412 THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 



was contested.'* Now the Goths possessed the Runic script, for a 

 Gothic lance engraved by them was found at Kovel, in Volhynia; 

 and in Roumania were found different objects with Runic signs. The 

 Goths thus met at the mouth of the Vistula a Veneto-Slavic people 

 that buried their dead. And it was the Goths and the other Ger- 

 manic invaders who followed them, the Burgunds and the Vandals, 

 if they may be counted among the Germans, who disturbed and drove 

 back the peaceful Veneto-Slavs. 



Cinerary tombs incased with stone disappear with these new 

 arrivals, while the iron age fully makes its appearance, the age of 

 the Tene with iron arms. 



Did the Slavs, too, disappear about the beginning of the present 

 era under the Germanic onslaught? No. They were but partially 

 and only for the time supplanted. Even their tombs will again 

 appear. 



But there must first be considered the conditions existing in 

 Bohemia, Pannonia and the Danube, prior to and during the first 

 centuries of the present era. 



In the east and north of Bohemia, the Gallic supremacy clearly 

 imposed itself upon the cremationists from the fifth century B. C. to 

 the first century A. D., for fields of cinerary urns, together with the 

 industry of the beginning of the iron age, are there mingled with, 

 or are succeeded by, fields with urns characteristic of the iron indus- 

 try of Tene or of the Gauls. There is, however, no appreciable 

 interruption of the existence of the Venetish tribes who had inhabited 

 Bohemia since the Hallstadtian period. The Germanic conquest, 

 while crushing the warlike Gallic element, did not destroy the in- 

 digenes or builders of the crematory tombs. Thus there are dis- 

 covered in these tombs Roman influences subsequent to the Tene 

 period, as in those between the Oder and Vistula. Such is a ceme- 

 tery at Dobrikov which received cinerary urns down to the fourth 

 centur}^ A. D., while other crematory cemeteries continued still 

 longer in existence. 



The exclusive practice of cremation continued in Bohemia, espe- 

 cially in the north and east, till the introduction of Christianity, and 

 is an indication of the persistence there of customs that belonged 

 neither to Germans nor to Gauls. The Gauls of the Tene period 

 are represented in Bohemia, as already shown, by burial tombs in 

 which the skeleton is laid on its back Avith iron weapons at the side. 

 With the advent of Germans in the first century A. D. (just the 

 period assigned to the entrance of the Marcomans in Bohemia), 

 there appear on the Vistula tombs in rows, Reihengriiber, which are 

 characteristic of the Germans, particularly of the Franks. 



oUndseet, p. 137. 



