Central Europe

CENTRAL EUROPE Frontiers.—Central Europe is divided effectively from the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions by the Alps and Illyrian-Bal kan ranges. On the east the Carpathians and the Transylvanian mountains border the Hungarian plain, without, however, consti tuting an ethnic frontier. To the north the Riesen and Erzgebirge are pierced by so many passes that the real cultural divide has always lain beyond the mountains near the terminal moraines of the last ice-sheet. Within the area thus defined the Danube, the Elbe, the Rhine and their tributaries form natural ways of com munication, easily accessible from one another and so unifying the whole region. On the other hand, the great Middle Danube-Tisza plain is really contrasted with the more broken country further north that is separated from it by the complicated ranges of Slo vakia and the eastern spurs of the Alps.

In late glacial and postglacial times the loss, clothing the slopes, but neither the higher hills nor the low-lying plains, was the main unifying factor; it provided a series of relatively open strips link ing the middle Danube to the northern plain and the Rhine valley. The forests, which constituted the most serious barrier to early human settlers, fringe the Central European loss belt, but do not interrupt it by any really impassable transverse stretches.

Lower Palaeolithic Remains.

In lower palaeolithic times this area was an outpost of the cultural province termed pre-Mous terian, where men of the Neanderthal species have left their flake implements. An early ancestor of that species is apparently repre sented by the celebrated jaw found at Mauer (near Heidelberg) belonging to the Mindel-Riss interglacial, while true Neander thalers are found at Krapina in Croatia during the next warm phase. Only near Arad are there any traces of an industry com parable to the western Chellean, and these are doubtful. But towards the end of the lower palaeolithic age rather small hand axes of Acheulean affinities attest influences from the west and perhaps also from the south, especially in Lower Austria, Galicia and South-west Germany. These types persist, in company with typical Mousterian, throughout the middle palaeolithic term.

Upper Palaeolithic: Ptedmost.

Then, after the crisis of the Wiirm glaciation, mammoth hunters of neanthropic type pitched their camps on the loss at Pfedmost, Vistonice and Willendorf and must have followed the tracks that the great pachyderms must follow as they passed to and from the Eurasiatic plain through the Moravian gates. The flint work here is reminiscent of upper Aurignacian but shows Solutrean "influence" at Pfedmost. On the other hand, these hunters employed great clubs and perhaps even hafted axes of mammoth bone and ivory, unknown to the west. They carved female figures, similar to those from contem porary deposits in France and Italy, and models of their prey in ivory and even moulded clay figurines which they allowed to hard en by their hearths. Their decorative art, on the other hand, was extremely abstract in contrast to the naturalism of the west. At Pfedmost the remains of the departed, ceremonially buried in a collective tomb fenced about by mammoth bones, seem to belong to two physical types, one of which is thought by some to exhibit Neanderthaloid affinities.

Proto-Solutrean.

Side by side with the Pfedmost culture there flourished another south of the Slovakian mountains, from which the Solutrean of western Europe is sprung. Its earlier tools are often Mousterian in form, but have been worked on both f aces by the pressure flaking that characterizes the French Solutrean. The authors of this culture, derived apparently from a local Mous terian, in a later stage of their development influenced Pfedmost and eventually spread westward, perhaps to escape the cold of the Buhl advance, bringing with them the classical Solut'rean culture which on French soil developed to a stage that is scarcely repre sented in Central Europe.

Survival of Hunters.

Both the men of Pfedmost and the proto-Solutreans disappeared, leaving but few descendants to hunt the reindeer. In Bavaria, Bohemia and Galicia these were more or less affected by the Magdalenian culture of France, though their civilization shows certain peculiarities. And then, as the forests began to spread with the return of milder climatic conditions, some of these in turn migrated northward with the reindeer, taking to Denmark the so-called Lingby culture, while scattered bands, iso lated by the primeval forests in caves or on sand-dunes in Bavaria, Thuringia, Poland and North Hungary, carried on the old tradi tions in an epipalaeolithic microlithic industry.

Neolithic Cultures: Danubian.

Meanwhile the neolithic culture was blossoming forth as something quite new on the open loss plains of Lower Austria, Moravia and Silesia. Its authors, who may be termed Danubians, were peasants, not hunters. As their principal crop they raised the small "Einkorn" wheat (Triti cum monococcum), tilling small plots with stone-bladed hoes. Owing to their primitive methods of "garden culture" the Danu bians made no permanent settlements, but squatted for a few years in half-subterranean huts, to move on again as soon as the soil showed signs of exhaustion. In this way they spread into Bohemia, Thuringia and Bavaria, and eventually, when drier climatic con ditions had brought about a thinning out of the forest, on to the loss lands of the Rhine valley, Belgium and North France.

