The New Stone Age in Northern Europe

by John M. Tyler

NEOLITHIC PEOPLES AND THEIR
MIGRATIONS

THE study of history without a thorough knowledge of geography is almost as futile as the hope of interpreting the structure of the ape without thinking of his arboreal life.[139] Contour lines are of vast, often dominant, importance in the life of every nation. John Bull has been moulded, if not made, by his island. Italy could never be safe until its boundary followed the crest of the Alps. Great mountain chains mark limits, and river valleys are thoroughfares. Whoever holds Constantinople controls the trade of a boundless area. If this is true to-day, it must have been far more important in prehistoric times, when man had only begun to gain a certain degree of independence or mastery of nature. Culture was then very largely determined by position and routes of communication. The Alps and Pyrenees formed a long, impassable barrier between northern and southern Europe, broken only by the Rhone valley; and northern Europe was split into an eastern or middle and a western province by the Juras, the Vosges, and the forested Ardennes. Then, as now, the Pass of Belfort was the narrow opening, and Belgium, always the battle-ground of nations, the great thoroughfare between middle Europe and France. From the south, and to a certain degree from the west, middle Europe was not easy of access. But to the eastward there are few or no natural boundaries as it goes over into the great Russian plain, of which North Germany is practically a westward projection. We might possibly go farther and accept literally the somewhat exaggerated statement that all Europe is only a peninsula of Asia.

Osborn has called attention to the fact that from Paleolithic to Neolithic time Europe gave rise to no new races.[140] The immigrants entered their new home with all their physical and mental characters already fixed or determined. The routes of migration of the successive waves of lower Paleolithic immigrants are still unknown. Remains of Chellean and Acheulean cultures are rich and widely distributed everywhere around the Mediterranean, especially in northern Africa, at this time well watered. The entrance of Neanderthal man into Europe may well have been from this direction.

The Cro-Magnon race very probably came along the northern or southern shores of the Mediterranean, and then pushed northward into France; though the evidence is far from compelling. The race is evidently Asiatic in its physical characters, reminding us of tribes still living along the Himalayas, most strikingly of the Sikhs. If they entered from the south, northern Africa was a station on their march, not their original home. The Solutrean culture may have been brought by the Brünn people, who probably came through Hungary and up the Danube, but its origin and route of migration is still very obscure. Breuil’s arguments for the migration of Magdalenian culture from Poland across Europe are very strong, and his view seems to accord well with the facts, though Osborn seems to lean toward a somewhat different interpretation.[141] The broad-headed people of Furfooz and Grenelle apparently came by the central European route. The only race showing any Negroid characters is that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe, and the genuine Mediterranean race may have arrived here bringing the Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic Epoch in France.

Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are the Hamitic peoples along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.[142] His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. It was a work of observation, insight, and genius, and was a landmark in the progress of the science of anthropology.

The area of distribution of the race takes the form of a Y, the arms following the north and south shores of the Mediterranean while the stem or lower portion extends through Asia Minor. It includes the Hamitic peoples, also the Pelasgi and the Hittites, but leaves out the Semites.

Huxley had described the distribution of his Melanochrooi, or dark Europeans, very similarly, except that in his group the stem of the Y lay farther south and extended into Arabia. In locating the origin of the Mediterranean race in Africa, Sergi was doubtless influenced by the opinion of Darwin and others that man’s birthplace was in Africa. Nearly all paleontologists to-day favor the Asiatic origin; and the stem of the Y stretching eastward toward Asia Minor or Arabia points to a possible or probable primitive route of migration. The Asiatic cradle is really in better accord with Sergi’s theory, and meets some objections or difficulties better, than the African.

We vaguely located this Asiatic cradle somewhere westward or northwestward of the great plateau of Thibet. We may call it the Iranian plateau, using the term in the broadest possible sense, including Afghanistan and perhaps western Turkestan: a great area extending more than 1000 miles from northwest to southeast, where it sinks into the valley of the Euphrates. We found a branch of the great Negroid race starting very early from this region and migrating westward past Arabia into Africa. This was an easy line of least resistance through regions where the moist, cooler climate of the glacial period brought only blessing instead of calamity and curse. The Hamitic and Semitic peoples naturally followed the same route, travelling as one people or nearly together, if the relations between the languages are as fundamental and close as some good authorities think. The Semites settled in Arabia, while the Hamites went on westward and found a home along the southern shore of the Mediterranean. We do not know when this migration took place.

This route was easy and wide, and led into a broad, favored continent. It would not be surprising if for a very long time most of the travel went this way. We may venture to guess that Neanderthal man may have followed it long before the beginning of the Hamitic-Semitic migrations, but this is only a guess. While rich, well-watered, and probably park-like in its flora during the moist climate of the glacial epochs, it was sure to degenerate into desert as the climate became warmer and dryer; as the Sahara Desert is dotted with the remains of Paleolithic settlements where the explorer to-day is in danger of perishing from thirst. Any traveller by this southern route must pass through Italy or Spain before reaching northern Europe.