Page 190 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The Wide View (I) 151

The mixed people o£ battle-ax and beaker ancestry in the
Rhineland and Holland must have had a double share of wander­
lust in their blood and in their traditions, while from the original
coastal fishermen of Holland they derived a knowledge of how to
build ocean-going boats. It was from Holland and the northwest
coast of Germany that this people, in successive waves over about
three generations, crossed over to the south and east coasts of
England, following the pure beaker people who had crossed from
France not long after the first construction of Stonehenge. These
later invaders were, in most aspects of their culture, also beaker
people, but racially they must have been a mixture of all the
strains that had met on the Rhine, the battle-ax strain being
particularly prominent. By 1650 b.c. this hybrid culture domi­
nated the whole of south and central England and east Scotland,
and, in true battle-ax tradition, an aristocracy of the invaders

IN THE PASSAGE-GRAVES OF SPAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE THERE ARE
MANY REPRESENTATIONS OF A RATHER OWL-FACED GOD, OFTEN THE
EYES ALONE BEING DEPICTED. THIS DRUM-IDOL OF CHALK, FROM AN
EARLY BRONZE-AGE BURIAL MOUND AT FOLKTON IN YORKSHIRE, ENG­
LAND, IS OF IMPORTANCE BECAUSE IT IS OF A LATER PERIOD THAN
THE PASSAGE-GRAVES, IN FACT OF ABOUT THE DATE WE HAVE NOW
REACHED IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM. CLEARLY THE RELIGION OF
THE PASSAGE-GRAVE BUILDERS WAS STILL PRACTICED AT THIS DATE.