Thus it seems clear that the Prospectors, in search of metal, reached Celtic lands, where their descendants may yet be found. What language they spoke is uncertain; it may have been allied to Etruscan or to Sumerian. But judging from their cosmopolitan habits, one may surmise that they were polyglot, and adopted the language of the country in which they settled. We can, then, hardly expect to detect any survivals of the Prospector tongue in the modern Celtic languages, unless indeed it be some loan words connected with the metal trade. /Chapter V/ THE CELTIC CRADLE We have seen that there is good reason for suspecting that it was from the mountain zone of Central Europe, which we have decided to call the Celtic Cradle, that the Celtic tongues spread over the west, and now that we have traced the movements of foreign influences into Celtic lands during the earlier phases of the bronze age, we must inquire what was happening meanwhile in this Alpine cradle. It was about 6000 /B.C./ that the Ofnet race had arrived in this region, where they had mingled with some remnants of the Combe Capelle race, thus producing, it is thought, the Alpine type, which we find dominant in the mountains to-day. We have found reason for believing that further waves of Alpines, coming it is believed from the Armenian highlands, had arrived by 4000 /B.C./, and that these had brought with them domesticated animals, the germs of agriculture, and a few fruits, such as the apple, plum and cherry.[174] These people settled down in the mountain valleys, by the margins of the lakes, or more often at their heads, where broad expanses of marsh produced luxurious crops of grass; this could be converted into hay, with which to feed their cattle during the long, snow-bound winters. On the harder slopes above they tilled their patches of grain and planted their orchards, while for security from the bears and wolves which infested the forest-clad mountains, they built their dwellings upon piles in the marshes, or in the shallow waters of the lakes. Thus they, and their cattle, which were stalled in the same dwellings,[175] could be safe from the attacks of wild beasts, or the more adventurous and less scrupulous of their neighbours. Remains of such pile-dwellings have been found throughout all the mountain zone, from Geneva and Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and Annecy and Bourget in Savoy,[176] to Laibach in Carniola on the edge of the Hungarian plain.[177] We learn, too, from classical writers that similar pile dwellings existed in Pæonia,[178] probably in Lake Beshika north of Salonika, as well as in Asia Minor.[179] This is additional proof, if that were needed, of the route by which these people had arrived in Europe.