The race which chiefly settled in the Swiss region is
generally believed to have come from Asia, and advanced across
Europe by way of the valley of the Danube. The native home of the
wheat and barley and millet, which, as we know, the lake-dwellers
cultivated, is said to be Asia. On the other hand, the Neolithic
men who have left stone monuments on our soil are said to be a
different race, coming, by way of North Africa, from Asia, and
advancing along the west of Europe to Scandinavia. A map of the
earth, on which the distribution of these stone monuments--all
probably connected with the burial of the dead--is indicated,
suggests such a line of advance from India, with a slighter
branch eastward. But the whole question of these invasions is
disputed, and there are many who regard the various branches of
the population of Europe as sections of one race which spread
upward from the shores of the Mediterranean.
It is clear at least that there were great movements of
population, much mingling of types and commercial interchange of
products, so that we have the constant conditions of advance. A
last invasion seems to have taken place some two or three
thousand years before the Christian era, when the Aryans
overspread Europe.
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