Free Europe: A History by Norman Davies

Plain. By c.3200 BC the whole of the Peninsula below latitude 62 °N was occupied by various types of a food-producing economy. 15 [GAT-HUNTER] [TAMMUZ] [VINO]
    In this era lake villages were built such as those at Charavines near Grenoble, at Chalain in the Jura, on the Federsee in Württemberg, or on Lake Zurich. They are particularly valuable to archaeologists, since the mud of the lake has acted as an almost perfect preservative of everything from kitchen utensils to half-eaten apple-cores, [TOLLUND]
    Overall, six principal neolithic zones have been established: an east Mediterranean and Balkan zone, under strong influences from the Levant; the Tripol’ye-Cucuteni zone on the Ukrainian steppe; the Baltic-Black Sea zone of cord-impressed ceramics and of the ‘battle-axe’ people; the central zone of linear ceramics, with its heartland in Bohemia but with outposts west of the Rhine and east of the Vistula; the northern zone of the Great Plain, dominated by funnel-necked beaker ware; and the western zone of the ‘bell beaker’ people, stretching from southern Spain to the British Isles and Scandinavia. Late neolithic cultures were often connected with vast megalith constructions varying from simple dolmens or menhirs to huge chambered tombs, stone avenues, and stone circles. The principal sites are at New Grange (Ireland) and Maes Howe in the Orkneys, at Carnac in Brittany, and at Avebury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The risky suggestion has been made that they owe theirdevelopment to international enterprise, even to contact with Egyptian, or possibly Minoan, metal-prospectors, [DASA] [GGANTIJA]
    TAMMUZ
    T AMMUZ , son of Ishtar or Ashetar, Mother of the Universe, was the Corn God of ancient Babylon. At the end of the harvest, the stalks of the last sheaves were plaited into straw fans or cages, in which the god could take refuge until the next season.
    These corn idols or ‘dollies’ have continued to be made wherever wheat is cultivated. In the Balkans a dolly known as the Montenegrin Fan is still fashioned in the shape of its predecessors on the Nile. In Germany and Scandinavia straw stars and straw angels are popular items of Christmas decoration.
    In England a vast repertoire of corn dollies was saved by rural conservationists when the art began to die out in the 1950s. Simple designs such as the Neck and the Horseshoe, the Knot and the Cat’s Paw, the Bell and the Lantern, can be found in all the wheat-growing counties. Local specialities include the Shropshire Mare, the Derbyshire Crown, and the Cambridge Umbrella. The Kern Babby of Northumberland and the Ivy Girl of Kent are nothing other than modern versions of ‘Mother Earth’, distant daughters of Egyptian Ishtar, of Demeter of the Greeks, and of Roman Ceres. 1
    The world knows three major staple cereals: rice, maize, and wheat. Of the three, ‘Europe chose wheat.’ Wheat came to Europe from Mesopotamia, and wherever Europeans have settled in force, they have taken their wheat with them—first to the empty lands of the neolithic north-west, more recently to the virgin prairies of America, Australia, and southern Siberia. The process whereby ‘the choice’ was made involved an endless series of experiments over several millennia. Although the rival cereals of rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, and millet have continued to exist in Europe, the triumphal march of King Wheat is uncontestable. 2
    Wheat—the genus Triticum of the grain-bearing grass family—is known in more than 1,000 varieties. Its grain is extremely nutritious. It consists on average of 70 per cent carbohydrate, 12 per cent protein, 2 per cent fat, 1.8 per cent minerals. The protein content is markedly higher than that of rice, 1 lb yielding up to 1,500 calories. Wheat-based nutrition is one of the factors which has given most Europeans a clear advantage in bodily stature over most rice-eaters and corn-eaters. Wheat is a seasonal crop, which only requires intensive labour at the spring