Free Europe: A History by Norman Davies Page A

sowing and the autumn harvest. Unlike the rice-growers, who had to tend the paddy-fields in disciplined brigades throughout the year, the wheat farmer was granted time and freedom to branch out, to grow secondary crops, to reclaim land, to build, to fight, to politicize. This conjunction may well contain the preconditions for many features of Europe’s social and political history, from feudalism and individualism to warmongering and imperialism. Wheat, however, quickly exhausts the soil. In ancient times, the land could only retain its fertility if the wheat fields were regularly left fallow and manured by domestic animals. From this there arose the traditional European pattern of mixed arable and livestock farming, and the varied diet of cereals, vegetables, and meat.
    In bread-making, wheat proteins have the unique property of forming gluten when mixed with water to form dough. In turn, the gluten retains carbon dioxide emitted from the fermentation of yeast. The net result is a wheaten loaf that is lighter, finer, and more digestible than any of its competitors. 3 ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ is a sentiment which European civilization could share with some of its Middle Eastern neighbours, but not with Indians, Chinese, Aztecs, or Incas.
    The Chalcolithic Age is a term used by some prehistorians to describe the long transitional phase when Stone and Bronze overlapped.
    The Bronze Age was marked by the manufacture of a new alloy through the admixture of copper with tin. Its onset began in the Middle East c.3000 BC, in northern Europe perhaps a thousand years later. Especially in the Mediterranean, it saw the growth of urban culture: written records, specialized crafts, widespread trade. Its greatest achievements were found at Mycenae, unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann from 1876 and at Cnossos in Crete, excavated by Sir Arthur Evans in 1899–1930. These sites are roughly contemporary with the stone circles at Stonehenge, whose three phases of construction began c.2600 BC. Charcoal from the ‘Aubrey Holes’ of Phase I at Stonehenge has been carbon-dated to 1848 BC ± 275 years; an antler pick from a stone socket of Phase III to 1710 BC ± 150 years. Hence, whilst advanced civilizations akin to those of the Middle East were developing in the Aegean, the peoples of the north-west were passing through the transition from Neolithic to Bronze, [SAMPHIRE]
    However, talk of ‘advanced’ or ‘backward’ cultures might well be inhibited by the skills of the engineers of Stonehenge, who contrived to transport eighty blue-stones weighing over fifty tons apiece from the distant Presceliy Mountains of South Wales, and to erect them with such precision that awestruck observers have imagined them to be the working parts of a sun-computer. 16 Indeed, carvings at Stonehenge of axes and daggers resembling objects found in the shaft-graves at Mycenae gave rise once again to speculation about direct contacts with the Mediterranean.
    Interregional trade, especially in minerals, is one of the important features of Bronze Age Europe. The Peninsula’s mineral resources were rich and varied, but their distribution was uneven; and a widespread network of trade-routes grew upin response to the imbalances. Salt had been sought from the earliest times, either by mining rock-salt or by evaporating brine from seaside salt-pans. Huge rock-salt mountains occur naturally in several locations, from Cardona in Catalonia to the Salzkammergut in Austria or Wieliczka in Poland. Primitive salt-pans or sali-nae were located all along the hot southern coast, from the Rhone to the Dnieper. Now, permanent ‘salt roads’ began to function. Best known among them was the ancient Via Salaria, which linked Rome with the salt-pans of the Adriatic coast. Amber, which can be found both on the western shore of Jutland and on the Baltic shore east of the Vistula, was greatly prized as jewellery. The ancient ‘amber road’ ran down the valley of the Oder,