Man, Past and Present Part 57

[1180] "Decipherment of the Hitt.i.te Inscriptions," _Soc. of Bibl.

Archaeology_, 1903, and "Hitt.i.te Inscriptions," _ib._ 1905, 1907.

[1181] _Orient. Literaturzeitung_, 1907, and _Orient-Gesellsch._ 1907.

See D. G. Hogarth, "Recent Hitt.i.te Research," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ x.x.xVI. 1909, p. 408.

[1182] L. W. King, "The Hitt.i.tes," Hutchinson's _History of the Nations_, 1914, p. 263. For this type see the ill.u.s.tration of Hitt.i.te divinities, Pl. x.x.xI. of F. von Luschan's paper referred to below. For language see now C. J. S. Marstrander, "Caractere Indo-Europeen de la langue Hitt.i.te," _Videnskapsselskapets Skrifter II Hist. filos. Kla.s.se_, 1918, No. 2.

[1183] "The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia," _Journ. Roy. Anthr.

Inst._ XLI. 1911, p. 230. For this region see D. G. Hogarth, _The Nearer East_, 1902, with ethnological map.

[1184] _Loc. cit._ p. 232.

[1185] F. von Luschan, _loc. cit._ p. 233.

[1186] _Loc. cit._ pp. 242-3.

[1187] Saba', Sheba of the Old Testament, where there are various allusions to its wealth and trading importance from the time of Solomon to that of Cyrus.

[1188] Ma'[=i]n of the inscriptions.

[1189] Arabic _badaw[=i]y_, a dweller in the desert.

[1190] _Loc. cit._ p. 235.

[1191] C. G. Seligman, "The physical characters of the Arabs," _Journ.

Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLVII. 1917, p. 214 ff.

[1192] The rude Semitic dialect still current in this island appears to be fundamentally Phoenician (Carthaginian), later affected by Arabic and Italian influences. (M. Mizzi, _A Voice from Malta_, 1896, _pa.s.sim_.)

[1193] M. Jastrow, _Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions_, 1910.

CHAPTER XV

THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES (_continued_)

THE PEOPLES OF ARYAN SPEECH--European Trade Routes--"Aryan"

Migrations--Indo-European Cradle--Indo-European Type--Date of Indo-European Expansion--Origin of Nordic Peoples--The _Cimbri_ and _Teutoni_--_The Bastarnae_--_The Moeso-Goths_--Scandinavia-- Modification of the Nordic Type--THE CELTO-SLAVS: Their Ethnical Position defined--Aberrant _Tyrolese_ Type--_Rhaetians_ and _Etruscans_--Etruscan Origins--The Celts--Definitions--Celts in Britain--The Picts--Brachycephals in Britain--Round Barrow Type--Alpine Type--Ethnic Relations--Formation of the English Nation--Ethnic Relations in Ireland--Scotland--and in Wales--Present Const.i.tution of the British Peoples--The English Language--_The French Nation_--Const.i.tuent Elements--Mental Traits--_The Spaniards and Portuguese_--Ethnic Relations in Italy--_Ligurian_, _Illyrian_, and _Aryan Elements_--The Present _Italians_--Art and Ethics--_The Rumanians_--Ethnic Relations in Greece--_The h.e.l.lenes_--Origins and Migrations--The _Lithuanian_ Factor--_Aeolians_; _Dorians_; _Ionians_--The h.e.l.lenic Legend--The Greek Language--THE SLAVS-- Origins and Migrations--_Sarmatians_ and _Budini_--_Wends_, _Chekhs_, and _Poles_--The Southern Slavs--Migrations--_Serbs_, _Croats_, _Bosnians_--_The Albanians_--_The Russians_-- Panslavism--Russian Origins--_Alans_ and _Ossets_--Aborigines of the Caucasus--THE IRANIANS--Ethnic and Linguistic Relations-- _Persians_, _Tajiks_ and _Galcha_--_Afghans_--Lowland and Hill Tajiks--The Galchic Linguistic Family--Galcha and Tajik Types-- _h.o.m.o Europaeus_ and _H. Alpinus_ in Central Asia--THE HINDUS-- Ethnic Relations in India--Cla.s.sification of Types--_The Kols_-- _The Dravidians_--Dravidian and Aryan Languages--The Hindu Castes--OCEANIA--_Indonesians_--_Micronesians_--_Eastern Polynesians_--Origins, Types, and Divisions--Migrations-- Polynesian Culture.

