THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 413 



In 1892, Niederle » asserted on good eA'idence that "" all the fields 

 containing urns in Bohemia belonged to a people that had been 

 settled there from the bronze age to the Christian period." Now, it 

 will not be difficult to establish a close ethnographic connection 

 between this people and the Bohemian Slavs of today, and the con- 

 clusion follows that the ancestors of these Slavs were settled in 

 Bohemia before the Gallic period of Tene, or since the Hallstadtian 

 l^eriod — that is, since the fifth century B. C. 



In the northwest of Bohemia and in Thuringia, a variable pro- 

 portion of place names reveals the former presence of the Slavs. 

 But the Germans, descending by the Elbe, jDrobably dispossessed them 

 at an early date. This was not the case, however, in Lusatia, where 

 the marshy region remains in possession of the Slavic Wends even 

 to the present day. There, as in Bohemia, the presence of cinerary 

 urns bears Avitness to the permanence of the people that introduced 

 the rite of cremation and of its historic identity with the Slavs. The 

 same Avas the case in the greater portion of Silesia. 



CREMATIONISTS OF HALLSTADTIAN PERIOD IN PANNONIA AND ILLYKIA, WHO MIXED 

 WITH GAULS OF THE T^NE PERIOD, FOUND IN ROMAN PERIOD WITH CUSTOMS 

 INTACT. 



In ancient Pannonia the cremationists were as much disturbed by 

 a l)urying j)eople as in Bohemia, but survived under even more diffi- 

 cult conditions. 



In 188-3 Prince AVindischgraetz distinguished tombs of cremation 

 and of burial side by side in the cemetery of Watsch. The former 

 are to a great extent earlier than the latter, and pertain to the con- 

 (juered people Avho, as eAndenced from the mutual position of the 

 graves, Avere indigenous, Avhile the latter, or burial tombs, are of the 

 conquerors. These conquerors, as Ave knoAv, Avere the Gallic Scor- 

 disci, Taurisci, and Boii, Avho advanced in the fourth century B. C. 

 from Bohemia to the south of the Danube, Pannonia, lUyria and 

 Thrace. They mingled Avith the Illyrians and Thracians, and 

 toAvard the beginning of the pi-esent era Avere to a great extent fused 

 Avith them. Thus Strabo tells us (VII, 5, 2) that the Yapods, Avho 

 occupied the primitiA'e territory of the Veneti on the x\driatic, in 

 Carniole and the present Istria, Avere a nation half Celtic and half 

 Illyrian. The cemetery of Jezerine, Avhich illustrates this gradual 

 fusion accomplished about the Roman period, has been attributed to 

 these Yapods; but all the Gauls Avere absorbed in the same Avay. 

 Strabo (VII, 3, 11 ; 5, 2) records the, destruction of the Boii, Taurisci, 

 and Scordisci by the Gatse and Dacians, who were kindred to the con- 

 quered Illyrians and Thracians and spoke the same language. Thus 



a Les Slaves de Race, Bulletin, 19()0, p. 74, 



