We do not press the argument of these suggestions, but only regret the paucity of evidence available. For the present we must be content that we have been able to find some evidence as to the antiquity of the Hittite settlement. We cannot suppose that the mounds of Sakje-Geuzi stand alone: indeed a myriad others, that remain unexamined,[729] are evidence to the contrary, and considerable inference may be made with these as basis from the disposition of the Hittite tribes as revealed by the first light of history. One powerful branch must have early seized the position of Carchemish, while others settled in the plains that lie westward of the Euphrates. Others again found their homes in the valleys of the Kara Su and the Orontes, while some branches passed the Lebanon and mingled with the aboriginal people of southern Syria, where they were gradually submerged. If we are right in our argument, the habitable valleys of the Taurus and anti-Taurus regions must have been earlier peopled; and to judge from the relationship we have indicated, the western extension of these tribes in Asia Minor must have been considerable even as early as neolithic times. Whether the Hatti rulers themselves were part of a later immigration is still open to consideration; upon that point we await further evidence. The Hittites would seem to have brought with them (sooner or later) a new cycle of deities, with Babylonian prototypes, including their national Sandes or Sandan, lord of heaven, a god of the skies with lightning in his hand, in one of his various forms; and they seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier population whom they overlaid. The sun-god they seem to have received from contact with the Semite, and to have identified him with their own chief god. With regard to other aspects of their primitive culture, we can argue from the one site of Sakje-Geuzi alone, and from the reflected witness of later times. There is only one general assumption, therefore, that we make, that once settled in a metal-producing country, in contact with the rich mines of the Caucasus,[730] and the copper sources in Cyprus and the Taurus, their civilisation would share to the full in the stimulus of the copper and bronze ages as these arose. It is at the latter stage that they emerge into the full light of history[731] in the fourteenth century B.C. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV THE WESTWARD DRIFT: NOMADS PASSING INTO ASIA MINOR THROUGH THE CILICIAN GATES.]