We have tried to express briefly the results of a glance at the agriculturists of southeastern Europe. Before the close of the Neolithic period they were in fairly close communication with Ægean culture and owed considerable or much progress to stimuli from this source. In the great essentials of human training and development something quite similar might be said of the lake-dwellers and the broad-heads of eastern France. North Germany had a different culture and probably somewhat different religious cults and general views and conceptions. France and England, too, represented a quite distinct province whose peoples were always under Mediterranean influence. Denmark was already a meeting-place for a variety of cultures, thoughts, and influences.
Peoples were gradually closing in from all directions on the central provinces of northern Europe, and here apparently they met. We find here a mixture of head-forms, of culture; mixture or modifications of styles of ceramic ornament, of burial customs—all suggesting a mingling of peoples of a variety of cultures. Here at or toward the end of the Neolithic period was the “melting-pot” for the fusion of these peoples and their cultures. There was conflict of customs and ideas, of ways of life. There was probably much incompatibility, many broken heads. The pacific people of the banded pottery seem largely to have withdrawn, or been driven out, before the infiltration or invasions of northern folk. It was hardly a comfortable place for conservative pacificists. There were doubtless battles in many regions—perhaps now and here we might speak of wars. In some places there may have been extermination of the fighting men. But in most parts there was large fusion, and out of this mixture of cultures, ideas, thoughts, and habits of life came the culture of the beginning of the Bronze Age.
The great characteristic of Neolithic culture seems to be a rude, often barbarous, sometimes ugly but generally healthy, always hardy and vigorous growth—it grew “like a weed”—the manifestation of an intense vitality. Because it was healthy it was essentially and generally fairly sane, matter-of-fact, whole, and balanced. The Neoliths were certainly no “reversed cripples,” in whom one or two of the less essential powers had outgrown and dwarfed the man. It was an adaptable stock giving rise to many marked and vigorous varieties, from whose intercrossing something great and good could hardly fail to arise.
Green refuses to write a “trumpet-and-drum history of England.” “Happy the people—here we cannot say nation—that has no annals.” Here is surely a certain amount of truth which we may be in danger of forgetting. In plants, and often in men, a long period of silent unnoticeable growth usually precedes the brief season of flowers and fruit. Is this the rule in racial, or internal, development?
Is it true, as some historians tell us, that a dormant period of national history best repays investigation, and that dormant peoples will bear watching? Is the dormant nation often storing up nutriment, strength, vitality, just as the plant is doing in its ugly underground roots and stem? Are fallow periods necessary to its fertility and apparently dormant times essential to its life and growth? Must periods of energetic action and effort be followed by times of exhaustion and rest, as in the history of the strong athlete rejoicing to run a race?
Is China awakening from just such a dormant period? What of India, still the home of philosophy? Because a nation, after bearing a marvellous harvest of culture, thought, art, or religion, seems barren and exhausted, does this discourage or arouse the hope that it will some day produce an equal or greater fruitage?
How about “darkest Africa”? Here surely we have a case of degeneration beyond all hope of recovery, not to mention a great future. But is this quite as certain as some of us seem to think? Is not much of our so-called Occidental progress really an orgy of wasted energy, neurotic excitement, half-camouflaged decadence, which will end in degeneration? We do not know yet. May there some day be a family rather than league of nations to which every one will contribute according to its special ability? If this be granted, will Huxley’s statement concerning the individual be applicable to races and peoples: “Its aim will be not so much the survival of the fittest as the fitting of as many as possible to survive”? These are sphinx questions demanding an answer from statesmen. Unfortunately most of our statesmen are only waiting to be gathered to their fathers in the graveyard of dead politicians. We will turn homeward after our excursion, gladly leaving our little bundle of facts and questions at the door of the philosopher of history.
But one question confronts us directly. Is our whole estimate and valuation of Neolithic life, work, and progress extreme and practically worthless? Were they, in spite of all our arguments, a mob of crude, worthless barbarians, undeserving of any gratitude or sympathy, much less of respect? Do we really owe anything to them?
One historic event of great importance had its growth and rise during the Neolithic period out of Neolithic life, conditions, and culture. This was the Aryan culture of Persia and India, of Greece and Rome, and of our northern ancestors. No one seems to deny its importance and value. We must glance at its origin and growth, and see if it supports at all the tentative and often conjectural conclusions at which we have arrived. This will be the object of our work and study in the next and closing chapter.