Europe: A History (21 page)

Constantly accumulating archaeological discoveries have effectively eliminated the earlier theories of Indo-European homelands…. The Kurgan culture seems the only remaining candidate for being Proto-Indo-European. There was no other culture in the neolithic and chalcolithic periods which would correspond with the hypothetical mother culture of the Indo-Europeans as reconstructed with the help of common words; and there were no other great expansions and conquests affecting whole territories where the earliest historic sources and a cultural continuum prove the existence of Indo-European speakers.
¹⁸

The essential point here is that Gordon Childe and his successors were using the term ‘culture’ in relation to human groups defined both by material and by linguistic criteria. Yet on reflection there seems no good reason why archaeological cultures should necessarily be correlated with linguistic groups in this way. The Indo-European enigma is not really solved. It is particularly exciting to realize that languages evolve by ceaseless mutation just as living organisms do. In this case, it may become possible to correlate the chronology of language change in Europe with that of genetic change. By comparing the time-trace of ‘linguistic clocks’ with that of our ‘molecular clocks’, the story of the origins of the European peoples and their languages may one day be unravelled.
¹⁹

Europe’s place-names are the product of thousands of years. They form a deep resource for understanding its past. The names of rivers, hills, towns, provinces, and countries are often the relics of bygone ages. The science of onomastics can delve beneath the crust of historical records.
²⁰
By common consent the names of rivers are among the most ancient and persistent. They are frequently the only surviving links with the peoples who preceded the present population. By a process of accretion, they can sometimes preserve a record of the successive waves of settlement on their banks. The ‘River Avon’, for example, combines two synonyms, one English, the other the older Welsh. Five Celtic root words connected with water—
afon, dwr, uisge, rhe
, and possibly
don
—supply the commonest elements in river-names right across Europe. Scholars endlessly disagree, of course. But among the best-known candidates would be the Inn and the Yonne, Avignon on the Rhodanus (‘Watertown’ on the ‘Swift River’), the Esk, the Etsch (or Adige), the Usk, and the Danube.

Celtic names abound from Portugal to Poland. The modern Welsh
dwr
, ‘water’, for example, has its cognates in Dee, Douro, Dordogne, Derwent (Clear
Water), Durance, and Oder/Odra.
Pen
, meaning ‘head’ and hence ‘mountain’, appears in Pennine, Apennine, Pieniny, and Pindus;
ard
, ‘high’, in Arden, Ardennes, Lizard (High Cape), and Auvergne
(Ar Fearanriy
‘High Country’);
dun
, ‘fort’, in Dunkeld (Fort of the Celts), Dungannon, London, Verdun, Augustodunum (Fort Augustus, Autun), Lugdunum (Lyons), Lugodinum (Leyden), Thun in Switzerland, and Tyniec near Cracow. All attest to the far-flung presence of the Celts,
[LLANFAIR] [LUGDUNUM]

Similar exercises can be undertaken with Norse roots, Germanic roots, Slavonic roots, even Phoenician and Arabic roots.
Etna
is a very suitable Phoenician name meaning ‘the furnace’. Elsewhere in Sicily,
Marsala
has a simple Arabic name meaning ‘Port of God’. Trajan’s bridge across the upper Tagus in Spain is now known as
La puente de Alcantara
—
al cantara
being the exact Arabic equivalent of the Latin
pons
.

Slavonic place-names spread much further west than the present-day Slavonic population. In northern Germany, for example, they are common in the region of Hanover. In Austria, names such as
Zwettl
(Světly, ‘Bright Spot’),
Doebling
(Dub, ‘Little Oak’), or
Feistritz
(Bystřice, ‘Swift Stream’) can be encountered from the environs of Vienna to Tyrol. In Italy, they overlap with Italian in the province of Friuli.

