416 THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS. 



tula in the fifth century, more tlian two or three centuries after the 

 successive departure of the Goths, the Burguncls, and the Vandals. 

 The invading Goths and Burgunds drove out the cremationists, espe- 

 cially from the Baltic littoral and the left bank of the Vistula. 

 Still, the burial tombs of the conquerors are found mingled with 

 the cinerary urns of the natives, as at Elbing on the littoral, to the 

 right of the mouth of the Vistula. Crematory cemeteries thus main- 

 tained themselves constantly dow^n to the seventh century A. D., and 

 even until after the introduction of Christianity. 



The Germanic peoples who settled on the Vistula did not continue 

 their distinct individuality. Like the Gauls on the Danube, they 

 were partially, but not completely, assimilated. Moreover, the Ger- 

 man colonization had for its result the strengthening of their ethnic 

 importance; yet neither was the older population, the cremation- 

 ists, submerged by the Germans, for, on the contrary, they regained 

 the mastery over all the regions first occupied, restoring their own 

 funeral customs, as their congeners were doing in Silesia, Bohemia 

 and Moravia, and as their congeners in Pannonia had done several 

 centuries before. 



MODERN FIELDS WITH URNS ON THE VISTULA ARE CEMETERIES OF SLAVS, FOUND 



THERE BY CHRISTIANITY. 



Some fifty or sixty fields with urns, which are common in Bohemia 

 and Lusatia, were discovered also on the lower Vistula, and frag- 

 ments of broken urns indicate a considerable number of them on the 

 Bog. They were found in the elevations that served as intrenchments 

 for the Burgunds. 



These tombs are the work of the natives while restoring their old 

 customs in their homes, which for several generations had been pos- 

 sessed by Germanic immigrants from Scandinavia. They are com- 

 paratively modern. Some of the objects found in them do not differ 

 much from those now in use in Slavic countries. They represent the 

 period between the invasion of the Goths, the Burgunds and the 

 Vandals and the introduction of Christianity. 



The permanence of the cremationists is thus established by the per- 

 sistence, in face of the intrusion of the bur^dng people, of funeral 

 customs that are the expression of peculiar creeds and conditions of 

 existence. 



Thus the Christian propaganda found there peoples who were 

 Slavs and who cremated their dead. Historical documents show that 

 when the Christian missionaries came in contact with the Slavs the 

 latter were still practicing cremation. This one fact enables us to 

 trace the genealogy of the Slavs, for they must have been identical 



