The New Stone Age in Northern Europe

by John M. Tyler

A GLANCE EASTWARD

THE culture of the oldest lake-dwellings appears suddenly in Europe, and its beginnings are exotic in all their essentials. The turbary cattle were quite different from the wild primigenius race of the surrounding regions; and we find no remains of the intermediate forms which should occur if domestication had taken place here. The same is true of the turbary pig. Wild sheep are unknown in northern Europe, and the moufflon of the Mediterranean islands can hardly have been the ancestor of our Swiss flocks, and is very possibly descended from domesticated ancestors which reverted to wild life. Something very similar may be said of our oldest cereals, wheat and barley.

We must evidently turn eastward or southward to find the cradle of the whole culture. Even if it came partly from Italy, it could hardly have developed there. Egypt may have made contributions, but mostly at a later date. We naturally turn first to Asia, the great centre of mammalian evolution, probably the oldest seat of cattle-raising and agriculture, cradle of man and centre of his earliest development. The true Neolithic cultures in northern Europe can hardly be older than about 6000 B. C.; the lake-dwellings are probably far younger. We must first inquire into the location, age, and character of the oldest agriculture in nearer Asia, where great discoveries have been made during the last twenty years.

We naturally turn first to Babylonia. Under the temple of Bel, at Nippur, was an immense platform constructed of sun-dried bricks, most of them stamped with the name of Sargon or of Naram Sin. The date of Sargon seems still uncertain; many historians place it at 2800 B. C.; others, and apparently most archæologists, like Obermaier, still hold to the old date, 3750 B. C.[70] Without any attempt to decide this question, we will hold in this chapter to the older date; and believers in the latter date can subtract 1,000 from our figures for earlier times, though this does not apply to Pumpelly’s estimates.

Says Delitzsch[71] of this mound: “In the deepest layers of these remains, or what amounts to the same, back many centuries beyond the fifth millennium, everywhere interesting and valuable remains of human civilization come to light, fragments of vessels of copper, bronze, and clay, a quantity of earthenware so beautifully lacquered in red and black that we might consider them of Greek origin, or at least influenced by Greek art, had they not been found eight metres deep under Naram Sin’s pavement.” Here we find the Bronze period, or possibly late Copper, before 5000 B. C. A city with a high and complex culture had already arisen. No one believes that the culture could have originated in the rank, almost untamable, primitive jungle of Mesopotamia. Its beginnings must be sought elsewhere and earlier. But the age and character of Babylonian civilization encourage one to seek further in western Asia.

In 1904 Pumpelly[72] made most thorough and careful investigations at Anau, near Askabad in Turkestan, about 300 miles east of the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, and 200 miles west of Merv. The remarkable results of his work are described in two large volumes, and have not received the attention which they deserve. He excavated in two large Kurgans or mounds. The north Kurgan is the older and chiefly concerns us. The Neolithic remains occur in thin compact strata aggregating some forty-five feet in thickness. The earliest settle ment was a town covering at least five acres, possibly nearly ten.

At the time of the beginning of the settlement, which Pumpelly estimated as somewhat before 8000 B. C., the inhabitants lived in rectangular houses built of uniform sun-dried bricks. They were skilful potters, though unacquainted with the potter’s wheel, making different grades of coarse and fine vessels. These were unglazed, but often painted with a definite series of geometrical patterns. They had the art of spinning, for whorls are found in all strata from the lowest up. They cultivated cereals, for the casts of the chaff of wheat and barley are found in the clay of the thicker pots. At first they had no domestic animals, only the bones of wild forms being found. When ten feet of culture strata had been accumulated the remains of a tame Bos namadicus, the Asiatic variety of the Bos primigenius, or urus, occurred. That this animal had already been domesticated is inferred from the less compact microscopic structure of the bones modified by artificial conditions. At this time the change of structure, if not complete, was evident. It had been for some time under the new conditions. The turbary pig appears about 7500 B. C.,[73] the turbary sheep about 1500 years later, but preceded by varieties of the great horned mountain sheep. The turbary cattle appear to have been a small variety of the Bos namadicus, somewhat dwarfed by drought and hardship.

The camel appears at Anau somewhat after 6000 B. C., and seems to be a means of intercourse and transport far antedating the horse, in a region already showing signs of dessication.

Spherical mace-heads occur reminding us of those used in Egypt. But no lance-head or arrow-point or other stone weapon was found in the lower levels. We do not know how they killed or captured the larger animals; they may have used the sling or bolero. In the lowest strata we find the bones of young children, but not of adults, buried in a contracted position under the floors of the dwellings. The first objects of copper and lead appear about 6000 B. C., and, open the Æneolithic period. Pumpelly distinguishes a Copper period, here longer and more distinctly marked than in Europe. The turquoise bead found in one of the graves came, in all probability, from the Iranian plateau, as did probably the copper and lead also.

He has shown us that even on the steppe the cultivation of cereals precedes the domestication of sheep and cattle. The nomadic life follows instead of preceding agriculture. The pioneers in this region cultivated the zone of steppe, into which rivers poured from the mountains. When cattle and sheep and goats had multiplied, the herdsmen drove them farther and farther on the rich pasturage of the boundless steppe. Thus nomads gradually appear. There are also different varieties of nomadism. Nomadic tribes were far less active and dangerous neighbors even after the domestication of the camel than when, about 2000 B. C., they had domesticated the horse. The first herdsman may have differed from the latter nomad almost as much as the most pacific sheep-herder of our Western plains differs from the liveliest cowboy.