The Danubians' typical tool was a polished stone adze or hoe, flat on one face and arched on the other, and a chisel of the same form; both are termed "shoe-last celts." Bone and flint were very sparingly used. The sole weapon was a disc-shaped stone mace head, with precursors at Pfedmost and in pre-dynastic Egypt. Fine pots were manufactured in a grey ware, the commonest forms be ing a hemispherical bowl and a globular bottle, both seemingly imitations of gourds.

The Danubians decorated their pots and bone objects in a free geometric style with spirals and maeanders, the latter being a mo tive familiar to the hunters of the Pfedmost culture. The Danu bians also made female figurines of clay as had their palaeolithic forerunners. Early graves are scarcely known, and certain finds in Bavaria suggest that the Danubians had burned their dead. But later on inhumation in the contracted position was regularly prac tised. In such graves ornaments made from a Mediterranean shell, Spondylus gaederopi, are often found.

Vinca.

South of the marshy regions of Central Hungary an allied but far richer culture was growing up that is best studied at Vinca, just below Belgrade. Here the settlements were of a more permanent character, and the presence of copper beads suggests some sort of intercourse with the Eastern Mediterranean. The implements agree with those described further north, but the pot tery, though obviously akin to the northern Danubian, is far more varied. Spondylus ornaments occur as in Moravia. It is possible that the Danubian culture is just a degenerate offspring of that of Vinca. Or perhaps both are separate branches of an older culture that had used gourds instead of pots. In any case the roots of both civilizations lie in the east Mediterranean region, though a survival of Predmost traditions can hardly be denied.

The simple Danubian of the north gave birth to various local cultures which may be due to epipalaeolithic hunters mixing with the peasants who were invading their territories. Meanwhile the civilization of Vinca spread into Istria, Bosnia, and perhaps along the Morava-Vardar corridor into Macedonia and North Greece.

Lengyel Culture.

Before 2,500 B.C. a third group termed the Lengyel culture had emerged on the Upper Tisza and quickly spread as far as Silesia, Thuringia, and Bavaria in the wake of the Danubians, while it profoundly influenced its southern neighbours. The new folk dwelt in regular villages and combined farming with trade and war. While their tools were mostly of Danubian type, they enriched their armoury with obsidian knives, arrows, spher oid mace-heads and hammer-axes, and imported copper in addition to sea shells for trinkets. The vases, no longer mere copies of non ceramic vessels, include composite forms, notably a dish on a high hollow foot, and vases with necks. Some mugs are provided with two handles suggesting the influence of Trojan metal-work.

Art now demanded expression in colour, and so the vases were decorated with red, yellow and white earth-paints, daubed thickly on the black surface to form spirals and other patterns. Clay figures of women and animals and miniature vases were also manufactured. The dead were normally interred in the contracted position in regular cemeteries like the later Danubians, or, much more rarely, cremated.

The Lengyel culture is essentially Danubian, albeit profoundly influenced by Anatolia and perhaps also by steppe-folk from the east. Still relations in all these directions were bilateral. Lengyel influence is certainly detectable in Thessaly and perhaps in Troy, and on one theory extended eastward to the Dnieper.

Painted Pottery.

In eastern Hungary high-footed dishes of Lengyel form were sometimes adorned with rectilinear patterns painted in a fast brown on a buff slip. Then on the Upper Alt in Transylvania these and other types of vases are found beautifully painted with polychrome spirals and maeanders at 26 sites, of which Erosd is the most celebrated. Rather similar material has been found in the oldest settlement on the hill of Cucuteni near Jassy, in Moldavia, and then in the Kiev Government, in settle ments of the "Tripolye A" group where, however, incised ware is far commoner than painted. All these eastern vase-painters lived as farmers in regular villages, which at Erosd and Cucuteni were fortified. At Erosd the houses were quite substantial gabled struc tures of wattle and daub with a porched entry on the short side. The Tripolye sites are characterized by "areas" of burnt clay— presumably the ruins of huts destroyed by fire—but said by Rus sian archaeologists to represent cremation necropoleis. The villag ers were acquainted with copper, which they used for ornaments and even axe-heads, but were losing the art of working stone ex cept for battle-axes, long knives and arrow-heads. Clay models of men, animals and huts and miniature vases everywhere accompany the painted pottery. Some hold that these allied cultures are just an eastern extension of that of Lengyel, enriched by cultural bor rowings from Thessaly or Hither Asia. Others, on the contrary, contend that the cultures in question are of oriental origin (camel bones were actually found at Tripolye) and spread westward across the Ukraine to the Danube valley, where their reaction on the Danubian substratum produced the Lengyel culture. It is at least certain that these cultures are not of southern origin. On the contrary, people allied by pottery and architecture to the inhabi tants of Erosd reached eastern Thessaly (Dimini) and even Co rinthia as intruders.

