has suggested to me that the name Mitan is the same as Midas, which would hint at a Phrygian origin, but the Iranian affinities of their language and the early date at which they appear in the Armenian mountains suggest that they arrived before the Phrygian invasion of Asia Minor, while the fact that they were located on the eastern rather than the western side of the Armenian massif leads one to believe that their line of approach was from Turkestan or the Iranian plateau on the east, rather than from Thracian territory on the west.

With the westward move of the Wiros I have already dealt in a former chapter. Having destroyed the Tripolje culture some passed along the sandy heaths of Galicia, entering Bohemia and Hungary through the Moravian gap, and displacing the Beaker-folk who passed northwards to Jutland, Holland and the British Isles. Others passed round the south-west shores of the Euxine to the Gallipoli peninsula where they divided, one party skirting the north Ægean coast to the grassy plain of Thessaly, where they introduced Dhimini ware, and where their sudden appearance on horseback gave rise to the legends of the Centaurs. The other party crossed the Hellespont, sacked Hissarlik II. and passed on to the grass lands in the centre of Anatolia. Here they organised the eastern Alpine tribes into a great empire, and though, apparently, they adopted the language of their subjects, they introduced some of their own words and idioms, including the numerals, into that tongue, and most important of all established in the Hittite empire the worship of the Wiro deities.

Such seems to have been the distribution of the Wiros about 2000 B.C., or a little later, and for the next 500 years we find little evidence of movement, except that the Kassites, about 1760 B.C. established themselves as rulers in Mesopotamia. The great split between the Indian and Iranian Aryas must have taken place about this time, causing the former to cross Afghanistan and enter the Punjab, while the latter continued to roam the steppes of Turkestan, and eventually to cross the Volga into South Russia, where they occupied the plain as far west as the foot of the Carpathians.[488]

We may now for a time leave the Asiatic sections and concentrate our attention upon those Wiros who entered what we have termed the Celtic cradle. Some passed into the mountain zone, where others had arrived before them, and made themselves lords of the settled agricultural Alpine lake-villages; these were the proto-Celts. Others seem to have remained in the plain of Hungary, continuing perhaps their former nomadic life. These, who had spread into the basin of the Morava, became the Thraco-Phrygian group. Between these two, in the lower valleys of the Drave and the Save, in Croatia and perhaps in Bosnia, were a third group, who may be termed proto-Italic. It must not be taken for granted that from the time of their arrival these three groups were quite sharply separated. We have seen, however, that the division of the people of the plain and the mountain zones arose quite early, largely from the difference between their modes of life. It is probable that many dialects arose, and that by degrees some of the mountain Wiros extended to the south-east, even as far as Herzegovina, and these gradually became separated from the main body of their fellows. The main group developed Celtic dialects, and south-eastern group Italic, though both, it must be remembered, spoke Q tongues.

Soon after 1500 B.C., when the first leaf-shaped sword, Type A, had been evolved, some Wiros seem to have passed over the mountains into the Friuli. It may have been merely a raid or a trading venture, but the Treviso specimen suggests that these swords had remained in use and had developed into a local type, so that it is possible that we may see in this, evidence of a small migration of Wiros through the Friuli to settle in the Veneto. The evidence is admittedly slight, but it seems to point to the introduction at this time into the regions lying at the head of the Adriatic of the Venetian dialects, which appear to be more archaic in form than the other Italic tongues.

During the Type B period, between 1450 and 1400 B.C., we have evidence of a northward movement to Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and the fact that these Type B swords continue in the north an independent development suggests that the party who carried them thither were not engaged in a temporary raid. I am inclined to see in this movement the arrival in the north of that band of Wiros, who introduced into the Baltic region Teutonic speech and the legends and the cult of Odin.[489] As we have seen Wiros had arrived there more than a thousand years before, but these earlier invaders, I have suggested, had spoken languages more akin to the Baltic group, and were, if my interpretation of the facts is correct, the red-haired worshippers of Thor.[490] Thus we get the three groups of people, forming the three classes of serfs, farmers, and nobles, which are mentioned in Scandinavian legend,[491] by the super-position of the sword-bearing Teutonic Wiros upon the early group of Baltic-speaking Wiros, who had in their turn mastered and enslaved the Mongoloid people responsible for the Arctic culture.[492]

It was soon after 1300 B.C. that a small group from the Italic zone, coming probably from Bosnia, passed south and then crossed the Adriatic, landing a little south of Ancona at the mouth of the Truentus. Passing up the valley of that river some settled at Batia near its head waters, while others crossed the Apennines to the valley of the Velinus and thence to Reatæ, which stood at its junction with the Himella. Thence some passed south eastward to Lacus Fucinus and others north-westward to Lacus Trasimenus. These, as I have endeavoured to prove, were the Wiros who introduced into the peninsula the Latin tongue and formed the essential Roman patrician gentes.