The most striking feature about this people is the custom of covering the skeleton, or the body, with red ochre.[205] It has been suggested that this arose from the body being buried in clothes and cap of skin, deeply impregnated with this pigment. This custom is widespread, and, as we have seen, was not uncommon in the upper palæolithic age, being found at the beginning of the Aurignacian period in the case of the Grimaldi skeletons found buried in the _Grotte des enfants_. We seem here to be in the presence of the survival of a custom which dates from the times of Aurignac. It will be remembered that during the closing phases of the Aurignacian period the Combe Capelle type makes its appearance in western Europe, and about the same time arrived the horse, which was hunted for food. A little later, when steppe conditions had become better established in the west, we have the great Solutrean invasion which drove the artistes of the Dordogne to the Pyrenees. The Combe Capelle type seems to have been predominant during this period, and the Brünn skeletons, one of which was of this type, were covered with red ochre.[206] As the climate deteriorated, and tundra conditions prevailed, the Solutrean invaders departed, apparently to the east. Until a large number of the skulls of our steppe-folk, found in the kurgans, can be compared with the relatively few crania of the Combe Capelle type which have survived from the upper palæolithic age, it would be dangerous to come to any conclusion, but the evidence cited above makes it reasonable to suggest that perhaps the long-headed hunters of the horse, with their fine laurel-leaf spears, may have retreated to the steppe lands of South Russia and Turkestan, and there converted the animal which they had hunted and ate into a means whereby they could roam with greater ease and rapidity over the grassy plains. The subjugation of the horse would have rendered easier the domestication of cattle, which in turn changed them from hippophagists to beef-eaters. Their robustness and long-headedness, combined with their roaming instincts and devotion to the horse, which will become clearer as we proceed, have convinced me that we are here dealing with that tall, fair, long-headed type, now dominant in northern Europe, which we term the Nordic race.[207] /Chapter VI/ MANY INVASIONS