As the result of recent researches there is an end of the theory that bronze came in with the "Aryans," and it is from this standpoint that the revelation of an independent Aegean culture in touch with Babylonia and Egypt some four millenniums before the new era is of such momentous import in determining the ethnical relations of the historical, _i.e._ the present European populations.

Some idea of cultured relations in prehistoric times may be obtained from a review of the trade communications as indicated by archaeology during the Bronze Age which lasted through the whole of the third millennium down to the middle of the second. As we have seen, in the Nile valley, in Mesopotamia and in the Aegean area, remains characteristic of Bronze Age culture rest on a neolithic substratum, and a transitional stage, when gold and copper were the only metals known, often connects the two. From the time of this dawning of the Age of Metals, the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, of Crete, of Cyprus and of the mainland of Greece freely exchanged their products. Navigation was already flourishing, and the sea united rather than divided the insular and coastal populations. Gradually Egeo-Mykenaean civilisation extended from Crete and the Greek lands to the west, influencing Sicily directly, and leaving distinct traces in Southern Italy, Sardinia and the Iberian peninsula, while Iberia in its turn contributed to the development of Western Gaul and the British Isles. The knowledge of copper, and, soon after, that of bronze, spread by the Atlantic route to Ireland, while Central Europe was reached directly from the south. Thanks to the trade in amber, always in demand by the Mediterranean populations, there was a continuous trade route to Scandinavia, which thus had direct communication with Southern Europe. As civilisation developed, the lands of the north and west became exporters as well as importers, each developing a distinct industry not always inferior to the more precocious culture of the south[1194].

With trade communications thus stretching across Europe from south to north, and from east to extreme west, it would seem not improbable that movements of peoples were equally unrestricted, and this would account for the appearance on the threshold of history of various peoples formerly grouped together on account of their language, as "Aryan."

J. L. Myres, however, is inclined to attribute "the coming of the North"

to the same type of climatic impulse which induced the Semitic swarms described above (p. 489). After referring to the earliest occurrence of Indo-European names[1195], he continues "Before the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt there had been a very extensive raid of Indo-European-speaking folk by way of the Persian plateau, as far as the Syrian coastland and the interior of Asia Minor." These raids coincide with a new cultural feature of great significance. "It is of the first importance to find that it is in the dark period which immediately precedes the Eighteenth Dynasty revival--when Egypt was prostrate under mysterious 'Shepherd Kings,' and Babylon under Ka.s.site invaders equally mysterious--that the civilized world first became acquainted with one of the greatest blessings of civilisation, the domesticated horse. The period of Arabian drought, which drove forth the 'Canaanite' emigrants, may have had its counterpart on the northern steppe, to provoke the migration of these hors.e.m.e.n." He adds, however, "our knowledge both of the extent of these droughts and of the chronology of both these migrations, is too vague for this to be taken as more than a provisional basis for more exact enquiry[1196]."

The attempt has often been made to locate the original home of the Indo-European people by an appeal to philology, and idyllic pictures have been drawn up of the "Aryan family" consisting of the father the protector, the mother the producer, and the children "whose name implied that they kept everything clean and neat[1197]." They were regarded as originally pastoral and later agricultural, ranging over a wide area with Bactria for its centre. With advancing knowledge of what is primitive in Indo-European this circ.u.mstantial picture crumbled to pieces, and Feist[1198] reduces all inferences deducible from linguistic palaeontology to the sole "argumentum ex silencio" (which he regards as distinctly untrustworthy in itself), that the "Urheimat" was a country in which in the middle of the third millennium B.C. such southern animals as lion, elephant, and tiger, were unknown. It was commonly a.s.sumed that the "Aryan cradle" was in Asia, and the suggestion of R. G.

Latham in 1851 that the original home was in Europe was scouted by one of the most eminent writers on the subject--Victor Hehn--as lunacy possible only to one who lived in a country of cranks[1197]. But since this date, there has been a shifting of the "Urheimat" further and further west. O. Schrader[1199] places it in South Russia, G.

Kossinna[1200] and H. Hirt[1201] support the claims of Germany, while K.

Penka and many others go still further north, deriving both language and tall fair dolichocephalic speakers (proto-Teutons) from Scandinavia[1202].

F. Kauffmann[1203], noting the contrast between the cultures a.s.sociated with pre-neolithic and with neolithic kitchen-middens, is prepared to attribute the former to aboriginal inhabitants, Ligurians, and, further north, Kvaens (Finns, Lapps), and the neolithic civilisation of Europe to Indo-Europeans. "Thus the neolithic Indo-Europeans would already have advanced as far as South Sweden in the Litorina period of the Baltic, during the oak-period."