In Transylvania Erosd had no direct successor, but at Cucuteni and in the Ukraine the older culture, characterized by polychrome painting and spiral motives, grew into another, distinguished by light coloured pots adorned by disintegration products—circles etc.—in black paint on a buff ground. With the latter, which other wise carries on the older traditions, middle Helladic pottery im ported from Greece has been found at Cucuteni, so that the later settlements were still inhabited after i 800 B.C. A very specialized branch of the same stock found in Thrace (Wallachia and Bul garia) seems in places at least to have lasted into the iron age, though no tools or weapons of the types current in the bronze age further west occur in the area.

Pastoralist Intrusions.

In the Danube valley we find that with the closing years of the third millennium the forest barriers to the north and east were breaking down completely; for the climate was growing drier and warmer than today, and the woods were thinning out. And so Central Europe was exposed to the in cursions of warlike tribes of pastoralists and hunters and the so called "Nordics." They introduced the oldest sheep-dog (Canis familiaris matris optimae), and perhaps the horse, as well as new grains, including emmer. They used flint celts or rectangular stone Celts with squared small sides, stone battle-axes, flint arrow-heads, and a variety of tools of bone and horn. Rare amber beads reveal the first relations with the Baltic area, while copper objects, in cluding awls and axe-heads, and Mediterranean shells denote con tinued intercourse with the south.

A first result of such incursions was the emergence of hybrid groups, largely Danubian, as the technique of the pottery shows, while its forms, influenced by vessels of leather or basketry, no less clearly betray the superposition of the pastoralist element from without. Furthermore, there was one compact body of semi nomadic folk with a centre in Thuringia who ranged from the Volga to the Rhine and from the Upper Tisza to Finland. They were armed with great battle-axes of stone, reared a barrow over their graves (in which the dead were buried in the contracted position) and ornamented their vases—beakers and amphorae— with cord-impressions. In Hungary the incursions have left less mark, unless the curious copper axes with one blade parallel and the other at right angles to the shaft be the counterparts of the stone battle-axes used further north, where no copper was avail able. In eastern Hungary there are also barrows covering con tracted skeletons stained with red ochre as in South Russia.

Lake-dwellings.

The invading tribes may have come from Scandinavia or from South Russia, or they may, in part at least, have been descendants of the epipalaeolithic hunters living on the sand-dunes of Poland and Thuringia. In the Alpine regions and along the Rhine such survivors of the old stone age had certainly evolved a civilization of their own, though its constituents were largely borrowed from the Danubians, and perhaps partly from cultural centres on the western Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. On the Swiss lakes small hamlets were built, strung out along the margin of the lake, the rectangular wooden houses being raised on piles above the sedgy shores (the lake-waters had already sunk below the present level). Further north kindred people were oc cupying the hills overlooking the Rhine and defending them with wide, flat-bottomed moats, banks and palisades. Here the type site is the Michelsberg north of Carlsruhe. Lake-dwellers and Michelsberg folk alike were farmers possessed of flocks and herds and cultivating grains, flax, and perhaps even fruit-trees. They excelled in basketry and horn-work; the stone axe-heads were often hafted with the aid of horn sleeves to diminish the shock of the blow by the elasticity of the horn. The pottery, in technique very like Lengyel ware, is based upon leather forms and devoid of ornament.

In the Eastern Alps, in Carniola, near the mouth of the Drave in Slavonia and in Bosnia settlements akin to those just described occur, but they show here an infusion of "Nordic" elements—e.g., stone battle-axes—while the pottery is decorated with patterns suggestive of Cypriote influence, though they are executed in a technique that must have been borrowed from the wood-carver.

South-Eastern Trade.

