Several hundred skulls, found in neolithic burial-places in France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, exhibit an intermixture of brachycephals and dolichocephals. According to the more or less frequent occurrence of the former in relation to the latter in each burial, we may, with Hervé,[356] trace the route followed by these brachycephals of Central Europe, from the plains of Hungary, by the valley of the Danube, into Belgium and Switzerland; from these last-named countries they flung themselves on the dolichocephalic populations of France and modified the primitive type, especially in the plains of the north-east and in the Alpine region.
FIG. 87.—Chancelade skull, second quaternary race.
(After Testut.)
But if the “neolithic” people of France and Central Europe belonged to at least two distinct races, the same has not been the case with the other countries of our continent. In the British Isles we find ourselves, on the contrary, as regards this period, in presence of a remarkable homogeneity of type; it is without exception dolichocephalic (cephal. ind. from 65 to 75 for the men), with elongated faces, such as are found in the long-barrows. Did they come from the Continent in neolithic times, or are they the descendants of the palæolithic men of Great Britain, the physical type of which is unknown to us? This is a question which still awaits solution. In Russia also, we only meet with dolichocephals during the later stone age (certain “Kourganes” and the neolithic station of Lake Ladoga).[357] In Spain, in Portugal, in Sweden, dolichocephalic skulls are found in conjunction with some brachycephalic ones, the latter somewhat rare however.[358]
It is impossible for us to enter into details while treating of the period which followed the neolithic, that is to say the “age” of metals (copper, bronze, and iron). The metal which first took the place of stone was probably copper. In fact, the copper weapons are hammered or cast after the pattern of the stone axes and daggers, and in certain stations in Spain have been found ornaments in bronze (precious metal rarely) by the side of tools and arms in copper (ordinary metal). The existence of a “copper age” is, however, admitted to-day by almost all authorities, who regard it as an experimental period; it supplies one of the arguments in favour of the theory that the bronze industry did not come from the East (from the shores of the Euxine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, or Indo-China, according to different authors), as was thought until recent times, but sprang up locally in Europe itself.
The complete absence of oriental objects, for instance Assyrian cylinders or Egyptian sculptured scarabæi in the finds of the bronze age in Europe, is an argument in favour of the new theory, maintained chiefly by Salomon Reinach in France and Much in Austria. The Scandinavian authors, Sophus Müller and Montelius, admit the local development of the industry in metallic objects, but with materials supplied by the merchants of the Archipelago and Cyprus. The great trade-route for amber, and perhaps tin, between Denmark and the Archipelago is well known at the present day; it passes through the valley of the Elbe, the Moldau, and the Danube. The commercial relations between the north and south explain the similarities which archæologists find between Scandinavian bronze objects and those of the Ægean district (Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenæ, Troy, Tiryns, etc.).[359]
It is generally admitted that the ancient bronze age corresponds with the “Ægean civilisation” which flourished among the peoples inhabiting, between the thirtieth and twentieth centuries B.C., Switzerland, the north of Italy, the basin of the Danube, the Balkan peninsula, a part of Anatolia, and, lastly, Cyprus. It gave rise (between 1700 and 1100 B.C.) to the “Mycenian” civilisation, of which the favourite ornamental design is the spiral.[360]
In Sweden the bronze age began later, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century B.C., but it continued longer there than in Southern Europe.
So also, according to Montelius, the introduction of iron dates only from the fifth or third century B.C. in Sweden, while Italy was acquainted with this metal as far back as the twelfth century B.C. The civilisation of the “iron age” distributed over two periods, according to the excavations made in the stations of Hallstatt (Austria) and La Tène (Switzerland), must have been imported from Central Europe into Greece through Illyria. This importation corresponds perhaps with the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. The so-called “Hallstattian” period lasted in Central Europe, France, and Northern Italy from the tenth or ninth to the sixth century B.C. The Hallstattian civilisation flourished chiefly in Carinthia, Southern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, Silesia, Bosnia, the south-east of France, and Southern Italy (the pre-Etruscan iron age of Montelius). The period which followed, called the second or iron age, or the La Tène period,[361] was prolonged until the first century B.C. in France, Bohemia, and England. In Scandinavian countries the first iron age lasted till the sixth century, and the second iron age till the tenth century A.D.