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But we shall attach less significance to the burial custom the less we are inclined to
ascribe an ethnical origin to burial in the contracted position. In Europe we find
the custom of burying the dead in the so-called contracted position practised
principally in neolithic, but in widely separated regions into the early bronze age
as well.* An enumeration of the localities of such finds is unnecessary. I refer
to Colini's compilation (Bulletino di paletnol. ital., XXIV, pp. 240 ff., note 100).
To this may be added the remarkable groups of finds in the sphere of Ægean cul-
ture. Burials in contracted position, belonging to both the stone and early bronze
ages, have been found, not only in the islands of the Ægean Sea (Ephemeris Arch-
aeologike, 1898, pp. 137 ff.; 1899, pp. 73 ff.) but also on the Grecian mainland
(Orchomenos). Indeed, a burial in the contracted position (liegender Hocker) has
been lately found even in the sphere of Mycenean culture in a tumulus of Orcho-
menos (Mitteilungen des kais. deutschen archaeologischen Instituts zu Athen, 1905,
pp. 130 ff.). Outside of Europe, burials in contracted position are known in Egypt
in the necropoli of the oldest dynasties (cf. De Morgan, Rech. sur les origines de
l'Égypte, 1897, pp. 132 ff.). It is perhaps worthy of especial remark that there is
evidence of this custom in a relatively late epoch in the Caucasus. In the necropolis
of Koban, on the north side of the range, burials in a contracted position were found
in many of the graves, though not in all of them (R. Virchow, d. Graeberfeld von
Koban, p. 13; E. Chantre, Rech. anthrop. dans le Caucase, II, pp. 25 ff.). Accord-
ing to the objects found in the graves this necropolis belongs to the early iron age,
therefore to the I millennium B. C. We have here, then, a region that in finds
approaches nearest to Transcaspia. Nevertheless, one must beware of drawing
important conclusions from this fact unless closer cultural connections can be
deduced from other circumstances. At the present time we are only justified in
saying that in three probably successive, prehistoric culture periods of remote
antiquity in Transcaspia there was a burial custom which was widely practised in
Europe, from east to west and from north to south, during the late neolithic and
early bronze ages.

Now it is a very striking and remarkable fact that the burials found within
the dwelling-places of Anau contain, as a rule, skeletons of children only. I know
of nothing analogous in the history of European cultures. On the other hand,
I find in Sellin's report on his excavations at Tell Ta'aneck in Palestine similar
observations (Denkschrift d. Wien Akad. d. Wissensch. Phil. Hist., Bd. 50, 1904,
pp. 32 ff.). There were found at several points on the hill, "under or close to
the houses and in or near pots, burials of children not over 2 years of age, half
of them indeed newly born; in one instance the body was clearly that of an adult.''
Sellin places the beginning of this custom (pp. 96 ff.) at an early period of the
settlement of the hill in the layer 1b (about 1600 to 1300 B. C.). It lasted through
layer 2a and extends even into the layer 2b (about 1000 to 800 B. C.). It ceased
during the time of the Greek influence (in the eighth to the seventh century B. C.).