We have found reason for believing that in neolithic days the Russian steppe east of the Dnieper was inhabited by a nomad steppe-folk, who had domesticated horses and cattle, and perhaps sheep. As they lived on a plain they had probably not met with the goat, which is a mountain beast, and it is to be noted that the name for goat varies in nearly all the Wiro languages.[452] These nomad steppe-folk, who buried their dead in a contracted position covered with red ochre under kurgans or barrows, were, we believe, Nordic or proto-Nordic in type, and some, at least, of their skeletons remind us of the Brünn-Brux-Combe Capelle type,[453] who hunted horses in late Aurignacian and Solutrean times. The state of civilisation and the area of distribution of those nomad steppe-folk exactly corresponds with the requirements of the early Wiros as postulated by Schrader, though it differs in some respects from those demanded by Giles. On the other hand, in Magdalenian and Azilian times, and perhaps during the earlier phases of the neolithic age, the ancestors of these people may well have lived in the Hungarian plain, and we have seen how some of them survived in Switzerland, at Chamblandes, well into neolithic times.[454] It is possible, then, that the circumscribed area, though not the settled agricultural condition, demanded by Dr. Giles, may have been true in the later phases of the upper palæolithic age. This, however, he will not agree to, for he is persuaded that the _hiatus_, assumed by the earlier archæologists, still exists, and that the upper palæolithic age, as well as the lower, preceded the last ice age and belongs to a very remote past. Some archæologists, it is true, still hold to these views, and this inflated chronology has not yet been abandoned by all. During the last few years, however, the shorter dating[455] has become more generally accepted, and this brings the whole of the neanthropic period into relatively recent times, and gives us a continuous history from the Aurignacian period to the present day. If Dr. Giles could be persuaded to accept these more modern views on palæolithic chronology, many of his difficulties would be removed, and he might agree to place the Hungarian cradle of the Wiros in the latter part of the upper palæolithic age. Dr. Giles raises objections also to the continuity of the Russio-Turkestan steppe, and maintains that a connection between South Russia and the east, north of the Black Sea, would have been impossible.[456] He is, therefore, disposed to take the Wiros to Persia and India by way of Asia Minor.