Page 444 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1090-1020 B.C.] The Celtic Dawn 381

adopted in ever-increasing measure by the inhabitants of the
lakeside villages. But though he had been one of the prime movers
in the union of the two peoples, it pained him somewhat to see the
Alpine people abandon the custom of barrow burial and begin,
like the farmers, to burn their dead and bury them in cemeteries
of urns. He left strict instructions to his sons that he, at least, was
to be buried in the manner of his native land beneath a barrow,
with his horse and his weapons by his side.

FOUR-WHEELED OXCART FROM THE VAL CAMONICA ROCK CARVINGS.

This chapter, if not pure myth, is at best extrapolation. The
peoples mentioned in it, Celts and Cimmerians, Scythians and
Sarmatians, Thracians and Dorians and Etruscans, are historical
facts. But they are first named in history some hundreds of years
later, when histories of these areas first came to be written. For
the majority of them this means the writings of Herodotus, about
450 b.c. But these nations of early Europe did not appear out of a
vacuum in 450 b.c. According to their own recorded traditions,
they had been around for hundreds of years by then. The
Scythians claimed to be the oldest race in the world; the Dorian
invasion of Greece occurred by tradition two generations after

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