Our second way from Syro-Cilicia would also lie over Anatolia, to the northwest, where we would have to swim or raft ourselves over the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus to the European shore. Then we would bear left toward Greece, but some of us might turn right again in Macedonia, going up the valley of the Vardar River to its divide and on down the valley of the Morava beyond, to reach the Danube near Belgrade in Jugoslavia. Here we would turn left, following the great river valley of the Danube up into central Europe. We would have a number of tributary valleys to explore, or we could cross the divide and go down the valley of the Rhine to the North Sea.
Our third way from Syro-Cilicia would be by sea. We would coast along southern Anatolia and visit Cyprus, Crete, and the Aegean islands on our way to Greece, where, in the north, we might meet some of those who had taken the second route. From Greece, we would sail on to Italy and the western isles, to reach southern France and the coasts of Spain. Eventually a few of us would sail up the Atlantic coast of Europe, to reach western Britain and even Ireland.
PROBABLE ROUTES AND TIMING IN THE SPREAD OF THE VILLAGE-FARMING COMMUNITY WAY OF LIFE FROM THE NEAR EAST TO EUROPE
Of course none of us could ever take these journeys as the first farmers took them, since the whole course of each journey must have lasted many lifetimes. The date given to the assemblage called Windmill Hill, the earliest known trace of village-farming communities in England, is about 2500 B.C. I would expect about 5500 B.C. to be a safe date to give for the well-developed early village communities of Syro-Cilicia. We suspect that the spread throughout Europe did not proceed at an even rate. Professor Piggott writes that “at a date probably about 2600 B.C., simple agricultural communities were being established in Spain and southern France, and from the latter region a spread northwards can be traced ... from points on the French seaboard of the [English] Channel ... there were emigrations of a certain number of these tribes by boat, across to the chalk lands of Wessex and Sussex [in England], probably not more than three or four generations later than the formation of the south French colonies.”
New radiocarbon determinations are becoming available all the time—already several suggest that the food-producing way of life had reached the lower Rhine and Holland by 4000 B.C. But not all prehistorians accept these “dates,” so I do not show them on my map ([p. 139]).
THE EARLIEST FARMERS OF ENGLAND
To describe the later prehistory of all Europe for you would take another book and a much larger one than this is. Therefore, I have decided to give you only a few impressions of the later prehistory of Britain. Of course the British Isles lie at the other end of Europe from our base-line in western Asia. Also, they received influences along at least two of the three ways in which the new way of life moved into Europe. We will look at more of their late prehistory in a following chapter: here, I shall speak only of the first farmers.
The assemblage called Windmill Hill, which appears in the south of England, exhibits three different kinds of structures, evidence of grain-growing and of stock-breeding, and some distinctive types of pottery and stone implements. The most remarkable type of structure is the earthwork enclosures which seem to have served as seasonal cattle corrals. These enclosures were roughly circular, reached over a thousand feet in diameter, and sometimes included two or three concentric sets of banks and ditches. Traces of oblong timber houses have been found, but not within the enclosures. The second type of structure is mine-shafts, dug down into the chalk beds where good flint for the making of axes or hoes could be found. The third type of structure is long simple mounds or “unchambered barrows,” in one end of which burials were made. It has been commonly believed that the Windmill Hill assemblage belonged entirely to the cultural tradition which moved up through France to the Channel. Professor Piggott is now convinced, however, that important elements of Windmill Hill stem from northern Germany and Denmark—products of the first way into Europe from the east.
The archeological traces of a second early culture are to be found in the west of England, western and northern Scotland, and most of Ireland. The bearers of this culture had come up the Atlantic coast by sea from southern France and Spain. The evidence they have left us consists mainly of tombs and the contents of tombs, with only very rare settlement sites. The tombs were of some size and received the bodies of many people. The tombs themselves were built of stone, heaped over with earth; the stones enclosed a passage to a central chamber (“passage graves”), or to a simple long gallery, along the sides of which the bodies were laid (“gallery graves”). The general type of construction is called “megalithic” (= great stone), and the whole earth-mounded structure is often called a barrow. Since many have proper chambers, in one sense or another, we used the term “unchambered barrow” above to distinguish those of the Windmill Hill type from these megalithic structures. There is some evidence for sacrifice, libations, and ceremonial fires, and it is clear that some form of community ritual was focused on the megalithic tombs.