This I am inclined to think must have been the case, and such an invasion would account for the widespread exodus of people with the Type G swords, which we have found scattered over many areas in France, over parts of North Germany, and stretching even to Scandinavia and Finland, and which reached the British Isles, with much other culture belonging to the Swiss lake-dwellings, as Crawford has recently shown us.[413] These people with the Type G swords must have been refugees from the invasion of the iron sword people. Déchelette has given us a map showing their progress in France, and on the same map he indicates the progress of the iron sword men.[414] The latter followed the refugees in almost every direction, and it was only in the Seine valley that the exiles escaped pursuit. This is a point to which I shall have to refer in a later chapter. /Chapter XI/ A RECAPITULATION We are now in a position to interpret the meaning of the evolution and distribution of these leaf-shaped swords, though there are many details, which we would gladly know, but of which we must remain in ignorance, perhaps for ever. We can, however, form some general idea of the events which were taking place in Europe during the centuries under review, and it will, perhaps, make for lucidity if they are here recapitulated as a continuous story. Since 4000 /B.C./ some Alpine people, coming originally from Asia Minor, had occupied the mountain zone, where they had erected their pile-dwellings and had cultivated their strips of cornlands. Meanwhile on the Russian steppes, east of the Dnieper, Nordic steppe-folk mounted on horses, were driving cattle from one pasture to another, sometimes dwelling in the open steppe, at others pasturing their beasts in the park-lands and woods to the north. Between these two peoples were the Tripolje-folk, living in pit-dwellings, cultivating the soil, and later on importing copper axes from Ægean traders. About 3000 /B.C./, or perhaps rather earlier, a drought caused some of the steppe-folk to emigrate. It was perhaps at this time, though probably later, that some passed through the woodland to the middle Volga valley, where, mixing with communities of Mongoloid fishers, they developed the Fationovo culture and became ancestors of the red Finns.[415] Others in small numbers certainly advanced towards the Baltic, and passing along its southern shore, appeared later at Furfooz, in Belgium.[416] The majority of these moved slowly up the Rhine valley, whence some entered Switzerland from the north, and made themselves lords of the lake-dwelling villages. Other steppe-folk seem also to have entered Hungary, probably through the Moravian gate, and settled on the plain and the eastern foothills of the mountain zone.