All this time the current from the south-east detectable already in the Lengyel culture had been flow ing up the Danube. Eventually it culminated in the foundation of new settlements on the auriferous streams flowing out of Transyl vania and on the approaches to the Slovakian copper lodes; the best known is at Toszeg near Szolnok. In the new settlements, though Lengyel forms occasionally appear, the pottery in tech nique and form is dominated by Anatolian traditions. Stone axe heads are rare in the settlements, whereas in them and in contem porary graves copper or bronze torques with looped ends as in North Syria and the Caucasus, wire pins with a knot head as in Cyprus and at Hissarlik, and gold ear-rings of Mesopotamian-Tro jan type, are to be found. Daggers with long hooked tangs, import ed from Cyprus, have turned up stray or in hoards in the same region. Similar Anatolian bronzes and pot-forms are found as far north as Bohemia. Everything points to the conclusion that Ana tolians or Aegeans were by now collecting gold on the Maros and Aranka, exploiting the copper-lodes of Slovakia and washing for tin in the streams that flowed over the Bohemian loss from the stanniferous Erzgebirge. The beginning of tin-working in Bohemia is perhaps dated by the appearance of rich bronze at Troy and in North Syria at the opening of the second millennium.

Beaker Folk.

About the same time a new element, the so called Beaker-folk, appeared on the scene from the west, crossing the Alps by the Brenner and visiting Bavaria, the Rhineland, Bo hemia, Thuringia, Silesia, Moravia and the district round Buda pest. In their graves—settlements are unknown—short-headed skeletons were buried in the contracted position accompanied by fine, well-shaped beakers, flint arrow-heads, stone wrist-guards, copper awls, small tanged daggers, conical buttons with V-perfora tions, and trinkets of gold all very much as in Spain, South France, Brittany, Sardinia and North Italy. Between the Elbe and the Rhine the Beaker-folk combined forces with the warlike nomads who buried their dead under barrows with cord-ornamented pot tery. The fusion is symbolized by a beaker of inferior technique and slender form that is found under barrows as well as in flat graves. People of the mixed stock descended the Rhine and crossed to Britain soon after 2000 B.C. Though beakers are found at some So sites in Moravia and at 7o in Bohemia, their makers never settled down there in any numbers. They had made incur sions as armed traders, but disappear as a physical type from Cen tral Europe. Still they had established communication between the Mediterranean and Bohemia via the Adriatic and the Brenner, while Bohemia was in turn linked with the amber deposits of Jut land and the copper lodes of Slovakia. The commercial connections that are preconditions of the rise of a bronze industry were thus established, and simultaneously with the fall of Troy II. about i800 B.C. the Anatolian metallurgists who had discovered Bohe mian tin and Slovakian copper were forced to begin producing for a local market.

Early Bronze Age: Aunjetitz Culture.

Almost imme diately after the Bell-beaker episode begin the, extensive ceme teries of the Aunjetitz culture (so called after Unétice, south of Prague), spread out along the amber trade-routes, leading from Upper Italy to Denmark and East Prussia across Bavaria and Thuringia or Silesia, and along those connecting the Bohemian tin district with Slovakian copper, but concentrated especially in Bo hemia. Long-headed people are buried in them accompanied by round-heeled, riveted daggers, flat and flanged celts, and various pins, bracelets and torques all of true bronze. Amber is common in the graves, and gold is far from rare. The pottery is largely developed out of the "Anatolian" series that spread up across Hun gary modified by "Nordic" and Bell-beaker traditions. The devel opment of the older culture at Toszeg and other Hungarian sites led to very similar shapes, and in the second strata we find daggers and pins that agree on the whole with those from Aunjetitz graves. But the focus of that culture was Bohemia, and the parallel cul tures of Hungary were relatively poor. Yet Toszeg was at this time defended by a palisade of stout posts, and some of the houses may also have stood on piles.

Tumulus Bronze Cultur.

The Aunjetitz folk were peas ants, traders and industrialists living in the fertile valleys. While their life was proceeding uneventfully from I 800 to I Soo B.C. (for Minoan metal vessels of the latter age were imported and imitated locally), the pastoral tribes who had occupied the hill country of south-west Germany and western Bohemia were slowly learning the art of metallurgy. Like their neolithic ancestors they heaped barrows over their graves and are accordingly known as the Tumu lus folk. The graves are sometimes richly furnished with weapons and ornaments: ogival knife-daggers with bone or wood handles fastened to the blade by large rivets, swords of the same type or with solid bronze hilts, sometimes 7ocm. long, socketed spear heads and very slender axe-heads with flanged sides or medial wings or, in Bohemia, with a V-shaped stop-ridge, and round shields of wood or leather strengthened by bronze bosses, which alone survive. Men and women alike wore pins with an eyelet in the swollen neck or terminating in a wheel, penannular bracelets and finger-rings terminating in opposing spirals of bronze ribbon, anklets, again with spiral ends, and pendants hung on the necklace or the girdle. Amber was imported from the Baltic and glass beads from the eastern Mediterranean.