The names of towns and villages frequently incorporate a record of their origins. Edinburgh was once ‘Edwin’s fort’; Paris, the city of the Parish’ tribe; Turin (Torino), the city of the Taurini; Göttingen, the ‘family home of the Godings’; Kraków (Cracow), the seat of good King Krak. Elsewhere, they record the attributes or function of the place.
Lisboa/Lisbon
means ‘Good Spot’;
Trondheim
means ‘Home of the Throne’;
Munich/Mtinchen
, ‘Place of the Monks’;
Redruth
‘Place of the Druids’;
Novgorod
, ‘New City’. Sometimes they recall distant disasters.
Ossaia
in Tuscany, meaning ‘Place of Bones’, lies on the site of Hannibal’s victory at Trasimeno in 217
BC.
Pourrières
in Provence, originally ‘Campi Putridi’ (Putrid Fields), marks the slaughter of the Teutons by Marius in 102
BC;
Lechfeld
in Bavaria, the ‘Field of Corpses’, the scene of the Magyars’ defeat in
AD
955.

The names of nations frequently reflect the way they saw themselves or were seen by others. The west Celtic neighbours of the Anglo-Saxons call themselves
Cymry
or ‘Compatriots’, but were dubbed
Welsh
or ‘Foreigners’ by the Germanic intruders. Similarly, French-speaking Walloons are known to the Flemings as
Waalsch
. The Germanic peoples often call themselves
Deutsch
or
Dutch
(meaning ‘germane’ or ‘alike’), but are called
Niemtsy
, ‘the Dumb’, by their Slavonic neighbours. The Slavs think of each other as the people of the
Slovo
or ‘common word’, or as
Serb
(kinsman). They often call the Latins
Vlachy, Wallachs
, or
Wiochy
— which is another variation on the ‘Welsh’ theme. The assorted Vlachs and Wallachians of the Balkans tend to call themselves
Romani, Rumeni
, or
Aromani
(Romans).

The names of countries and provinces frequently record the people who once ruled them. The Celtic root of Gal-, indicating ‘Land of the Gaels or Gauls’, occurs in Portugal, Galicia in Spain, Gallia (Gaul), Pays des Galles (Wales), Cornwall,
Donegal, Caledonia (later Scotland), Galloway, Calais, Galicia in southern Poland, even in distant Galatia in Asia Minor.

Place-names, however, are infinitely mobile. They change over time; and they vary according to the language and the perspective of the people who use them. They are the intellectual property of their users, and as such have caused endless conflicts. They can be the object of propaganda, of tendentious wrangling, of rigid censorship, even of wars. In reality, where several variants exist, one cannot speak of correct or incorrect forms. One can only indicate the variant which is appropriate to a particular time, place, or usage. Equally, when referring to events over large areas of time and space, the historian is often forced to make a choice between equally inappropriate alternatives.

Yet historians must always be sensitive to the implications. One easily forgets that ‘Spain’, ‘France’, ‘England’, ‘Germany’, ‘Poland’, or ‘Russia’ are relatively recent labels which can easily be used anachronistically. It is clearly wrong to talk of ‘France’ instead of ‘Gaul’ in the Roman period, as it is dubious to speak of ‘Russia’ prior to the state in Muscovy. Writing in English, one automatically writes of the ‘English Channel’, ignoring that ‘La Manche’ is at least half French. Writing in Polish, one automatically writes ‘Lipsk’ for Leipzig, without laying claim to the Polishness of Saxony, just as in German one says ‘Danzig’ for Gdansk, or ‘Breslau’ for Wroclaw, without necessarily implying the exclusive Germanity of Pomerania or Silesia. One forgets that official language, which presents place-names in forms preferred by the bureaucracy of the ruling state, does not always concur with the practice of the inhabitants. Above all, one forgets that different people have every reason to think of place-names in different ways, and that no one has the right to dictate exclusive forms. One man’s
Deny
is another man’s
Londonderry
. This person’s
Antwerpen
is the other person’s
Anvers
. For them, it was
East Galicia
or
Eastern Little Poland;
for others, it is ‘Western Ukraine’. For the ancients, it was the Borysthenes: for the moderns, it is the Dnipr, the Dnepr, or the Dnieper. For them, it is
Oxford
, or even
Niu-Jin:
for us, forever
Rhydychen
.