On the other hand the discovery of Tocharish has inclined E. Meyer[1204]

to reconsider an Asiatic origin, but the information as to this language is too fragmentary to be conclusive on this point. After reviewing the various theories Giles[1205] concludes "in the great plain which extends across Europe north of the Alps and Carpathians and across Asia north of the Hindu Kush there are few geographical obstacles to prevent the rapid spread of peoples from any part of its area to any other, and, as we have seen, the Celts and the Hungarians etc. have in the historical period demonstrated the rapidity with which such migrations could be made. Such migrations may possibly account for the appearance of a people using a _centum_ language so far east as Turkestan[1206]."

More acrimonious than the discussion of the original home is the dispute as to the original physical type of the Indo-European-speaking people.

It was almost a matter of faith with Germans that the language was introduced by tall fair dolichocephals of Nordic type. On the other hand the Gallic school sought to identify the Alpine race as the only and original Aryans. The futility of the whole discussion is ably demonstrated by W. Z. Ripley in his protest against the confusion of language and race[1207]. Feist[1208] summarises our information as follows. All that we can say about the physical type of the "Urvolk" is that since the Indo-Europeans came from a northerly region[1209] (not yet identified) it is surmised that they belonged to the light-skinned people. The observation that mountain folk of Indo-Germanic speech in southern areas, such as the Ossets of the Caucasus, the Kurds of the uplands of Armenia and Irania, and the Tajiks of the western Pamirs not infrequently exhibit fair hair or blue eyes supports this view.

Nevertheless, as he points out, brachycephals are not hereby excluded.

His own conclusion, which naturally results from a review of the whole evidence, is that the "Urvolk" was not a pure race, but a mixture of different types. Already in neolithic times races in Europe were no longer pure, and in France "formed an almost inextricable medley" and Feist a.s.sumes with E. de Michelis[1210] that the Indo-Europeans were a conglomerate of peoples of different origins who in prehistoric times were welded together into an ethnic unity, as the present English have been formed from pre-Indo-European Caledonians (Picts and Scots), Celts, Roman traders and soldiers and later Teutonic settlers[1211].

The evidence that Indo-Europeans were already in existence in Mesopotamia, Syria and Irania about the middle of the second millennium B.C. has already been mentioned. About the same time the Vedic hymns bear witness to the appearance of the Aryans of Western India. The formation of an Aryan group with a common language, religion and culture is a process necessarily requiring considerable length of time, so that their swarming off from the Indo-European parent group must be pushed back to far into the third millennium. At this period there are indications of the settling of the Greeks in the southern promontories of the Balkan peninsula at latest about 2000 B.C., while Thracian and Illyrian peoples may have filled the mainland, though the Dorians occupied Epirus, Macedonia, and perhaps Southern Illyria. Indo-European stocks were already in occupation of Central Italy. It would appear therefore that the period of the Indo-European community, before the migrations, must be placed at the end of the Stone Ages, at the time when copper was first introduced. Thus it seems legitimate to infer that the expansion of the Indo-Europeans began about 2500 B.C. and the furthest advanced branches entered into the regions of the older populations and cultures at latest after the beginning of the second millennium[1212]. About 1000 B.C. we find three areas occupied by Indo-European-speaking peoples, all widely separated from each other and apparently independent. These are (1) the Aryan groups in Asia; (2) the Balkan peninsula together with Central and Lower Italy, and the Mysians and Phrygians of Asia Minor (possibly the Thracians had already advanced across the Danube); and (3) Teutons, Celts and Letto-Slavs over the greater part of Germany and Scandinavia, perhaps also already in Eastern France and in Poland. The following centuries saw the advance of Iranians to South Russia and further west, the pressing of the Phrygians into Armenia, and lastly the Celtic migrations in Western Europe.

From the linguistic and botanical evidence brought forward by the Polish botanist Rostafinski[1213] the ancestors of the Celts, Germans and Balto-Slavs must have occupied a region north of the Carpathians, and west of a line between Konigsberg and Odessa (the beech and yew zone).

The Balto-Slavs subsequently lost the word for beech and transferred the word for yew to the sallow and black alder (both with red wood) but their possession of a word for hornbeam locates their original home in Polesie--the marshland traversed by the Pripet but not south or east of Kiev.

