Chapter XI A Recapitulation
We are now in a position to interpret the meaning of the evolution and distribution of these leaf-shaped swords, though there are many details, which we would gladly know, but of which we must remain in ignorance, perhaps for ever. We can, however, form some general idea of the events which were taking place in Europe during the centuries under review, and it will, perhaps, make for lucidity if they are here recapitulated as a continuous story.
Since 4000 B.C. some Alpine people, coming originally from Asia Minor, had occupied the mountain zone, where they had erected their pile-dwellings and had cultivated their strips of cornlands. Meanwhile on the Russian steppes, east of the Dnieper, Nordic steppe-folk mounted on horses, were driving cattle from one pasture to another, sometimes dwelling in the open steppe, at others pasturing their beasts in the park-lands and woods to the north. Between these two peoples were the Tripolje-folk, living in pit-dwellings, cultivating the soil, and later on importing copper axes from Ægean traders.
About 3000 B.C., or perhaps rather earlier, a drought caused some of the steppe-folk to emigrate. It was perhaps at this time, though probably later, that some passed through the woodland to the middle Volga valley, where, mixing with communities of Mongoloid fishers, they developed the Fationovo culture and became ancestors of the red Finns.415 Others in small numbers certainly advanced towards the Baltic, and passing along its southern shore, appeared later at Furfooz, in Belgium.416 The majority of these moved slowly up the Rhine valley, whence some entered Switzerland from the north, and made themselves lords of the lake-dwelling villages. Other steppe-folk seem also to have entered Hungary, probably through the Moravian gate, and settled on the plain and the eastern foothills of the mountain zone.
Meanwhile the knowledge of copper had been introduced by traders, who had sailed up the Adriatic, and travelled inland from Fiume. This copper culture reached the Swiss lake-dwellings, and eventually passed down the Rhone as far as Lyons. It was followed by a bronze culture, which was imported from Italy and the western Mediterranean.
About 2250 B.C. another drought caused a dispersal of the steppe-folk on a greater scale. Some went east, into the remotest fastnesses of Turkestan, some perhaps as far as the head waters of the Yenesei and the region around Minutsinsk, while others passed on to the Iranian plateau. This last group we hear of about 2100 B.C. as Kassites, and a few centuries later they conquered Mesopotamia.
Those who went westward seem to have destroyed the Tripolje culture and driven off its people, unless, indeed, they had already been driven away by the drought. The bands of steppe-folk divided, some passing north of the Carpathians and some going south by the shores of the Euxine. This last group crossed the Danube, and skirting the Balkan mountains arrived at the east end of Thrace. Here they divided, one band passing to the west by the shores of the Ægean and then southwards to Thessaly, where they frightened the inhabitants, who termed them Centaurs. The other band crossed the Hellespont, destroyed Hissarlik II., and passed on into the Anatolian plain, where in due course they organised the native Alpine population into the Hittite empire.
It is not so easy to follow the group which passed north of the Carpathians, but they seem to have followed the line of sandy heaths across Galicia into Silesia, then some, probably, entered Hungary through the Moravian gate, while others pushed into Bohemia. These last found there people who were either refugees from the Tripolje area or folk closely allied to them. These people, who had been accustomed to a type of cord vase, had found in Bohemia bell-beakers, which had arrived there via Italy from Spain. From a combination of both types of ware they had evolved the northern beaker. When the Nordic steppe-folk arrived from Silesia these Beaker-folk left, and passed northwards between the Rhine and the Weser, some going to Jutland and some to Holland. A few of the latter found a refuge in Great Britain.
In Central Europe, in the district we have called the Celtic cradle, we find two cultures growing up, one consisting of Alpine peasants under Nordic lords, which prevailed in the mountain zone; the other, more truly Nordic, and still pastoral and perhaps nomadic, was limited to the Hungarian plain. After a short interval of interruption, trading was resumed with their Italian neighbours by way of Fiume.
It is about this time that the Nordic steppe-folk of Hungary demanded larger and larger daggers, until at length the earliest leaf-shaped sword was evolved about 1500 B.C. During the following years a few adventurers passed into the Friuli and the Venetian lands, perhaps to trade, or perhaps to settle. Others, few in number, seem to have visited the amber coast of the Baltic, and one, at least, died there and was buried in Schleswig-Holstein. About 1450 B.C. Type B was evolved and spread over the mountain zone. It was carried by traders or invaders towards the Baltic, especially to Denmark. Since this type is found in considerable numbers in the north, and there continued its own local development for many years, we must admit that these swords were not taken there by mere adventurers, but by invaders, few in number, perhaps, who had gone north to Denmark, and perhaps further still, and settled, perhaps as a governing class, among the people they found there.
From 1400 to 1300 B.C., while Type C was dominant, there appears to have been little movement. The exodus of fifty years earlier had perhaps given ample elbow room to those who were left behind. But soon after 1300 B.C. we find two movements, more or less simultaneous, but going in opposite directions.
The first of these movements seems to have started from the valley of the Save, perhaps over the Predil pass into the Friuli, but more probably, as Peet417 has suggested, through Bosnia and Herzegovina, and across the Adriatic into Italy. If the latter course were taken, the invaders landed not far from Ascoli Piceno, and most of them passed up the valley of the Trento, by the pass through which the Via Salaria afterwards ran, to the valley of the Velino. Here they settled in that fold of the Apennines between lakes Trasimene and Fucino, through which run, in opposite directions, the Velino and the upper waters of the Tiber. This band of invaders must have been a relatively small one, as the area they occupied is not extensive and was very sharply defined.
