The claim that the ancient Celts and Achæans were physically more like Germans and Scandinavians than any other European people is certainly not without foundation. It has been urged that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the sea and with the eel, which is said to be unknown in the tributaries of the Black and Caspian Seas, as also their acquaintance with the beech. Other arguments can be found in special articles. We have seen that arguments based on the meaning of words like beech, eel, and sea, rest on a very insecure foundation. The Finns are almost as blond as the Germans, and Kossina[178] places them with the Germans as ancestors of the Indo-Europeans. There are in Europe also blond brachycephals, generally acknowledged to have been of western Asiatic origin. The arguments for a Germanic origin are attractive, but hardly convincing, and anything but conclusive. The objections to this view are weighty. One marked feature of Indo-European culture was the use of the horse, which held the highest rank among their domestic animals. But the domestic horse seems to have been introduced into Europe from the East. The few traces of its presence in northern Europe during Neolithic times are usually explained as remains of wild animals killed in the hunt. If they played so large a part in Indo-European culture, it is strange that they have left so few remains. Kossina, in one of his studies, places the cradle of Indo-European culture in "Scandinavia, Denmark, and northwest Germany, wherever megalithic monuments with their characteristic pottery occur." Wherever such monuments occur we find incineration coming in late in Neolithic time, or more exactly with the Bronze period, except in Brittany and England, of which later. But incineration seems to accompany the progress of the European branch, and must have come into use among these peoples well back in their history to explain its wide occurrence. The word town, in the original language, seems to signify a settlement surrounded by a hedge or wall, or some sort of defense. But fortified towns are hardly known in North Germany at this time. All these cultural features seem to appear somewhat or considerably too late in North Germany to suit Kossina's theory. A second feature of Indo-European culture is the rise of the chieftain. But the Germans seem to have borrowed the name for king and other expressions for military organizations, as well as many culture-words, from the Celts. This fact has led some good authorities to declare that the Germans received their Indo-European language from the Celts.