The foregoing types characterize the middle bronze age of south west Germany and Bohemia, which lasted from i 600 to 130o B.C. Before its end a rapier of late Mycenaean type had found its way to Bavaria, and heavy slashing swords, often with an octagonal bronze hilt, were coming into use among the Tumulus folk. Their culture lasted on throughout the late bronze age till, with a return of a damp, cold climate about Boo B.C. it becomes transformed, through contact with intruders from Illyria into a Hallstatt cul ture. In the late bronze age barrows cremation became the com monest funerary rite under the influence of the urnfield folk, the swords were heavy and leaf-shaped and the pins grew to extrava gant lengths. Barrows of this period are found also south of the Alps in north-west Hungary, Styria and Bosnia. In the last-named area inhumation was the regular rite and early forms of safety pin were in use. They were little more than pins bent round for security with the point caught against the head.

Hungarian Bronze Age.

In Hungarian settlements which, like Toszeg, were occupied continuously throughout the bronze age, the beginning of the middle phase is marked by a layer poor in ceramic remains that may denote a partial evacuation of the site. The foundation of the terremare in the Po valley about the same time may be the counterpart of this partial break. Neverthe less the Hungarian plain was by no means deserted, since numer ous and splendid bronzes (dated by their occurrence in middle bronze age hoards in the north) were being cast in this period. Most distinctive are battle-axes, some with a knobbed butt-end and others with but one blade, that recall Asiatic types. They are often gloriously decorated with scroll patterns. Such Hungarian bronzes were exported to Bavaria, Mecklenburg and the Ukraine.

Eventually the whole plain is found to be covered with urnfields, i.e., cemeteries of urns containing cremated bones. The urns and accessory vases were often beautifully decorated, in the west with excised patterns, in the south with punctured lines and stamped circles and in the north with conical warts. In the southern graves models of female personages were sometimes deposited, as at Klicevac in North Serbia. The people buried in these cemeteries must have belonged to a mixed race of farmers, traders and metallurgists.

Lausitz Urnfields.

Similar communities appear about the same time in Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia, but especially in Laus itz, whence these are termed the Lausitz people. They were the economic heirs, and probably the descendants, of the Aunjetitz people of east-Central Europe though they cremated their dead, burying the remains in large urnfields. Their houses were built on the log-cabin principle and formed regular villages. The Lausitz folk were the first people in Europe to adopt the socketed celt, and sometimes they used safety pins (fibulae) for fastening their clothes. The Lausitz pottery was ornamented at first with big conical worts like the contemporary ware of northern Hungary, and later with corrugations. The typical ossuary, shaped like two cones placed base to base, was usually perforated with a hole to allow the ghost to escape.

The Lausitz people spread very widely, over-running Lower Austria, Slovakia and North Hungary and apparently even reach ing Macedonia about Io5o B.C. Another branch spread westward towards the North Alpine zone—Bavaria and the Tyrol—where extensive urnfields with occasional Lausitz ossuaries mixed with other types appear in the late bronze age. But the North Alpine urnfield culture is complicated owing to the absorption in it of western Aunjetitz people and Alpines and to its relations, both peaceful and hostile, with the Tumulus folk of the same area. Hence the North Alpine culture has a martial aspect, the graves being furnished with heavy swords and other weapons. Yet the people buried in them were pre-eminently industrialists; it was they who inaugurated the systematic exploitation of the Alpine deposits of copper and salt by shafts and tunnels that are trace able to-day. The same people conquered Switzerland, where they synoicized the hamlets beside each lake into one or two larger pile villages. The latter became flourishing industrial centres whose products—swords, knives, penannular razors and ornaments—were exported in all directions. In exchange there came amber, bronze basins and fibulae from Denmark, copper, tin and antimony from the east, and Villanovan artifacts from Upper Italy. Another branch of the same stock had spread down the Rhine valley to Holland, whence they eventually reached England.

The Coming of Iron.

Just south of the Alps in Styria and Elyria there were other urnfields, existing side by side with tumu lus groups, whose authors may have included Hungarian and Lausitz elements. In this area, traversed by the trade routes that led from Upper Italy to the copper and antimony mines of Hun gary and the Alps and eventually to the amber of East Prussia, the use of iron, transmitted up the Adriatic, was early adopted, as was that of the safety-pin. Before moo B.C. we meet here the proto types of the slashing leaf-shaped swords and the various safety pins, especially the spectacle brooch, that later characterized the "Hallstatt" culture. So we infer that the civilization, named after the prehistoric village of salt-miners at Hallstatt in Upper Austria, was moulded along the eastern slopes of the Julian Alps, whence the knowledge of iron was spread along the main trade-routes among the urnfield-folk of Austria, Moravia and Silesia.