Although, owing to the absence of Teutonic inscriptions before the third or fourth century A.D. it is difficult to trace the Nordic peoples with any certainty during the Bronze or Early Iron Ages, yet the fairly well-defined group of Bronze Age antiquities, covering the basin of the Elbe, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Jutland, Southern Sweden and the islands of the Belt have been conjectured with much probability to represent early Teutonic civilisation. "Whether we are justified in speaking of a Teutonic race in the anthropological sense is at least doubtful, for the most striking characteristics of these peoples [as deduced from prehistoric skeletons, descriptions of ancient writers and present day statistics] occur also to a considerable extent among their eastern and western neighbours, where they can hardly be ascribed altogether to Teutonic admixture. The only result of anthropological investigation which so far can be regarded as definitely established is that the old Teutonic lands in Northern Germany, Denmark and Southern Sweden have been inhabited by people of the same type since the neolithic age if not earlier[1214]." This type is characterised by tall stature, long narrow skull, light complexion with light hair and eyes[1215].

During the age of national migrations, from the fourth to the sixth century, the territories of the Nordic peoples were vastly extended, partly by conquest, and partly by arrangement with the Romans. But these movements had begun before the new era, for we hear of the _Cimbri_ invading Illyric.u.m, Gaul and Italy in the second century B.C. probably from Jutland[1216], where they were apparently a.s.sociated with the _Teutoni_. Still earlier, in the third century B.C., the _Bastarnae_, said by many ancient writers to have been Teutonic in origin, invaded and settled between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. Already mentioned doubtfully by Strabo as separating the Germani from the Scythians (Tyragetes) about the Dniester and Dnieper, their movements may now be followed by authentic doc.u.ments from the Baltic to the Euxine.

Furtw.a.n.gler[1217] shows that the earliest known German figures are those of the Adamklissi monument, in the Dobruja, commemorating the victory of Cra.s.sus over the Bastarnae, Getae, and Thracians in 28 B.C. The Bastarnae migrated before the Cimbri and Teutons through the Vistula valley to the Lower Danube about 200 B.C. They had relations with the Macedonians, and the successes of Mithridates over the Romans were due to their aid. The account of their overthrow by Cra.s.sus in Dio Ca.s.sius is in striking accord with the scenes on the Adamklissi monument. Here they appear dressed only in a kind of trowsers, with long pointed beards, and defiant but n.o.ble features. The same type recurs both on the column of Trajan, who engaged them as auxiliaries in his Dacian wars, and on the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, here however wearing a tunic, a sign perhaps of later Roman influences. And thus after 2000 years are answered Strabo's doubts by modern archaeology.

Much later there followed along the same beaten track between the Baltic and Black Sea a section of the Goths, whom we find first settled in the Baltic lands in proximity to the Finns. The exodus from this region can scarcely have taken place before the second century of the new era, for they are still unknown to Strabo, while Tacitus locates them on the Baltic between the Elbe and the Vistula. Later Ca.s.siodorus and others bring them from Scandinavia to the Vistula, and up that river to the Euxine and Lower Danube. Although often regarded as legendary[1218], this migration is supported by archaeological evidence. In 1837 a gold torque with a Gothic inscription was found at Petroa.s.sa in Wallachia, and in 1858 an iron spear-head with a Gothic name in the same script, which dates from the first Iron Age, turned up near Kovel in Volhynia.

The spear-head is identical with one found in 1865 at Munchenberg in Brandenburg, on which Wimmer remarks that "of 15 Runic inscriptions in Germany the two earliest occur on iron pikes. There is no doubt that the runes of the Kovel spear-head and of the ring came from Gothic tribes[1219]." These Southern Goths, later called Moeso-Goths, because they settled in Moesia (Bulgaria and Servia), had certain physical and even moral characters of the Old Teutons, as seen in the Emperor Maximinus, born in Thrace of a Goth by an Alan woman--very tall, strong, handsome, with light hair and milk-white skin[1220], temperate in all things and of great mental energy.

Before their absorption in the surrounding Bulgar and Slav populations the Moeso-Goths were evangelised in the fourth century by their bishop Ulfilas ("Wolf"), whose fragmentary translation of Scripture, preserved in the _Codex Argenteus_ of Upsala, is the most precious monument of early Teutonic speech extant.

To find the pure Nordic type at the present day we must seek for it in Scandinavia, which possesses one of the most highly individualised populations in Europe. The Osterdal, and the neighbourhood of Vaage in Upper Gudbrandsdal in Norway, and the Dalarna district in Sweden contain perhaps the purest Teutonic type in all Europe, the cephalic index falling well below 78. But along the Norwegian coasts there is a strong tendency to brachycephaly (the index rising to 82-3), combined with a darkening of the hair and eye colour (the type occurs also in Denmark), indicating an outlying lodgement of the Alpine race from Central Europe.

