THE ORIGIN OF EUROPEAN CULTURE. 



23 



clear, we have reproduced one of the Olympian breastplates, orna- 

 mented with figures, which at once suggest those upon the situla from 

 Watsch above described. This design is doubly interesting. It 

 shows us a slightly higher stage of the art of figural representation, 

 as well as of conventional design. Not only the men and horses, but 

 the borders, are far better drawn. More than this, we begin to detect 

 a distinctly Oriental motive in other details. The bulls and the lions 

 —lions are not indigenous to Europe nowadays — at once remind us 

 of their Babylonian and Assyrian prototj^es. We have entered the 

 sphere of Asiatic artistic influence, albeit very indistinctly. This 

 design here represented, it should be said, is rather above the average 

 of the Olympian finds of the earlier epoch. Many of the other ob- 

 jects, especially the little votive figures of beasts and men, are much 

 more crude, although always characteristic and rudely artistic in 

 many ways. Through this Olympian stage of culture we pass tran- 

 sitionally on to the Mycenaean, which brings us into the full bloom 

 of the classic Greek. 



The Oriental affinities of the Hallstatt culture have been espe- 

 cially emphasized by recent archaeological discoveries at Koban, in 

 the Caucasus Mountains. A stage of culture transitional between 

 bronze and iron, almost exactly equivalent to that of the eastern 

 Alps, is revealed. Similarities in little objects, like fibulae, might 

 easily be accounted for as having passed in trade, but the relationship 

 is too intimate to be thus explained. Hungary forms the connecting 

 link between the two. In many respects its bronze age is different 

 from that of Halstatt, notably in that the latter seems to have acquired 

 the knowledge of iron and 

 of bronze at about the same 

 time. In Hungary the pure 

 bronze age lasted a long- 

 time, and attained a full 

 maturity. A characteristic 

 piece is represented here- 

 with. In respect of the rep- 

 resentation of figures of ani- 

 mals such as these, Hall- 

 statt, Hungary, and Koban 

 are quite alike. 



Have we proved that 

 bronze culture came from 

 Asia by reason of these recent finds in the Caucasus? Great stress has 

 been laid upon them in the discussion of European origins. Are we 

 justified in agreeing with Chantre that two currents of culture have 

 swept from Asia into Europe — one by the Caucasus north of the Black 



Ilr.vGAUiAN Bronze Vessel. ( After Hampcl, 1876.) 