In Slovakia and North Hungary, on the other hand, which since I I oo B.C. had been under the control of Lausitz people engaged in exploiting the rich deposits of copper, a brilliant but belated bronze age civilization was elaborated while the use of iron was beginning further west. In the enormous hoards of this period we meet not only socketed Celts, beautifully decorated leaf-shaped swords and very complicated brooches, but also great bronze buckets and bronze or gold cups, ornamented with embossed pat terns such as birds' heads flanking a disc, identical with those cur rent in Villanovan Italy. Farther to the south-east remnants of the native population, having survived the shock of the Lausitz invasion, continued in a bronze age, as, farther north, till the 8th century B.e., rejecting not only iron but such innovations as the safety-pin and the socketed Celt that their neighbours had ap propriated.

By goo B.c. the Tumulus-builders living south of the Noric Alps had adopted from their neighbours, the urnfield-folk of Styria, the use of iron and the types of safety-pin and sword that the latter had elaborated. Some of the Tumulus folk, notably those congre gated on the high plateau of Glasinac in South Bosnia, were also in contact with the Greek world. From these western highlands inhumationists spread eastward into the upper Morava valley and thence to Macedonia and Bulgaria, taking with them the spectacle brooch and other types of Styrian antecedents. Other bands spread along a parallel route across western Hungary and then up the Maros, while, very probably, a similar movement in a more north erly direction brought the classical Hallstatt culture to Moravia and Silesia on the one hand and to south-west Germany on the other. In these regions the presence of Illyrian intruders among the urnfield-folk is revealed by inhumation burials furnished with horse-trappings and Hallstatt swords and safety-pins. But the in truders were far from numerous and mingled with the urnfield folk and the older Tumulus-builders.

Then between the 7th and 5th centuries Silesia and still more Transylvania and northern Hungary were raided by Scyths from the east, while abundant Scythian products were introduced in ex change for copper and antimony. The regular use of iron in Hun gary and Transylvania was due to these incursions. Down to the 4th century the lowlands east of the Danube were dominated by the eastern power, while further west the later Glasinac and Hall statt cultures developed under Italian influence. After 40o B.C., however, La Tene forms and the use of the wheel began to perco late eastward, in some cases at least brought by Celtic invaders. Their infiltrations form a prelude to more extensive incursions, as a result of which the culture of Illyria and Pannonia was assimila ted to that of the Celtic west before the Romans occupied those provinces. (See Hallstatt, La Tene, Villanovans.) (V. G. C.) For archaeology of North Europe, see the articles ARCHAEO LOGY : Bronze Age, Iron Age, Stone Age; SCANDINAVIAN CIVIL IZATION. For archaeology of the mediterranean region, see AFRICA: Archaeology, North Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Heierli,

Urgeschichte der Schweiz (1902) ; E. H. Bibliography.-Heierli, Urgeschichte der Schweiz (1902) ; E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (1913) ; C. Schumacher, Siedelungs and Kulturgeschichte der Rheinlande (1921) ; Henri Breuil "Voyage paleo lithique en Europe Centrale" in L'Anthropologie (1922-24) ; Hoernes & Menghin, Urgeschichte der Bildenden Kunst in Europa (1924) ; Chronologie der jungeren Steinzeit in Siiddeutschland (Augsburg, 1924) ; A. Stocky, Pravek ieme Ceske (Prague, 1926) ; Adolf Mahr, Das vorgeschichtliche Hallstatt (1926) ; H. Peake and H. J. Fleure, Priests and Kings (1927) ; V. Gordon Childe, The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), and The Danube in Prehistory (1928).

Pigmentation of skin, hair and eyes, diminishes in Europe from the Mediterranean northwards to mid-Norway and Sweden, to increase again in the Arctic. Stature increases from the Medi terranean northwards to mid-Norway and Sweden, to diminish again in the Arctic, but the changes are less regular for the Dinaric peoples, and the Castilian Spaniards are mostly tall. The Iberian peninsula, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, south Italy, have long-headed populations and so have various areas in France, the British Isles and Norway and Sweden, apart from the Arctic area, in which the head runs very broad. The great mass of peoples of central Europe, from central France eastward to central Russia, and from Greece and north Italy to Prussia is broad-headed though less pronouncedly so in the north.

Main Divisions.

Ripley and Deniker have made schemes to express the above facts. A Teutonic or Nordic race, with tall stature, bony frame, light colouring and a fairly narrow head is described chiefly for Norway, Sweden and parts of Finland, Den mark, north-west Germany and Britain. A Mediterranean race is described chiefly for the western basin of that sea, with short stature, relatively slight build, dark colouring and a narrow head; and an Alpine race inhabiting central Europe as above mentioned is described as broad-headed with broad face, thick-set frame, brown hair and grey to brown eyes, the colouring being darker in the south. The majority of the British people would be some where between the Nordic and the Mediterranean, and would include representatives of both.