The anthropological history of Scandinavia, according to Ripley, is as follows: "Norway has ... probably been peopled from two directions, one element coming from Sweden and another from the south by way of Denmark.

The latter type, now found on the sea coast and especially along the least attractive portion of it, has been closely hemmed in by the Teutonic immigration from Sweden[1221]." Brachycephalic people already occupied parts of Denmark in the Stone Age[1222], and, according to the scanty information available, the present population is extremely mixed.

One-third of the children have light hair and light eyes, and tall stature coincides in the main with fair colouring, but in Bornholm where the cephalic index is 80 there is a taller dark type and a shorter light type, the latter perhaps akin to the Eastern variety of the Alpine race[1223].

The original Nordic type is by no means universally represented among the present Germanic peoples. From the examination made some years ago of 6,758,000 school children[1224], it would appear that about 31 per cent. of living Germans may be cla.s.sed as blonds, 14 as brunettes, and 55 as mixed; and further that of the blonds about 43 per cent. are centred in North, 33 in Central and 24 in South Germany. The brunettes increase, generally speaking, southwards, South Bavaria showing only about 14 per cent. of blonds, and the same law holds good of the long-heads and the round-heads respectively. To what cause is to be attributed this profound modification of this branch of the Nordic type in the direction of the south?

That the Teutons ranged in considerable numbers far beyond their northern seats is proved by the spread of the German language to the central highlands, and beyond them down the southern slopes, where a rude High German dialect lingered on in the so-called "Seven Communes"

of the Veronese district far into the nineteenth century. But after pa.s.sing the Main, which appears to have long formed the ethnical divide for Central Europe, they entered the zone of the brown Alpine round-heads[1225], to whom they communicated their speech, but by whom they were largely modified in physical appearance. The process has for long ages been much the same everywhere--perennial streams of Teutonism setting steadily from the north, all successively submerged in the great ocean of dark round-headed humanity, which under many names has occupied the central uplands and eastern plains since the Neolithic Age, overflowing also in later times into the Balkan Peninsula.

This absorption of what is a.s.sumed to be the superior in the inferior type, may be due to the conditions of the general movement--warlike bands, accompanied by few women, appearing as conquerors in the midst of the Alpines and merging with them in the great ma.s.s of brachycephalic peoples. Or is the transformation to be explained by de Lapouge's doctrine, that cranial forms are not so much a question of race as of social conditions, and that, owing to the increasingly unfavourable nature of these conditions, there is a general tendency for the superior long-heads to be absorbed in the inferior round-heads[1226].

The fact that dolichocephaly is more prevalent in cities and brachycephaly in rural areas has been interpreted in various ways. De Lapouge[1227] contended that in France the restless and more enterprising long-heads migrated from the rural districts in disproportionate numbers to the towns, where they died out. For the department of Aveyron he gives a table showing a steady rise of the cephalic index from 71.4 in prehistoric times to 86.5 in 1899, and attributes this to the dolichos gravitating chiefly to the large towns, as O. Ammon has also shown for Baden. L. Laloy summed up the results thus: France is being depopulated, and, what is worse, it is precisely the best section of the inhabitants that disappears, the section most productive in eminent men in all departments of learning, while the ignorant and rude _pecus_ alone increase.

These views have met with favour even across the Atlantic, but are by no means universally accepted. The ground seems cut from the whole theory by A. Macalister, who read a paper at the Toronto Meeting of the British a.s.sociation, 1897, on "The Causes of Brachycephaly," showing that the infantile and primitive skull is relatively long, and that there is a gradual change, phylogenetic (racial) as well as ontogenetic (individual) toward brachycephaly, which is certainly correlated with, and is apparently produced by, cerebral activity and growth; in the process of development in the individual and the race the frontal lobes of the brain grow the more rapidly and tend to fill out and broaden the skull[1228]. The tendency would thus have nothing to do with rustic and urban life, nor would the round be necessarily, if at all, inferior to the long head. Some of de Lapouge's generalisations are also traversed by Livi[1229], Deniker[1230], Sergi[1231] and others, and the whole question is admirably summarised by W. Z. Ripley[1232].

But whatever be the cause, the fact must be accepted that _h.o.m.o Europaeus_ (the Nordics) becomes merged southwards in _h.o.m.o Alpinus_ whose names, as stated, are many. Broca and many continental writers use the name _Kelt_ or _Slavo-Kelt_, which has led to much confusion. But it merely means for them the great ma.s.s of brachycephalic peoples in Central Europe, where, at various times, Celtic and Slavonic languages have prevailed.