10.3 Europe: 500 to 401 b.c.  (Page 4/4)

Pei (Ref. 168 ) states that at 500 B.C. the Latin language was a rough, elemental tongue, lacking most of the refinement of syntax and vocabulary to come later.

The Greek Syracusans were busy through most of this century fighting and defending their possessions. In the battle of Himera on the north Sicilian shore in 480 B.C. they defeated the Carthaginians and then were able to dominate the western Mediterranean. We have noted above how they subsequently defeated the Etruscan navy. In 414 B.C. the Athenians besieged Syracuse, but they too were defeated, their fleet destroyed and the survivors were taken as quarry slaves.

The Greek Empedocles, living in Sicily, developed a theory of the movement of blood to and from the heart, and performed various medical "miracles". He is said to have raised a woman from the dead. Later, Galen was to call him the Father of Italian medicine. (Ref. 28 )

Central europe

By 500 B.C. the greater part of the northern European coast was Germanic. The first, or Germanic, sound shift in the Aryan tongue created a dividing line between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages. Farther south the Germanic groups were still checked by Celts. From 500 or 450 B.C. onward is the age of the La Tene Celtic Culture, named after excavation sites in the region of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.

Corresponding to the Golden Age of Greece, there was a wave of Celtic expansion, with battles against the cities of the classical world. They used two-wheeled chariots as cavalry in tactical units of three and tribal foot soldiers armed with spears, slings and tall wooden shields decorated with metal bosses, but there were no bows and arrows. The Switzerland Celts extracted tolls as they controlled the head of the Seine navigation on the tin route from Britain to the bronze workshops of Italy. At that time the Rhineland had already become important in iron ingot production. A reverse flow of Etruscan bronzes went back up the river route and those art objects found in Germany, as well as in Belgium and Luxemburg, had definite influence on Celtic art. (Ref. 168 , 194 , 8 , 75 )

Recent excavations at Hochdorf (near Stuttgart) in southwestern Germany indicate that the Celts of south Germany had a stratified society with an aristocratic class that lived in hilltop fortresses. The wealth of that class was based on trade links with Greek colonies in Italy and southern France and with the Etruscans. The large tombs of the aristocrats were sometimes one hundred meters in diameter and held Mediterranean drinking vessels, furniture and other household luxuries. The average life span at that time was about thirty years. The Hallstatt culture existed in two great regions, one in the west with clear Celtic features and an eastern one in Carinthia, the north Adriatic and Yugoslavia, which included the Illyrians and the Veneti.

Western europe

On the east coast of Spain and at Massilia on the Mediterranean coast of France there were Greek colonies, but otherwise all France and the Atlantic coast was Gaulic (Celtic). These people also overran the basic population of Ireland, bringing iron to that land as well as to Britain, where its use rapidly outstripped bronze after 450 B.C. The Celts who arrived in Britain in this era were Brythonians, or P-Celtic speakers, from the early La Tene Culture on the continent. (Ref. 43 , 222 )

On the North Sea between the Somme and Aller rivers, including present day Holland, northeastern France, northwestern Germany and most of Denmark is an area where place- names still show remnants of a language neither Celtic nor German. The Celts never got this far north and the Germans for a long time were west of the Aller. A prehistoric people were apparently squeezed between the Celts and the Germans in that location. (Ref. 8 )

Scandinavia

In this century there was a true Iron Age in Scandinavia and a period of continued proliferation of Germanic tribes, some of which were spilling over into Europe proper.

Eastern europe

The Finns and the Balts occupied the same respective territories as in the preceding century. In the Slav zone of Poland a new fashion of decorating urns with faces replaced the old Lausitz style. This change appears to have spread southeastward from the Baltic. Areas of quite advanced civilization existed in the Greek colonies on the Black Sea and at the Persian borders near the Caspian.

On the Russian steppe the Iranian tribes between the Don and the Aral Sea became known as the Sarmatians while those farther west were Scythians, now becoming farmers. Southern Russia was both cooler and more moist than earlier or than now and instead of the previously existing steppe country, by 500 B.C. wooded or partly wooded country extended from Romania east for one thousand miles to the Don River. This tended to restrict nomadic foraging and raiding. It was in this century that Herodotus, the Greek historian, visited Albia on the north shore of the Black Sea and wrote of the Scythians. (Ref. 92 ) He mentioned that some of the Scythians grew grain, not for their own use, but for sale chiefly to the Greeks. East of these farmers were the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, reaching as far east as the Don. They used large cow stomachs to hold thirty to forty gallons of water. It is said that the natives of the Caucasus Mountains were still practicing cannibalism at this time. (Ref. 215 )(Ref. 176 ) (Ref. 92 )(Ref. 211 )(Ref. 213 )

Forward to Europe 400 to 301 B.C.

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