Deniker added an Adriatic or Dinaric variant of the Alpine race, with tall stature, and a high head, found chiefly in the west of the Balkan peninsula and in Venetia, with congeners from Asia Minor and Armenia. The more ordinary short Alpine round head he called "Cevenole" or "Occidental." The rather broad-headed fair types of the regions north-east of central Europe he called the Oriental race ; much the same group being termed by others the East-Baltic race. He also gave the name Atlanto-Mediter ranean to an element with taller stature and less narrow heads among the people of the Iberian peninsula.

Origins of the European Types.

The origins of these types are a difficult problem. Myres has suggested the spread of broad headed peoples from Asia Minor and, since it has been shown that peasantry spread into Europe largely through the Danube basin, it has become increasingly probable that the Alpine race is closely linked with this spread, and that its Occidental or Cevenole branch is an earlier arrival that has spread farther. In Galicia and the Ukraine, etc., are found both taller and shorter varieties, and it is thus probable that both have spread into Russia. The exten sion of broad-headedness northward and north-eastward is a marked feature, and is probably connected with a biological domi nance of broad-headedness over long-headedness ; the extension is marked by increasing fairness of colour. Tall, broad-headed men with strong supraorbital sinuses and prominent brows are a marked feature of the European plain from Polish Galicia to Eng land, and they are usually fair in colouring. Their skull type is much the same as that found in burials of the early ages of metal, with accompaniments of Beaker pottery, and so this type has been called the "Beaker" type.

As to origins of the long-headed types in Europe, most of the Upper Palaeolithic skulls are dolichocephalic, and in that early period there were streams of people, with long heads, from north Africa, as well as, probably at a later stage, from the south Russian steppe. Here and there, as in Tras os Montes (Portugal), Sardinia, La Dordogne (France), Plinlymon (Wales), inland Norway and mid-north-Sweden, there are groups of people with the very long, very high and narrow heads, strong brows, big cheek bones and rather broad noses of certain Upper Palaeolithic skulls. It is, therefore, likely that survivals from the Upper Pa laeolithic age are one element in the composition of the European peoples. Ripley was inclined to think, and many agree, that in the cool, cloudy north-west, the type became taller through post ponement of maturity, and fairer ; the warmth of the south, on the other hand, encouraging the maintenance of pigment and of relatively early maturity. The localized distribution of survivals of ancient types suggests that they are not merely the extreme cases in a large group of variants, their likeness to early skulls (especially Combe Capelle and Predmost skulls) supports the view that they are survivals. It has also been claimed, with less strength, that there are survivals of other Upper Palaeolithic types such as that of Grimaldi (lower layers) and that of Cromagnon.

Arctic Europe has received westward drifts from Asia of dark skinned dark-haired broad-heads, and there have been spreads of Asiatic broad-heads into the south Russian steppe and into east central Russia.

Giuffrida-Ruggeri, Biasutti, Collignon, Pittard, Beddoe, Arbo, Bryn and Fleure have noted at various coastal spots from south Italy round to Norway, dark broad-heads, often tall, who seem to be the origin of Deniker's idea of the Atlanto-Mediterranean type, a type which he derived from statistics of populations that included both these broad-heads and the Mediterranean type. Many of the broad-heads of north Brittany belong to this power ful type rather than to the Alpine type as commonly stated.

It seems not improbable that broad-headedness in Europe acts to some extent as a Mendelian dominant (see HEREDITY), and probably, in some crosses at least, brown eyes are dominant over blue ones. Thus types may appear to change in the course of time without there being vast migrations to account for this.

Thus almost every country has a people of mixed breeds. Italy has chiefly Mediterraneans in the south and chiefly Occidental Alpines and Alpine-Dinarics in the north. Germany is mainly Alpine, with marked fairness of colour and some Nordic long headedness near the Baltic, and here and there in other parts. France is mainly Alpine, but of darker colouring than Germany, with some Mediterraneans in the south and west, and some Nordics in the north and east and many mixtures. Britain is long-headed, with a good many Nordic types in the east, and Mediterranean types in the west and south-west, and vestiges of the curious type noted above for Castile in Devon, Wales and the west Scottish Highlands. But the great mass is neither fully Medi terranean nor fully Nordic, thus lending support to the idea that each of these is the result of evolution in its characteristic area, Britain being between the two.

