THE ORIGIN OF EUROPEAN CULTURE. 19 



oreination. Thus, while an intensive outbreak of culture of a high 

 order may not ha^'e 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. Tlirougliout the eastern Alpine higJdands, 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 hefore the Christian era. This prehistoric civilization rep- 

 resents 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 ne- 

 <n'opolis was discovered more than a half century ago, which marked 

 an epoch in archaeological 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 MediteiTanean 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 

 Scandina\da. It was even more primitive than the Etruscan, and 

 entirely different from it, especially in its lack of the beautiful pot- 

 tery known to these predecessors of the Romans. Little wonder that 

 von Sacken, who first adequately described it in 1868, and Hoch- 

 stetter, who worthily carried on his researches, believed that Hallstatt 

 represented an entirely indigenous and extinct AljDine 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 de- 

 posited with their dead by a people who controlled the great and 

 very ancient salt mines hereabouts ? ^N^either 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 dis- 

 coveries all over eastern Europe south of the Danube, from the Tyrol 

 over to the Balkan peninsula, as well as throughout northern Italy, 

 Wiirtemberg, and even over into northeastern France, the wide ex- 

 tension of this civilization * proves that it must in a large measure 

 have developed upon the spot, and not come as an importation from 



* Chantre, 1884; Hocrnes, 1892; Bertrand and Reinach, 1894 a; Sergi, 1898 a; and 

 Orsi (Bull. Paletnologia Italiana, xi, 1885, p. 1 d sf^q.) are best authorities. See also Hall- 

 statt in the subject index of our Bibliography, soon to be published as a Special Bulletin 

 of the Boston Public Library. 



