Note 360 — Chapter V · THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK

Schräder-Jevons, 281, says that the Indo-Europeans begin their history ‘acquainted with the rudiments of agriculture,’ but ‘still possessed with nomadic tendencies.’ He adds that considerable progress must have been made before the dispersion of the European branches, and points out that agriculture would naturally develop when the migratory hordes from the steppes reached the great forests of central Europe. For this there would be two reasons, the greater fertility of the soil and the narrowed space for pasturage. On the other hand, V. Hehn, Culturpflanzen und Haustiere, and Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, i. 16, find the traces of agriculture amongst the undivided Indo-Europeans very slight; the word yáva-ζέα, which is common to the tongues, need mean nothing more than a wild cereal.