Terms Used for Races.

It may be useful to add notes on various terms the names of which are often used in racial dis cussions.

The Basques are a linguistic and social rather than a racial group, though they are mostly long-headed and very probably include survivals of Upper Palaeolithic types. They occupy the western Pyrenees on the French and Spanish sides, and the language has a considerable extension south-westward on the Spanish flank. The Basque language (q.v.) does not belong to the Indo-European language family at all, and is probably very ancient. The people have many social features, such as house types, ceremonies, games, etc., distinguishing them from their neighbours. They still call themselves Eskualdunak, i.e., "those who possess the Eskualda" or Basque tongue.

The name Aryan (see INDO-EUROPEANS) has been used in many senses at different times. It was once supposed to relate to a people of central Asia who were supposed to have drifted west into Europe, bringing our civilization with them. It is strictly used for an element in a language-group, the two most primitive survivals of the group being Sanskrit and Lithuanian. It has re cently been argued on archaeological grounds that the Aryan languages probably developed on the steppes of south Russia, and were spread thence in the 3rd and and millennia B.C. by long headed warriors armed at first with perforated stone battle axes, and later with bronze.

The name Celtic has been used, especially in France, to name the Alpine broad-heads so characteristic of the region that the Romans called Gallia Celtica. It is strictly used for a language group (see CELTIC LANGUAGES) and is best discarded as a racial name. The peoples of Celtic speech in modern Europe include a considerable proportion of individuals of dark, short, long-headed type (Mediterranean race).

In the Balkan peninsula race, language, religion and economic life are all important as dividing features among the peoples. The western mountains contain many of the people called Dinaric, the ordinary short round-headed Alpine stock is characteristic for the Serbian Morava basin and for the Rumanian peasantry, as well as among the Bulgars. The last owe their name, some features of their language, and occasional physical characteristics to Asiatic (Tatar) elements entering from the south Russian steppe. The Rumanian peasantry, largely Alpini, includes also some dark long headed elements, especially, it is said, in the north-east. The name of Vlachs, people of Wallachia, is applied also to nomad groups, who in generations past have wandered between Thessaly and the Danube and in Transylvania. The Rumanian language, as is usual for any European region that felt the Roman power, owes a great deal to Latin. In the west the Albanians form a warlike high land group organized in clans, with blood feuds between them; they are largely Dinaric in type, but apparently include some fair broad-heads who may be descendants of immigrant conquerors of early times. The coastal Greek population appears to be pre dominantly broad-headed on the mainland, with long-headed elements chiefly in the islands.

The Lithuanians and Letts are the best known peoples of the forested basins of the Niemen and Duna, mainly rural, with Ger man elements in the ports and Jewish elements in the towns gen erally. It has been said that the Lithuanian language (q.v.) is an early member of the Aryan family; the Lett language (q.v.) includes Slavonic elements and is said to preserve features from the non-Indo-European tongues of the region. Both language groups include many fair, broad-headed types with some Nords.

The Finns and Goths speak languages with north Asiatic affin ities, but should apparently not be confounded with the Lapps and Samoyedes on this account. They include a Nordic element of Swedish origin, the fair broad-headed element usually described as "East Baltic," and doubtless in the remoter parts a considerable Arctic (Lapp) element. The Tavastlandian Finn has been sup posed to be longer and the Karelian or Eastern Finn broader headed.

The Magyars speak a language of the Finno-Ugrian family (see HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE) brought in by conquerors who came westward via south Russia after the decline of the Roman power. Asiatic elements are not physically conspicuous among them save among gipsies, who are fairly numerous on the Hungarian plains, and it is supposed that those elements have diminished and dis appeared in the course of subsequent centuries. (H. J. F.) The history of Europe can only be written in so far as it is possible to consider the European peoples as a whole. The task of history, therefore, is to show how the unity of Europe was effected. This resulted from several causes : first, from the com mon customs of everyday life, religion, and law ; secondly, from the general similarity of social and political organization; thirdly, from the subjection of different peoples to a single political or religious authority; fourthly, from the establishment of perma nent relationships between the different European States. The solidarity of Europe has only been achieved very slowly as from time to time new peoples have come under the influence of Euro pean civilization. In this sense Europe has continued to expand throughout the centuries. Beginning in the extreme south-east, in the days of the Roman empire her civilization spread over the Mediterranean sea-board and to the coasts of the Atlantic. Dur ing the middle ages it advanced over central Europe and the Scan dinavian countries. Russia entered the comity of Europe only at the beginning of the century, and it was not until the 19th century that the conception of European unity was expressed in the language of diplomacy by the use of the word "European."