Imperial Germany & the Industrial Revolution. Thorstein Veblen
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may be drawn from almost any country lying within striking distance of this Baltic-North Sea tract. The hybrid populations of this region have repeatedly, almost unremittingly, broken bounds and migrated in force into other countries and so have been mixed in by crossbreeding with these other peoples.
But in no case where the experiment has had time enough to be at all conclusive have they succeeded in making over the racial constitution of the peoples among whom they so have intruded, with such effect as in any instance to supplant the indigenous population and substitute their own racial composition for what they found at the time of their immigration; at least one of the racial factors that go to make up the northern hybrids - the dolicho-blond - has in all cases presently disappeared selectively from these outlying populations into which it so has been introduced; and the composite northern population has proved itself unfit in its composite character to live outside the Baltic-North Sea tract, at the same time that its constituents have proved unfit to hold this tract except in a composite.
Nor has any intrusive population of a different racial derivation, pure-bred or composite, succeeded in displacing the northern hybrids from this habitat, whether by mass movement or by infiltration, although that experiment has also been tried on a sufficient scale, - as, e.g., in the advance of the Finns (Lapps) into the Baltic country, particularly on the northern and northeastern borders of this region that has by a process of selection been proved to belong to the blond-hybrid peoples. At least in the one instance of Finland, and less assuredly elsewhere toward the north and east, the onset of the intruders was so far successful as to have displaced the language of the earlier population; but in the long run the racial composition of the inhabitants has reverted substantially to what it was before the coming of the Finns, so that there is at present no appreciable racial difference between the two shores of the Baltic.3
The early Baltic culture is of interest, then, as showing the state of the arts of life to which the ancestry of substantially all the north-European peoples was originally accustomed; which might, indeed, be said to be congenital to these peoples. This culture runs somewhat of an even course, as near as the evidence permits it to be seen, over a long interval, - sufficiently long to have tested the fitness of the Baltic population for the manner of life which it offered, and at the same time sufficiently exposed to contact with other racial elements or aggregates outside to prove that the characteristic hybrid mixture of these Baltic peoples was better fitted than any competing population for life on that technological footing and under the geographical and climatic conditions in which they were placed. A summary recital of the characteristic features and salient events of this cultural period, so far as the evidence permits, will substantiate the claim.4
In general terms the Baltic stone age may be characterised as a relatively advanced savagery, placed in a geographic situation drawn on a relatively small scale, - a small-scale system of tillage and presently of mixed farming. It may perhaps as fairly be called a relatively low stage of barbarism; there need be no dispute about the alternative terms; they both are suggestive rather than technically competent descriptive terms. And the bronze age comes under the same loose designation, with the necessary caution that it is marked, on the whole, by an appearance of greater technological efficiency and a larger accumulation of wealth, - perhaps also a more settled habit of life.
The neolithic population appear, throughout the period and throughout their territory, to have lived in open settlements of no great size, scattered over the face of the land as the available soil for tillage and pasture might decide.
It is doubtful whether these settlements were grouped in villages or loosely dispersed by individual households over the open country. But in any case there is said to be no evidence of towns, or even of large villages,5 nor is there any trace of fortifications or any evidence of a preference for naturally defensible sites. Taken in conjunction with the relative scarcity of weapons, and the total absence - in the available evidence - of any form of defensive armor, this defenseless distribution of settlements conveys perhaps an unduly broad suggestion of a peaceable habit of life. Yet with all due caution of allowance for what the material does not, and perhaps can not, show, it is impossible to set aside the circumstantial evidence that the culture was character- istically a peaceable one. And it necessarily follows also, in the light of considerations already set out above, that the population will have been of a peaceable temper on the whole. The like conditions continue, and the circumstantial evidence runs on with a degree of consistency to the same effect, not only through the stone age but also through the succeeding period of bronze.
In the latter period especially the distribution of the population has in several places been traced in some detail, showing that it followed the lay of the land in such a way as to take account of the most practicable fords and roadways, many of which are still in use.6
II. On the Merits of Borrowing
In one connection and another it has already appeared that this stone and bronze-age culture of the Baltic peoples drew for its elements on other cultural regions and earlier phases of civilisation. These peoples borrowed persistently and with great facility. So far as this practice of borrowing is traceable in the stone age it is necessarily a borrowing of technological elements, since the nature of the materials in which they worked has allowed very little but industrial appliances to come down to the present; but as regards these technological elements the borrowing is of the most ubiquitous character. Even in the use of flint, as shown by the series of implements running through the period specifically characterised by the kitchen middens and down over the full-blown neolithic into the bronze age, - even in their use of flint they appear to have learned much of the serviceable innovations from outside, chiefly from the south. The early kitchen-midden implements are rather rudely chipped flints, and it is apparent that the grinding of flint was unknown on the Scandinavian waters in that time. Presently, when this improvement comes into vogue, it comes in along with the use of new and more serviceable forms, such as to suggest that they were worked out by help of examples drawn from the more advanced neolithic populations to the south. But along with a due recognition of this technological indebtedness it is also to be recognised that the Baltic peoples presently carried this polished (and chipped) flint technology to a perfection of workmanship and mechanical serviceability not surpassed, even if it may have been equalled, by any other neolithic culture.
Again, neither the crop plants nor the domestic animals are visibly present in the kitchen middens from the outset. As for the crop plants this may mean only a quite intelligible failure of evidence, and does not conclusively argue that, e.g., barley was not known and used from the beginning of the Baltic settlement, though the total absence of any trace is not to be set aside as having no significance. For the domestic animals, on the other hand, the negative evidence is conclusive, and it must be taken as an ascertained fact that these were introduced gradually at an appreciable interval after the beginnings of the Baltic culture had been made, and after the Baltic peoples had definitely acquired the (hybrid) racial complexion that marks them through later time. The paucity of the material, not in volume but in range, permits little more to be said in this connection for the stone age; except it be that the only other appreciable material evidence available, that of the graves and mounds, runs to much the same effect, - the use of these being also held to have been learned from outside, and developed in a characteristic manner on lines originally given by the same usage as it prevailed in other countries.
Throughout the bronze and iron periods of prehistory the same facile borrowing goes on; both the use and the material of the bronze and iron work being of foreign derivation. And as the sequence comes on down the ages and approaches historical dates, offering a progressively increasing volume and diversity of archaeological material, the evidence of borrowing extends also to other than the industrial arts. As the beginning of history, in the stricter sense, is approached this borrowing shows itself ever more notoriously in the aesthetic arts; in which, at the close of the pagan era, e.g., Scandinavian art shows its indebtedness to the Irish and other Gaelic culture at every turn. What is known of late Baltic (mainly Scandinavian) paganism carries the same insidious suggestion of facility for new ideas in the domain of supernatural beliefs; very much