Neolithic Ivory Carving. Mas d'Azil.
(By special permission. Further reproduction prohibited.)

A notable advance in the line of culture entirely indigenous to southwestern Europe has been lately revealed through the interesting discoveries by Piette at the station of Brassempuoy and in the grotto of Mas d'Azil. Carvings in ivory, designs upon bone, evidence of a numerical system, of settled habitations, and, most important of all, of a domestication of the reindeer, of the horse, and the ox in the pure stone age have been found; and that, too, in the uttermost southwestern corner of Europe. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland, as also in Scandinavia, a knowledge of agriculture, pottery, and the domestication of animals is evinced, likewise as a native discovery. From other quarters of the continent in the stone age comes similar testimony to a marked advance of man culturally. The justly celebrated carving of a reindeer from Thayngen, almost worthy of a modern craftsman, betrays no mean artistic ability. The man who drew it was far from being a savage, even if he knew no metals, and buried his dead instead of cremating them. The evidence as to early domestication of animals is perhaps the most startling. Carved horses' heads, with halters and rude bridles, have been surely identified by Piette and others.

Bone Carving. Thayngen. (After Bertrand, 1891.)

A system of writing seems also to have been invented in western Europe as far back as the stone age.[5] Letourneau and Bordier have advanced good evidence to this effect, although it is not yet incontestably proved. The Phœnicians were perhaps antedated in their noted invention by the dolmen builders, by the lake dwellers of the earliest times, and, according to Sergi, also by the people of the Villanova pre-Etruscan culture in Italy. In an earlier time still in the Po Valley, as far back as the stone-age Terramare period, pottery was made, and that, too, of a very decent sort. And all this time there is not the slightest evidence of contact with or knowledge of the East. As Reinach says, in no dolmen, no lake station, no excavation of the stone age is there any trace of an Assyrian or Babylonian cylinder, or even an Egyptian amulet. Even the jade and nephrite found in western Europe from Switzerland to Norway, which has so long been regarded as evidence of early commerce with the East, he denies as proof of such contact. The case thus put may perhaps be over-strenuously stated, yet one can not but realize from it that western Europe has too long been libeled in respect of its native aptitude for civilization. This is not constituted of bronze alone, nor is its trade-mark cremation. Thus, while an intensive outbreak of culture of a high order may not have arisen west of the Alps, it can no longer be denied that the general standard of intelligence was surely rising of its own native volition.

II. Throughout the eastern Alpine highlands, a culture far more highly evolved than the neolithic one in the West, and betraying certain Oriental affinities, appears at a very early time, a thousand years or more before the Christian era. This prehistoric civilization represents a transitional stage between bronze and iron.

In a secluded valley in upper Austria, close to the border line of Salzburg, by the little Alpine hamlet of Hallstatt, a remarkable necropolis was discovered more than a half century ago, which marked an epoch in archæological research. Excavations at this place alone, far from any present considerable seat of population, have already revealed more than three thousand graves. The primitive culture here unearthed, represented by all kinds of weapons, implements, and ornaments, bore no resemblance to any of the then known classical ones of the Mediterranean basin. Its graves contained no Roman coins or relics. There was nothing Greek about it. It contained no trace either of writing or chronology. It was obviously prehistoric; there was no suggestion of a likeness to the early civilizations in Scandinavia. It was even more primitive than the Etruscan, and entirely different from it, especially in its lack of the beautiful pottery known to these predecessors of the Romans. Little wonder that von Sacken, who first adequately described it in 1868, and Hochstetter, who worthily carried on his researches, believed that Hallstatt represented an entirely indigenous and extinct Alpine civilization. On the other hand, so exceedingly rich and varied were the finds in this out-of-the-way corner of Europe, that another and quite different view seemed justifiable. Might this not be an entirely exotic culture? products gained by trade from all parts of the world, being here deposited with their dead by a people who controlled the great and very ancient salt mines hereabouts? Neither of these interpretations of this find at Hallstatt have been exactly verified by later researches, and yet its importance has not lessened in the least. By later discoveries all over eastern Europe south of the Danube, from the Tyrol over to the Balkan peninsula, as well as throughout northern Italy, Würtemberg, and even over into northeastern France, the wide extension of this civilization[6] proves that it must in a large measure have developed upon the spot, and not come as an importation from abroad. On the other hand, its affinity in many details with the cultures both of Italy and Greece proved that it had made heavy drafts upon each of these, profiting greatly thereby. The best opinion to-day is, that it constitutes a link in the chain of culture between eastern and western Europe. As such it is of primary importance in any study of European origins.

Bronze Situla.
Watsch, Austrian Tyrol.
[[Larger Image]]

The primitive stage of European civilization, to which the term Hallstatt is specifically applied by archæologists, is characterized by a knowledge both of bronze and iron, although the latter is relatively insignificant. Its rarity indicates that we have to do with the very beginnings of its use. In this early combination of bronze and iron the Hallstatt culture is in strong contrast with the rest of Europe. Almost everywhere else, as in Hungary for example, a pure bronze age—sometimes one even of copper also—intervenes between the use of stone and iron. Here, however, the two metals, bronze and iron, appear simultaneously. There is no evidence of a use of bronze alone. Bearing in mind, what we shall subsequently emphasize in the case of Scandinavia, that in that remote part of Europe man had to put up with the inferior metal for close upon a thousand years before the acquisition of a better substitute, it will be seen that at Hallstatt a remarkable foreshortening of cultural evolution had ensued. Iron, as we have said, was still comparatively rare. Only in the case of small objects, less often in the blades of bronze-handled swords, does this more precious metal appear. But it is far more common than in the earliest Greek civilizations made known to us by Schliemann and others.