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with the heart of Germany. Consequently there was 
no gulf here between Germanic and Roman, but a 
gradual transition. Roman. organisation pressed 
slowly eastward. . . . The focus of development, which 
‘in Merovingian times had been mainly Gaul, shifted 
over in Carolingian times on to German soil. Here 
came about the last amalgamation of Roman and 
Germanic which is the foundation of modern Europe. 
Only Scandinavia still stayed long outside this develop- 
“ment, as a last remnant of ancient Germany, and a 
wound in the side of Europe which was hard to heal.” 
For the stages of this revolution in social and political 
‘structure Dr. Aberg offers us as testimony not edicts 
or charters, nor a cursus honorum such as has revealed 
he spirit and the structure of imperial Rome, but 
the mute eloquence of hundreds of brooches and 
buckles, of ingenious design, intricate ornamentation, 
and accurately plotted distribution. His inventory 
of type-specimens occupies 42 pages, and his nine maps 
of the principal phases which he has been able to 
distinguish are models of this kind of interpretation. 
‘His first two chapters, occupying only forty pages, 
trace the outlines of the whole inquiry, and summarise 
the course of events before the opening of the fifth 
century, at which his proper study begins. These and 
e subsequent later review of Merovingian influence 
east of the Rhine are what will chiefly interest the 
istorian ; the remainder of the book, with its ample 
fand well-executed illustrations, concerns rather the 
dent of design and of the transference of decorative 
motives from one repertoire to another. 
The account of the Visigothic occupation of Spain 
and Portugal (pp. 206-240) is more tentative, because (as 
eady noted) the material is scanty and inaccessible, 
, to judge from the specimens which are figured 
here, less instructive as to the movements of Germanic 
peoples in this region. 
all Germanic antiquities from this area as “Gothic,” 
reserving till a later stage the possibility of assigning 
some types to particular peoples. 
A word should be added to congratulate the Vilhelm 
‘Ekmans Fund at Uppsala on having produced so learned, 
valuable, and well-appointed a volume at the rate of 
less than three farthings per page. 
(2) Mr. Peake’s book is of a different quality. Spaci- 
ously printed, and well bound—and we must add, 
more than adequately priced at 24d. per page—it is 
little more than a reprint of a course of six University 
lectures, with acknowledgments of the principal 
sources of printed information, the bare minimum of 
outline diagrams, and far less than the due minimum 
of distribution maps. The author disarms criticism 
when he declares his purpose to be “not so much to 
_ record evidence as to interpret it, to restore the main 
NO. 2788, VoL. 111] 
NATURE 
Provisionally, Dr. Aberg groups j 
455 
features of early history than to describe archeological 
remains.” It is, in fact, an essay rather than a formal 
treatise. It covers very wide ground, from a pre- 
liminary survey of the pre-Celtic continent—Nordic, 
Alpine, and mixed Mediterranean stocks, partially 
brought into economic relations by slow breach of 
natural barriers, especially forest and mountain, and 
by the pervasive wiles of the “ prospectors ”—to the 
problem of the replacement of bronze by iron for cutting- 
weapons, and the superposition of ‘“ P-Celts”” upon 
* Q-Celts ” and of other P’s upon other Q’s. 
To be proficient at all points of such a programme 
would be a giant’s task. Mr. Peake has read widely 
(though scarcely widely enough) and has thought in- 
dependently and boldly; and his book is always 
readable and intelligible. Frequently his suggestions 
carry conviction ; his mistakes are mostly of omission ; 
and his summaries even of the most controversial 
matters are discreet and fair. Obsolete learning he 
is for the most part content to leave on one side, and 
where he feels obliged to review the course of inquiry, 
as in the chapter on the “ Aryan Home,” he knows 
how to select main turning-points, and distinguish 
the permanently suggestive idea from the transitory 
prejudices which advertised or obscured it at its 
inception. 
The problem which Mr. Peake has set before himself 
is to compare the archeological evidence for reputed 
movements of peoples within peninsular Europe, from 
the end of the third thousand years B.c. to the beginning 
of the first, with the philological conclusions on the 
same subject derived from the relationships and dis- 
tributions of languages. His conclusion, briefly stated, 
is that the distribution over Europe and its neighbour- 
hood, of the series of types of so-called “‘ leaf-shaped 
swords” of bronze, is such as to indicate successive 
eruptions of peoples armed with these swords, from 
the Hungarian plain into various adjacent regions and 
beyond them. Also that the disappearance of the later 
types of the series from Hungary itself and from sur- 
rounding districts may be so closely associated with 
the distribution of other swords, similar but derivative 
and made of iron, as to justify the inference that it 
was the aggression of the men of the iron swords that 
determined the retreat or disappearance of the users 
of “leaf-shaped” bronze blades. Lucky finds of 
typical swords in datable surroundings, and especially 
the discovery in Egypt of a sword of European type, 
about half-way down the morphological series, engraved 
with the name of King Seti II., who reigned only from 
1209 to 1204 B.c., enable him to reckon the probable 
duration of the whole series of events, and to institute 
@ very suggestive comparison of them with the move- 
ments of the two main groups of Celtic-speaking peoples, 
