H.— ANTHROPOLOGY 193 



herdsmen are roaming over the Alfold, tilling and grazing patches for a 

 few seasons and then moving on. And Danubian I peasants are spreading 

 over the loss, shifting their little hamlets of twenty or so households to 

 new virgin fields every few years. And beyond the frontiers of the loss 

 are only food-gatherers, fishing and fowling along streams in the forest 

 or collecting shell-fish on the coasts. 



Yet earlier still beneath Tel Halaf villages we have glimpses of settled 

 cultivators who, judging by the few items of equipment so far recovered, 

 were at least as far advanced as the Danubians. 



Even on this extreme chronology Montelius' fifth axiom is justified. 

 Oriental cultures are richer than the contemporary European. Moreover 

 the first picture discloses a very significant cultural zoning. As we pass 

 north-westward from the Orient we descend through regular gradations 

 from the many-sided richness of urban civilisation to the stark poverty 

 and immediate dependence on external nature of food-gathering hordes. 

 Such a grading is exactly what would be deduced from Montelius' third 

 axiom. Its discovery in the archasological record is the best demonstra- 

 tion of diff"usion that I can imagine. I take it as confirming the diffusion of 

 bronze-working with all its economic implications. 



But on the extreme chronology this demonstration could not be applied 

 to food-production, to the more important discovery-complex that made 

 possible what I term the neolithic revolution. The Vardar-Morava 

 culture, that as yet alone establishes concretely continuity across the 

 Balkans, could hardly be put so early in relation to Oriental cultures, 

 however it may be related chronologically to Danubian I. Objective 

 proof of cultural continuity, giving eflPective opportunity for diffusion 

 between the Near East and Central Europe, would be still lacking. The 

 belief that agriculture and stock-breeding, the foundations of any neolithic 

 culture, were introduced into Europe from the Orient would remain only 

 a probable hypothesis which, however much its plausibility has been 

 enhanced, must await final confirmation or refutation in the observed 

 facts of excavation. The Balkans are still but little known. Till the 

 crucial experiments have been made there, it would be permissible to 

 hope for confirmatory evidence in that quarter. 



Montelius' thesis has come unscathed through the severest test. Even 

 on a chronology based on geological rather than archaeological premises 

 and designed to meet the demands of an extraneous discipline, his axioms 

 4 and 5 prove workable. If geologists demand dates of the order just 

 outlined, archasologists can meet them without sacrificing any essential 

 principles, but preserving intact their own proper methods and all the 

 historically vital deductions therefrom. But these high dates for Central 

 European prehistory have been advanced provisionally simply and solely 

 to test the applicability of Montelius' method, and not as proven or even 

 probable. To justify them archaeologically we have had to sacrifice 

 many tempting comparisons and to explain away observed facts that must 

 be admitted as relevant. 



Remember that down to 1200 B.C. no date in European prehistory 

 could be justified archaeologically by an actual object of Oriental manu- 

 facture found in Central Europe, still less by an admittedly European 

 product in a historically dated context. We have had to rely exclusively 



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