The other movement went to the east, and was probably that great emigration from Europe to Asia of which dim recollections survived among the Greeks, and which took the Briges into Asia Minor, where they became Phrygians.418 It also carried to Thrace some, at any rate, of its red-haired people.419 It was probably some stragglers from this group who passed southwards, like knight-errants destroying monsters and punishing evil doers, and who eventually became kings over the towns of Mycenean Greece. These were known later as Achæans, and may possibly have included also stragglers from the group which had passed over to Italy.
It was between 1200 and 1175 B.C. that the next movement began, and this was mainly to the west and north. Some of these invaders left the Danube basin, crossed the Rhine, and passing through the Belfort gap, entered France, and over-ran the greater part of that country. Until the swords of this type have been catalogued and mapped, it will be impossible to trace their line of advance, or to determine how far they went. Some of these seem to have passed either down the Rhine or up the east of France, for they crossed over to Britain, landing for the most part in the Thames and by the Wash, or else at some intermediate points. They seem to have settled in the east of England, and subsequently in Wessex, but later waves of them evidently set out for Ireland, crossing Wales by the upper Severn valley and the Bala cleft. A considerable number of these seem to have settled in Ireland.
It was about this time that others set out from Hungary through the Moravian gate, and while some went northwards, the majority passed along Galicia, across the Bukovina and Podolia, and arrived at length by the banks of the Koban. Here they settled for a time, and entered into trade relations with a humble tribe, living on the southern slopes of the Caucasus, from whom they learned the knowledge of iron. Armed with swords with iron blades, they returned to the Danube basin about 1100 B.C., and perhaps worked the iron mines at Gyalar, in Transylvania. Then they settled in the Hungarian plain and in the north of the Balkan peninsula. About 1050 B.C. a large body of these people from the Koban passed southwards and descended the Vardar valley. By degrees they passed thence to Thessaly. Then they began that slow but steady conquest of the Greek states, which is known as the Dorian invasion.
A little later, about 1000 B.C., the Koban folk, with their iron swords, began pushing up the Danube, the Drave and the Save. In the valley of the last they found whole mountains of iron, which they began to work, and by 900 B.C., if not earlier, they had reached Styria and the Salzkammergut, and were working the salt mines at Hallstatt. It was, perhaps, earlier than this that they moved up the Danube valley as far as Ulm and Sigmaringen, and soon after their arrival there quarrels arose between them and the lords of the mountain zone. It must have been before 900 B.C. that the newcomers destroyed the lake-dwellings and expelled their inhabitants, who fled from them to the north and west.
The refugees who went northwards were few in number, though some of them seem to have fled a long way, perhaps even to Finland. Large numbers escaped to France, and spread over most of that land except Brittany and the extreme west. But here they were followed by the men of the iron sword, who pursued them in every direction, except down the valley of the Seine.
A great number of these refugees reached Britain, landing mostly at the mouth of the Thames, and sailing up it as far as Reading. An important settlement was made at “Old England,” at the mouth of the Brent, and doubtless elsewhere by the Thames. They advanced across the south of England, where, as we have seen, some of their predecessors were living, and settled at All Cannings and doubtless other places in Wiltshire. They pushed on into South Wales, making settlements on the open hills above Cardiff. Some of these, too, reached Ireland.
Meanwhile the men of the iron sword, pursuing these refugees, followed them in every direction across France, except down the valley of the Seine. They went northwards down the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle, entered Belgium,420 and perhaps even entered Denmark. There seems no evidence, however, that they crossed to Britain.
One further raid was made by the men of the iron sword, and this was on an extensive scale. Some time after 900 B.C. a number of them, coming from the Save valley, crossed the Predil pass. Some of these stayed for a time at Santa Lucia Tolmino, in the Isonzo valley, while the majority proceeded to Cividale in the Friuli plain. They passed on rapidly to the Po valley, and destroyed the villages of the Terramara-folk who lived there, expelling the inhabitants as seems to have been the invariable custom of these men of blood and iron.421 The Terramara-folk fled, some to Etruria, others to Taranto and others again to Rome, where they built a dry terramara on the Palatine Hill.422 The iron sword people passed on and settled at the foot of the Apennines, with their centre at Bologna, introducing into all the region north-east of the mountains the culture known to archæologists as that of Villa-nova.423
As we have seen in Chapter IV., the Etruscans had been for some little time settled in Tuscany, where they had established their trading cities governed by religious magistrates. Before long these Etruscan Prospectors found themselves face to face with this newly-arrived war-like people. I have already given my reasons for thinking that the Villa-nova folk conquered the Etruscans, and that together they extended their empire, which is said to have reached to Pompeii. They perhaps succeeded in pressing back the leaf-shaped sword people from the neighbourhood of Lake Trasimene, but did not apparently succeed at first in dislodging them from the valley of the Velino.
Thus we see that the leaf-shaped sword folk, mainly the people of the mountain zone, have at one time or another invaded and in some way or another conquered nearly all Europe except the Iberian peninsula, while at the close of the bronze age they arrived as refugees in Celtic lands. The iron sword folk, the people of the plain, who had learned the use of iron in the Koban, followed them, making a complete conquest of Greece, of Italy north of the Apennines, of France all but the west and the Seine valley, Belgium and perhaps other regions further north. These people did not conquer Scandinavia, nor did they reach Britain, at any rate until several more centuries had elapsed.