68 MIGRATIONS TAKE DOMESTIC ANIMALS TO NEOLITHIC EUROPE. 
breed was established not later than towards the end of the oldest settlement 
of the North Kurgan; that is, according to my chronology, about 6000 B.c. It was 
formed during the part of the climatic cycle in which prevailed those conditions, 
unfavorable to nutrition, to which the breed owed its stunted character. Its 
characteristic features became firmly fixed during the subsequent existence of many 
generations after transference to a nomadic life on the arid plains during the dry 
extreme of the cycle. And the firm establishment of the characteristics of the 
breed is proved by its persistence down to the present time, for it still exists at one 
point in the high Alps of the Grisons in Switzerland, and in Wales. 
These domestic animals make their appearance in European neolithic stations 
apparently contemporaneously with an immigration of a people of a round- 
headed Asiatic type which seems to have infiltrated gradually among the pre- 
vailing long-headed Europeans. ‘The presumption is, therefore, that these animals 
were brought from Asia by this round-headed people, and that we have in this 
immigration one of the earliest, indeed probably the earliest, postglacial factor 
in the problem of Asiatic influence in European racial as well as cultural origins, 
for they brought with them both the art of cattle-breeding and some knowledge 
of agriculture. 
While, however, the ultimate Transcaspian origin of these domesticated 
animals and of the wheat and barley, and probably of the acconipanying round- 
headed people as well, may be considered as practically assured, it is a noteworthy 
fact that we look in vain among the finds from the Swiss lake-dwellings and other 
neolithic stations of Central Europe for objects that recall the industrial culture 
of the primitive Transcaspian oasis towns. It is possible that the spindle-whorl 
and the art of spinning may have been brought to Europe with the arts of breeding 
and of agriculture. But aside from these the industrial products present in the 
main no Central-Asiatic suggestions. Instead of these we find only the evidences 
of the most-developed European neolithic culture with its store of finely wrought 
stone implements and characteristic primitive European pottery. This remark- 
able absence of traditions of the advanced industrial arts of the Transcaspian 
oasis towns seemed difficult to explain, if we should assume that the domestic 
animals and cereals were brought to Europe by the descendants of the oasis people 
who originated them, for we should not expect such acquirements to be lost, but 
rather to find them added to those of the local cultures. 
It was not until May, 1907, that the basis of an explanation was discovered, 
when Professor Sergi of Rome kindly examined a series of skulls which I had sub- 
mitted to him at his suggestion, including two of adults who had not been formally 
buried. These skulls had been sent to America by Mr. Langdon Warner, who had 
been intrusted by Dr. Schmidt with the uncovering and recording of the skeletons 
of children encountered during our excavations. They were all inscribed at the 
time of discovery with the exact vertical and horizontal position in the kurgan 
strata, and they ranged from the oldest layers of the North Kurgan through the 
first and second cultures to the top of the kurgan. As the reader will observe by 
referring to Professor Sergi’s report, they are all dolichocephalic or mesocephalic, 
