Whether or no any of these steppe-folk entered Hungary at this time is not quite clear, for it would seem that some of the long skulls found at Laibach may be of an earlier date. To these we will return later. It seems probable that the grassy steppes of the Hungarian plain would tempt these wandering horsemen, and we can scarcely believe that they would have avoided such rich pastures, unless, indeed, they were already occupied by their distant relatives, who were powerful enough to keep them out. The balance of evidence seems, however, to suggest that, whether or no any Nordic steppe-folk had arrived here earlier, some of these invaders from the steppes must have entered the fertile plain of the middle Danube. It has been pointed out by Minns,[239] that “in the far west of Russia, between the Carpathians and Kiev, we find in the neolithic period distinct traces of connection with the coasts of the Baltic,” also that there are found “northern types of axes and amber.” Zaborowski,[240] also has drawn attention to the resemblance between some of the contents of the kurgans and the culture by the shores of the Baltic. It was for this reason that in 1916 I suggested[241] that at a date prior to that we have been discussing, perhaps about 3000 /B.C./, some of these steppe-folk had passed to the shores of the Baltic, and were the long-headed men who are found occupying the lowlands of Belgium[242] about that time. I have elaborated the argument since,[243] but it has not met with the approval of some of the Swedish archæologists.[244] With the evidence at present available it is not easy to make a conclusive case one way or the other, but, as we have seen, the neolithic culture of this area resembles in some points that of the Baltic, Nordic types appear in the Baltic region, in Belgium, in the Rhine basin and pass thence to the Swiss lake-dwellings, while other long-headed types, which may however have appeared later, are found in the west of Hungary and the eastern slopes of the mountain zone. All these points lead one to suspect that at an earlier date some of these Nordic steppe-folk, driven doubtless by a former period of drought, had migrated north-westwards to the colder regions around the Baltic Sea, where the type, already tall, relatively fair and long-headed, developed later these characters to a more pronounced degree. We have seen that the Tripolje people had departed from the Ukraine and Galicia, driven away by drought or by the invading steppe-folk. Traces of pottery, bearing some resemblances of that of the Tripolje culture, have been found in various places to the south, just those places where we find that our steppe-folk had settled. This suggests that the steppe-folk had conquered these people, and taken captive some of their women,[245] who in all primitive tribes are the potters.