‘European History’ has always been an ambiguous concept. Indeed, both ‘Europe’ and ‘History’ are ambiguous. Europe may just refer to that Peninsula whose landward boundary for long stayed undefined—in which case historians must decide for themselves where the arbitrary bounds of their studies will lie. But ‘European’ can equally apply to the peoples and cultures which originated on the Peninsula—in which case the historian will be struggling with the world-wide problems of ‘European Civilization’. History may refer to the past in general; or else, in distinction to prehistory, it may be confined to that part of the past for which a full range of sources are extant. With prehistory, one is dealing with the evidence of myth, of language, and above all of archaeology. With history in the narrower sense, one is also dealing with literary records, with documents, and above all with the work of earlier historians. In either case, whether one is beckoned by the ends of prehistory or the beginning of history proper, one is brought to the terminus of Europa’s ride, to the island of Crete.

1628
BC,
Cnossos, Crete
. Standing on the high northern terrace of the palace, the courtiers of Minos looked out to the distant sea over the shimmering groves of olive and cypress. They were the servants of the great Priest-King, masters of the Cretan
thalassokratia
the world’s first ‘seaborne empire’. Supported by the trade of their far-ranging ships, they lived a life of comfort, of ritual, and of administrative order. Their quarters were supplied with running water, with drainage, and with flushed sewers. Their walls were covered with frescos—griffins, dolphins, and flowers, painted onto luminous settings of deep blue and gold. Their spacious courtyards were regularly turned into arenas for the ceremonial sport of bull-leaping. Their underground storehouses were packed with huge stone vats filled with corn, wine, and oil for 4,000 people. Their domestic accounts were immaculately kept on soft clay tablets, using a method of writing which progressed over the centuries through hieroglyphic, cursive, and linear forms. Their craftsmen were skilled in jewellery, metalwork, ceramics, faience. They were so confident of their power and prosperity that none of their palaces was fortified (see Appendix III, p. 1217).

Religion played a vital role in the life of the Minoans. The central object of their worship was probably the great Earth Goddess, later known as Rhea, mother of Zeus. She was revealed in many forms and aspects, and was attended by a host of lesser deities. Her sanctuaries were placed on mountain-tops, in caves, or in the temple-chambers of the palaces. Surviving sealstones portray naked women embracing the sacred boulders in ecstasy. Sacrifices were surrounded by the Cult of the Bull, by orgies, and by a mass of ritual paraphernalia such as altar tables, votive containers, blood-buckets, and wasp-waisted statuettes of fertility goddesses. The ubiquitous symbols of bulls’ horns and of the
labrys
or double-headed axe were carried on high poles in procession. In times of danger or disaster, the sacrifice of animals was supplemented by the sacrifice of human children, even by cannibalistic feasts. (After all, Rhea’s husband, Cronus, was remembered as a devourer of children, and but for a timely ruse would have eaten the infant Zeus.) Minoan ritual, therefore, was intense. But it was an important ingredient in the social cement which held a peaceable society together for centuries. Some observers have remarked on the absence of modern masculinity in representation of Minoan males.
²¹
These remarks necessarily prompt questions about the island’s role in the transition from ‘primitive matriarchy’, and the onset of ‘patriarchal warfare’. (See Plates 3, 4.)

Minoan civilization flourished on Crete for the best part of a thousand years. According to Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator of Cnossos, it passed through nine distinct phases, each identified with a particular ceramic style, from Early Minoan I to Late Minoan HI. The zenith was reached somewhere in the middle of Minoan II, in the second quarter of the second millennium
BC.
By that time, unbeknown
to the courtiers on the terrace, the first of the ‘great catastrophes’ was upon them.