Page 43 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

But they do not look to the past, but to the future. They do
not consider themselves isolated communities on the edge of the
uttermost ocean. They know that they are the shock troops of civi­

lization. As we shall see, they are in touch with the civilized east,
and in their own eyes they are well on the way to modernity.
Within their towns—which are almost cities anyway—they have

all the civilized paraphernalia of palaces and temples; they have
a cemetery of collective tombs outside the walls quite as impres­
sive as anything in Crete or Egypt. And, clearest of all signs of

progress, they have home-produced bronze. It is only a few
generations since the prospectors from the east discovered the
lodes of copper and tin, but production is now in full swing, both

for export and for the home market. It will not be long, they
reckon, before they in their turn can begin to spread civilization

to the benighted flint-using barbarians of the forests of the
northwest.

SUGGESTED RECONSTRUCTION OF A VILLAGE IN SOUTHERN GERMANY
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND MILLENNIUM, BASED ON AN EX­
CAVATED SITE AT AICHBUHL.

They are not the only Europeans who consider themselves

well on the way to civilization. In the Balkans and along the val­
ley of the Danube there are also farming communities which have
recently taken the (in their own opinion) most important step,

the change-over from flint to bronze. Admittedly they are forest
farmers, moving their villages to new clearings every few years

in the way of the real backwoodsmen farther north. But their
forests are the open woodlands of the great plains of glacier
dust, where there is room for their massive ox wagons to ma­

neuver between the trees. They move in style, with many posses-