THE RAGES OF EUROPE

the difference is simply that the vaults are higher and the faces narrower in the west, as far as Poland, and the reverse from the Ukraine on eastward.

The Andronovo or Minussinsk Kurgan culture lasted from about 1000 B.C. to 1 a.d., and was followed by other cultures, which lasted until the eighth century, when the Kirghiz came in.⁹⁸

These later peoples introduced iron, and the habit of making plaster death masks. Not only do these masks represent in many cases a long­headed, narrow-nosed and often aquiline, and narrow-faced people, but the plaster contains in some instances blond hairs pulled out of the beard. The head hair, often preserved on the corpses, is usually brown.

During the fourth century a.d., the physical type definitely changed, as one can tell from the masks—the face is now wide and flat, the nose broad and flat, with a very low bridge. Eye slits are painted blue—and the hair blue with black lines.⁹⁹ Thus not until after the time of the Huns were the Nordics of southwestern Siberia replaced by mongoloids.

9. The final bronze age and cremation

The two or three centuries immediately preceding the 1000 b.c. mark in central Europe, and a little later in more backward parts, witnessed several cultural innovations which mark the beginning of the Late or Final Bronze Age. To the physical anthropologist, the most important of these was cremation, on account of which our knowledge of race during this most important period is nearly at the zero point. This hiatus is especially unfortunate, since the findings of the archaeologists make it clear that the Late Bronze Age was a time of considerable shifting and expansion of peoples.

In most of Europe, the Sub-Boreal climate gave way to the Sub-Atlantic, which brought an increase in cold and dampness, and fostered the growth of forest on former grasslands. The area of soil suitable for cultivation grew smaller, while the number of people had increased; these factors alone were enough to cause displacements of population. Across the plains of Asia as well as of Europe, large movements took place; the migrations of the Aryan ancestors into northern India through Afghanistan, and into the Iranian plateau, were Late Bronze Age phenomena.

Cremation had begun in Europe, as an alternate funeral rite, early in the Bronze Age, and had gradually increased in popularity in the plains north of the Alpine mountain barrier. Its chief center of expansion seems to have been the central and eastern grasslands, from eastern Germany over to Russia, where it was particularly useful fdr nomadic peoples faced with the problem of disposing of their dead on frozen ground.

96. Golomshtok, E., AA, vol. 35, 1933, pp. 319-322.

97. Golomshtok, E., BUMP, vol. 2, #4, 1933, pp. 40-45.